The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cup
Shuyao drinks the wedding-cup poison as empress, wakes at fourteen, and drops the prince's engagement jade into a water urn in front of guests; the prince steps from his carriage.
The cup was blue porcelain, and it smelled faintly of plum blossom.
Tang Shuyao knew that smell.
She had ordered it served to two concubines herself.
"Drink, Your Majesty," said the eunuch holding the tray.
"Quickly, please. The Prince says it must be done before the northern riders reach the gate."
He did not call her Empress. The title had been taken from her at dawn.
The execution yard was small and gray, with a high wall on every side.
Her husband stood on the covered platform, in white and gold, holding a sleeve to his nose against the cold.
Wei Chengjue had been the Third Prince when she married him. Now he was the Emperor.
Beside him stood her cousin Jiang Wanrou, wearing the phoenix crown that used to be Shuyao's.
Wanrou was crying prettily, as she always did.
"Cousin, it is only a quick sleep," Wanrou said. "The Emperor was kind."
Shuyao looked at the white silk, the knife and the cup laid out for her to choose from.
"Where are my father's bones?" she asked.
"The tombs, of course," Wei said gently.
He was lying, and he had always been good at it.
Her father had been beheaded four years ago, for opening the north gate.
She had given Wei the bronze tiger mould that opened it.
Her brother had died on the same morning, with a broken leg and no one to carry him.
She had written the letter that killed the Marquis of the North, and every house that bore his name.
She had done all of it for the man in white and gold, because he said it would keep her family safe.
"You were useful," Wei said now, softly, from the platform. "I won't forget it."
Shuyao laughed.
It came out rough, and everyone in the yard flinched.
"You will," she said. "You always do."
She drank the cup to the bottom.
The poison tasted of plum, and then of nothing.
Far off, something heavy struck the palace wall, again and again.
She did not live long enough to learn what it was.
"Miss. Miss Shuyao. The prince's gifts are at the gate."
Hands were shaking her shoulder.
Shuyao opened her eyes on a ceiling of carved pear wood.
It was the ceiling of her girlhood room, with the small crack over the bed that her nurse always said was a dragon.
She sat up.
Her chest did not hurt, and her throat was not burning.
Her hands were small.
She held them up in the gray morning light, ten thin fingers with ink on one thumb.
"Miss?" The maid was wringing a towel. "Please, the Third Prince is waiting. Madam says to wear the peach."
The peach robe lay across the screen, the one she had worn on the day she first saw Wei.
She remembered that day. She had thought he looked like a poem.
"What is the date?" Shuyao asked.
Her voice was high and clear, a child's.
The maid told her.
She was fourteen years old, and it was the spring her father rode north for the last time.
Shuyao pushed the blankets aside and stood.
Her knees held.
She walked to the window and looked down into the courtyard.
Her brother Zhengyu was there, laughing, leaning against a pillar on both of his strong legs.
He was alive.
She held the window frame until the wood stopped moving under her fingers.
Then she turned and told the maid, "Not the peach. The green."
"The green is for riding, miss."
"I'm riding."
She dressed herself. She had never in her life done it quickly before.
The gate court was full of people when she came through it.
Servants in the prince's colors held red lacquer boxes in rows.
The household stood in a half circle, her grandmother in front, her cousin Wanrou half a step behind with a pearl comb in her hair.
On a silk cushion in the steward's hands lay a ring of white jade, the engagement token.
"Miss Tang," said the steward, bowing. "His Highness asks you to accept it and to be his."
Wanrou's eyes went to the jade, just once, hungry.
Shuyao saw it.
She walked up, picked the ring off the cushion, and weighed it in her palm.
It was heavy and cold and very fine.
Her grandmother started to smile.
Shuyao walked past her to the stone water urn by the gate, where the lotus leaves floated, and she opened her hand.
The ring went in with a small clean sound.
Nobody in the court breathed.
"Tell His Highness," she said to the steward, "that I decline."
Behind the red lacquer boxes, a carriage door opened.
A man in white and gold stepped down, smiling, and he was sixteen years old and still beautiful.
"A decree does not sink in a pond, Miss Tang," said Wei Chengjue.
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