The Crown Prince had always doted on me, but after he ascended the throne, the Empress Dowager kept finding ways to fill his harem with women. At first, I was furious and constantly picked fights with him. “Xie Zhilin, you promised me we'd be the only ones for each other for life! If not for that, I wouldn't be Empress!” Xie Zhilin would always pull me into his arms and soothe me. “Yanyan, the Empress Dowager isn't my birth mother. How can I ignore her wishes completely?” “You are the only one I love. These women are entering the harem only to balance the court's factions and secure the dynasty.” But later, Xie Zhilin spent every night carousing with beautiful women and often skipped court as well. I stopped arguing with him altogether, becoming the Empress he admired: a model of virtue and generosity, with room in her heart for others. That is, until a shaman from the Western Regions took one look at Xie Zhilin and declared that he had been poisoned. Only then did he turn deathly pale and look at me, though my face showed not a trace of surprise. “Yanyan, you knew I was poisoned all along?! Why... didn't you tell me?” Why? Because... I want you dead too.
