A Palace Maid's Road to Success

[My new novel, After Taking the Princess's Place in the Prince Consort's Bed (A Mistaken Love), is now available. The blurb is at the bottom. Please add it to your collection!]

Blurb:

Three years ago, amid a change of regime and the chaos of war, Yunzhu once fished a handsome young man in disheveled underclothes out of a pond. She rescued him and even made him a bowl of chicken soup.

Only after the chaos outside had passed did she learn that the boy who blushed around her was the very man who had later won the power struggle and ascended the throne as emperor.

The emperor sent someone to ask what she wanted, but Yunzhu was stunned by the vast gulf in their status. All she dared ask for was a hundred taels of silver, and she hurried to cut ties with him.

By mischance, she later entered the palace as a maid alongside the unpopular Lady Su, who was constantly being targeted.

To survive, Yunzhu had no choice but to swallow her pride and bring up their past, hoping to help her mistress secure a more respectable position.

Who could have guessed that, after one mishap after another, her mistress would end up confined to the Cold Palace?

With no other option, Yunzhu had to step in herself, hoping to rescue her at the lowest possible cost.

But as she tried to get her mistress out, she ended up securing a place for herself instead.

Xiang An had grown up alongside the emperor as his trusted, long-suffering attendant. He knew what had happened back then, but had never seen the face of the girl involved.

Because the emperor paid so much attention to Qingyi Palace, he assumed that the one who had shared that fateful encounter with him was Lady Su, who held a proper rank.

So when he had to steel himself and ask Yunzhu, who happened to be nearby, to give the emperor an antidote after he was drugged with Yichun Powder, he went through a fierce inner struggle.

But who could have expected that after waking, the emperor, who had kept himself pure for twenty years, would discover he'd lost his virtue and neither grieve nor lose his temper? Instead, his ears turned red, and he seemed poised to transfer his affections.

Only then did Xiang An realize just how badly he'd been mistaken.

Heavens! As the emperor's most trusted chief eunuch, he had mistaken the future empress for someone else!

[Reading Notes]

1. One-on-one romance, both leads sexually inexperienced, happy ending. Entirely fictional setting.

2. Big-hearted palace maid x love-struck, sincere emperor (possibly the class monitor of the gentlemanly conduct club)

3. Updates daily unless something unexpected comes up. I'll take a break if needed.

4. I want to write a lighthearted story. I'll write as I please, so just enjoy it however you like!

[Blurb for the new novel, After Taking the Princess's Place in the Prince Consort's Bed]

(The current title is A Mistaken Love, now available.)

As one of the lowest-ranking servants in the food chain, a lowly palace maid has very little say in her own life.

So Rouyun agreed to the princess's request: take her place in bed with the prince consort she disliked, and consummate the marriage in her stead at night, to satisfy the empress dowager's scrutiny of the union.

Every pitch-black night, as the curtains swayed around the bed, Rouyun struggled to keep herself from giving the game away.

Her only hope was that the princess would divorce her husband soon, freeing her from this torment that entangled both body and heart.

The day of the divorce did indeed arrive soon.

But what Rouyun never expected was that the prince consort, who was said to be noble and radiant yet aloof, would make "keeping Rouyun" the condition for agreeing to the divorce.

[Bonus Scene]

Not long after Princess Pei Yu's wedding, a friend came to visit the newlywed prince consort.

Seeing how distant the couple seemed, the friend brought the groom some things to help him get in the mood. Unbeknownst to him, someone took advantage of the opportunity and made the drug several times stronger.

That night, Pei Yu was barely conscious. He vaguely remembered being rough, and feared he might have hurt the princess.

The next morning, he went to the princess's quarters to apologize, only to find her lively and full of energy. Meanwhile, the palace maid who attended her every day had suddenly fallen ill and disappeared.

*

The following day, Pei Yu ran into the recovered maid in the garden.

Though it was summer, her collar was fastened high. As her gaze darted away, a few unusual red marks could be seen on her neck.

They seemed to overlap with the places where he'd been rough the night before.

[Resilient little maid x composed, aloof beauty]

Theme: Embrace life with optimism