Reborn as the Weakest Heiress, I Gave My Inheritance to the Enemy's Daughter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The List
Linxia, the enemy's daughter, reads Zhaoxue's list of ways to survive and finds her own name at the top; Zhaoxue hands her the Pine Seal instead of lying, and Linxia decides to stay.
Mo Linxia was reading the list when Zhaoxue came back with the tea.
She sat on the guest cushion in the middle of Pine Hall with one boot up on her knee.
She held the paper at arm's length, toward the window light.
Zhaoxue stopped in the doorway, and the cups rattled once on the tray.
She had written that page at dawn, on the back of a ledger sheet.
She had meant to burn it before the envoy arrived.
The envoy had arrived two hours early.
Mo Linxia was the only daughter of the Master of Salt Tide Hall, and she had ridden five days to be here.
She was tall and tan, with a thin scar through her left eyebrow and a black ponytail tied with a red cord.
Her black robes were stitched with silver waves, and a plain black sword lay across her lap.
The six riders who came with her were still out in the courtyard, watering their horses.
Linxia looked up, and the corner of her mouth moved.
"Heiress Feng," she said. "You have very tidy handwriting."
Zhaoxue set the tray down on the low table, because her hands would not hold it any longer.
She could see the page from where she stood.
WAYS TO SURVIVE THE NIGHT OF LANTERNS.
One. Mo Linxia. Make her love me.
Two. Keep Father off the east terrace.
Three. Find out who lifts the east gate bar.
Four. Count Mo Zhenhai's guards.
"I am number one," Linxia said. "I have never been number one at anything that wasn't a sword."
"It isn't what it looks like," Zhaoxue said.
"Then tell me what it looks like."
Zhaoxue could have said it was a game, or a joke written by a bored girl, or a plan for a play.
Three nights ago, she would have said any of them.
Three nights ago she had been dead.
She had died in this same hall, on the Night of Lanterns, with smoke coming under the doors and a stranger's blade in her back.
Then she had woken in her own bed with the morning sun on the quilt and nine days left to live.
She had spent two days looking for a way through those nine days.
The only thing she had found was a woman.
"It's exactly what it looks like," Zhaoxue said.
Linxia's eyebrows rose, the one with the scar a little higher.
"Your father is going to burn my sect on the Night of Lanterns," Zhaoxue said.
The hall was very quiet.
"I saw it three nights in a row. Black banners in the courtyard, the east gate open, my father's courtyard in flames."
"A dream," Linxia said.
"I woke with smoke in my throat."
"My father has not set foot on Cloud Pine in eight years."
"He is coming for the Gathering in six days. The Seven Peaks asked him to."
"And you think he will come to burn the place down in front of the Seven Peaks."
"I think he will burn it with all of them watching, and call it a quarrel between two sects."
Linxia put the paper down on her knee.
She did not look angry, and that frightened Zhaoxue more than anger would have.
"So you wrote down a way to stop him," she said. "You put his daughter on top."
"I am the weakest heiress this sect has ever had," Zhaoxue said. "I can light one candle with my finger."
"I have no army, no sword, and nothing to trade except myself."
"That's what number one is."
"Yes."
For a long moment Linxia only watched her.
Then Zhaoxue reached up and pulled the cord over her own head.
The green jade disc swung out of her collar, carved in the shape of a pine branch.
Every Cloud Pine heir had worn it since the sect's founding.
Whoever held it commanded the guard formation and opened the treasury, and whoever held it after Master Feng owned the mountain.
Her father had hung it around her neck on her eighteenth birthday, and she had never taken it off.
She took it off now and held it out across the table.
"Take it," she said.
Linxia did not move.
"That's your whole inheritance."
"If Cloud Pine belongs to you, your father has no reason to burn it," Zhaoxue said.
"If he burns it anyway, you will be standing inside it."
"You are a terrible schemer."
"I know."
"You'd give a sect to a woman you met an hour ago, because of a dream."
"I'd give it to you because of what I saw," Zhaoxue said, and her voice cracked on the last word. "Please."
Linxia took the seal.
She turned it over in her palm, and her thumb traced the little pine needles on the edge.
Then she hung it around her own neck and tucked it inside her collar, against her skin.
"Fine," she said. "It's mine. I'm staying until the Night of Lanterns to guard my property."
Footsteps sounded in the corridor, quick and light.
Ning Zhiyuan came in with his ring of keys at his belt, smiling the easy smile he had worn since they were children.
"Shimei, the Mo envoy's rooms are ready, and the kitchen asks if she eats..."
He stopped.
His eyes had gone to Linxia's collar, where the cord showed grey against her neck.
His smile stopped for a breath.
Then it came back.
"Shimei," he said lightly. "What is the Mo envoy doing with the Pine Seal?"
"Holding it," Linxia said.
She stood, tucked the list into her sleeve, and nodded at Zhaoxue like a guard taking a post.
"Number two," she said quietly. "Keep your father off the east terrace. I'll start there."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend