This Palace Is Mine

[Empress Xiaoyi was born on the ninth day of the ninth month, and she was ten years old in October. Empress Xiaoyi was sixteen years younger than Emperor Qianlong, and she was also sixteen years younger than the Fifteenth Prince.] She was chosen to enter the palace at the age of seven as a companion reader to a princess. She was destined to have a tangled fate with the palace: other noblewomen only entered the palace to be selected as consorts at thirteen or fourteen, but she had arrived years earlier! All she could do was count on her fingers and wait. Once the princess married in a few years, she could leave the palace and go home, having fulfilled her duty! But who could have guessed that she would meet the strange Fifteenth Prince in the palace? He always claimed he was there to see the princess and the other young ladies, yet his eyes were fixed on her. When the palace consorts bullied her, the Fifteenth Prince stood up for her. When she fell from a tree, he caught her. When she made friends with imperial grandsons and princess consorts, the Fifteenth Prince lost his temper... She had no idea how she had offended the young prince. All she wanted was for the princess to marry soon, so she could make her escape! But! The very year the princess married, the emperor watched her with the sly grin of an old fox. “Little girl, stay and be my daughter-in-law~”