What Is It Now, My Princess? - Chapter 1
My mother was Father’s favorite consort. With her immensely powerful father behind her, she ruled the palace as she pleased.
Anyone who displeased her earned a beating severe enough to leave a yard of bloody flesh.
Father indulged her. He said that fierce, imperious temper was exactly what he loved about her.
Mother had only one sorrow: eight years in the palace, and she had never conceived.
Father took it in stride and told her there was no hurry.
Then she did get pregnant, and he was the one who grew anxious.
An old nurse told me that on the day I was born, Father sat outside the birthing room with a grim face from morning to night.
Only when the midwife announced the birth of a little princess did he finally smile.
“Good. A princess is good. I do love a princess.”
Later, my grandfather’s estate was confiscated. Mother fell ill and never recovered. She died when I was two.
None of that stopped me from becoming the most exalted, most overbearing princess in the empire.
Because my very capable uncle turned the family’s fortunes around, clawing his way from the son of a disgraced official to Prince Regent. A textbook comeback.
After forty, Father became obsessed with alchemical elixirs. He spent his days in a fog and dumped the business of government on my uncle, Xie Heng.
One day, Xie Heng came to report after court and had been standing outside the imperial study for half the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.
An attentive eunuch brought him a stool.
“Please sit while you wait, Your Highness. His Majesty took his elixir and went to sleep. He won’t be waking for a while.”
The sixth prince happened to arrive to pay his respects. Seeing this, he made a snide remark about Xie Heng putting on airs and forgetting his place.
I marched over and slapped him so hard he spun like a top.
“You little weasel. Who’s forgetting their place?”
The sixth prince was older than me. As the empress’s son and the crown prince’s full brother, he normally strutted around with his nose in the air. But I’d beaten that out of him long ago.
When the top stopped spinning, I raised my hand again.
He recognized me, clapped a hand over his face on instinct, and fled, whimpering.
“I’m telling Mother! I’m telling my brother! Just you wait!”
Fine. I’d wait. He said the same thing every time, and every time all I got was news that the empress had confined him to his rooms.
“Provoke anyone you like, but for heaven’s sake leave that little terror Zhaohua alone!”
Every consort in the palace drilled that warning into her children.
Because whenever someone offended me, the regent invariably made an example of some unfortunate member of their mother’s family at court the next morning.
“How can anyone sit on that? It’s rock-hard.”
I ordered Eunuch Wang to replace the stool with a cushioned armchair, then summoned two maids to soak Xie Heng’s feet and massage his legs.
“Uncle, court must have been exhausting. Are your legs sore?” Wearing my sweetest smile, I personally handed him tea.
He didn’t take it. He narrowed his eyes at me instead.
“Normally you call me by my name or shout ‘old man.’ Why does hearing ‘Uncle’ give me chills?”
Tsk. The old man was sharp.
Fine, then. No point pretending.
“I got into a teeny, tiny bit of trouble outside the palace.” I held my finger and thumb a hair apart. “Make it go away for me?”
Understanding dawned. Reassured, Xie Heng accepted the tea.
“Outside the palace? How bad could it be? I thought you’d sewn yourself another dragon robe to play in.”
Eunuch Wang’s knees nearly gave out. “Your Highness, mind your words!”
His composure cheered me immensely.
“I took a fancy to a young fellow and invited him to my country estate for a few days of fun. Accidentally played him to death. His family won’t let it go. They keep demanding an explanation. I thought I might as well kill the lot, but there are so many of them. A hundred and eight! I can’t get through them all.”
Xie Heng sprayed tea everywhere.
