The Empress Is Alluring, and the Mad Official Seizes Her in His Arms

Jiang Wan thought Yan Shaoqin hated her so much he wanted her dead. He pinned her against a stone table in the imperial garden, tore open her collar, and branded the side of her neck with his teeth. “Go on, cry out. Let your emperor hear how his empress gasps for breath in the hands of an enemy prince.” She regretted it. She regretted that the arrow she shot three years ago had missed by half an inch. The close-protection assassin she once wished a long life for now stood at the throat of her Southern Qi with three hundred thousand iron cavalry. In the throne room, he looked past Chu Heng and fixed his eyes on her. “I want no cities. I want Her Majesty the Empress to attend to me day and night.” Chu Heng drew his sword, but Jiang Wan stopped him. “Your Majesty, trust me.” She wagered that she could win. But she forgot that Yan Shaoqin was a mad dog. Mad dogs never play by the rules when they bite. He imprisoned her in a secret passage and forced her to meet him in secret, branding her with his mark. “Jiang Wan, I wonder if your emperor will depose you for this.” Only after she was sent as a hostage to Northern Zhou did she discover that this mad dog had spent three whole years laying his plans. All he wanted was for her to fall from her lofty place into his arms, then make her pay, inch by inch. “Jiang Wan,” he said, looking up at her with a humility she had never seen in his eyes. “Will you kill me now, or… take me in again?”