She waited by Daming Lake for eighteen years, only to get a single reply: "I know."
Reborn on the day before it all began, Xia Yuhe clutched the folding fan bearing the poem written by the Emperor himself and smiled.
In this life, she would not be a woman waiting for a dragon. She would be the one moving the pieces.
When her stepmother tried to sell her younger sister, she exposed the Zhang family's dirty secrets in front of everyone. When the imperial consorts tried to climb over her, she smiled and sent them one by one to the Cold Palace. When the Emperor tried to keep her as a canary, she insisted on ruling from behind the curtain and taking half the empire into her hands.
From commoner to regent empress dowager, she asked for no title.
But that year, the paper money burned throughout the land bore the same four words: Long live the Empress.
She waited for a lifetime, then traded a lifetime for a life without waiting.
