When I was five, my father usurped the throne and changed the name of the kingdom to Chen.
Chen was my mother’s surname.
Overnight, I became the most exalted, and only, princess of Great Chen.
My title was Ning Le.
On the day I moved into the Supreme Palace, every palace servant looked at me with reverence in one eye and mockery in the other.
Because I was mute.
They were brazen enough to call me a damned mute to my face while pretending to obey me.
It took a lot of people dying before those fools realized that this mute girl could hear just fine.
Of course I wasn’t deaf. My father had only poisoned me mute when I was five.
It was because I saw him skin a man, the very man who could have wiped out my father’s and my entire clan.
I was so frightened that I fell gravely ill. When I woke, my father was holding me, a bowl of medicine in his hand.
I refused to drink it because it was bitter, so he smiled gently and coaxed me.
“Be good, Yun’er. Drink it, and Father will give you every sweetness in the world.”
He lied to me, and he broke his promise.
How could he not know that once I drank that bowl of medicine, I would never taste sweetness again for the rest of my life?
