Chapter 1 He Raced Back
When he heard I was pregnant, Li Yuancheng raced back from the border on a fast horse.
His armor was still on. The dark hair at his temples was wet with sweat.
He sat at the bedside and carefully stroked my slightly rounded belly. "Xie Yuying, do we truly have a child?"
His voice was tight. Every word sounded glad.
The same convincing performance as in my last life.
I forced a smile and answered softly, "Mm. It has been almost three months."
What I carried was his first child.
And my death warrant.
Pity that in my last life I had not known. I had waited for this child's birth with a full heart.
Li Yuancheng pulled me into his arms. "Thank you."
Thank you.
How ironic those two words were.
I looked up at him. The veins on his neck were right before my eyes.
For so many nights, I had loved the way those veins stood out when he lost control.
Now I only wanted to take the silver knife from the fruit plate and cut them open.
In the end I drew my gaze back and nestled against him, meek.
Killing him with one stroke would have been too kind.
I wanted him to taste having nothing, and the pain of a thousand arrows through the heart.
And I knew Xu Liuyi would soon come to congratulate me.
She was Li Yuancheng's cherished first love.
He had fallen for her when he was a hostage in her homeland, Chen.
From what I could see, he had feelings. She showed none.
Later Chen was defeated, and she was sent to Great Zhou as a Tribute Woman. Li Yuancheng asked for her.
Though he liked her, he could not sleep with her.
He was going to be the emperor of Great Zhou.
And in the inner palace of Great Zhou there was a secret law that went against heaven. The emperor's first son would be named Crown Prince, but to keep maternal kin from seizing power, the woman who bore the Crown Prince had to die.
Since the founding of Great Zhou, six young women had already died for it.
Li Yuancheng's birth mother had been the sixth.
I was the seventh.
If I had died purely because of that secret law, like the others, I would not have hated Li Yuancheng this much.
I would only have blamed him for being timid and weak, for not daring to fight this man-eating law for me.
But I had been calculated by him.
At that time he had only three consorts. One was Xu Liuyi. The other two were daughters of high ministers.
The ministers' daughters might already have known the palace's secret law. They kept claiming they were unwell and never attended him at night.
So Li Yuancheng chose me.