Chapter 2 Why He Chose Me
Our Xie family had long garrisoned the border. My father and three Elder Brothers had already died in battle.
Not long after, my mother died of grief. Of the Xie house, only I remained, along with my married Second Elder Sister and my Fourth Elder Brother, who had lost a leg.
A family so far from the capital knew nothing of the palace's secret affairs.
And my mother had borne four sons and two daughters. Her sisters had many children too. In the first year after my Second Elder Sister married, she gave birth to twins.
In many people's eyes, the women of my mother's line were easy to conceive.
So I, with no powerful maternal clan and a body thought good for bearing children, was picked by Li Yuancheng.
That year I had just turned seventeen.
After I entered the Eastern Palace, I had Li Yuancheng's favor to myself.
He spent every night in my rooms and took me with him when he went out. Except for the days of my monthly courses, we were almost never apart.
He was like a cold moon in the sky, aloof and noble, nothing like the rough men of our border city.
I liked him too.
I liked being with him.
Strangely, with favor that frequent, I did not conceive in the first year.
It was not until the autumn of the next year that Li Yuancheng, as Crown Prince, had to go to the border to reward the troops.
I started missing him on the first day he left.
I disguised myself as a man and rode after him.
I had grown up in the border army. Riding was my strength.
I caught up at nightfall, then slipped into his tent and begged him to take me along.
When he saw me, he looked startled, and he refused me outright. "No."
I coaxed him. "Why? You used to take me wherever you went."
"Women cannot follow the army."
"I can keep dressing as a man."
"No."
As we spoke, his personal guards heard the noise and came to check.
The tent was small. There was nowhere to hide.
He had to lie down under the quilt and hide me beneath him.
After the guards left, I pushed the quilt aside and breathed in small gasps.
Li Yuancheng only stared at me.
I thought he would tell me to leave again.
Instead he pulled me back under the quilt.
That night, so as not to alert the guards, we kept as quiet and restrained as possible in that tiny tent.
Whenever I could not hold back, he clamped a hand over my mouth and nose until I nearly suffocated, while he only took what he wanted and did not seem to notice at all. His face twisted with extreme pleasure.
Even then I had a faint feeling he did not love me, so he did not see my pain.
To him I was only a vessel for pleasure, a tool for producing heirs.
At the time I liked him one-sidedly, and told myself this was him losing control because of me.
Near dawn he hid me under his wide cloak and sent me out.
On the autumn plain, cold wind rolled through the long grass, and the light of the stars was slowly fading.
I sat on my horse and said goodbye, reluctant, telling him to finish his duty and come home quickly. I would be waiting.
I did not know that on that night I had conceived his child.
Still less did I know that my life, like those stars before dawn, was slowly going out.