The First Life 1

A young woman, a little over twenty, stood bounded on the edge of the fortress wall. The strong, freezing wind blew her disheveled long hair all around.

She trembled from the cold on her purplish frostbitten feet.

A thin hemp garment and rope, stained dark red with her blood, covered her petite body from neck to leg.

It offered her little protection against the freezing wind.

Her back whipped raw. She had no fingernails on both hands, only red raw and blackish flesh where her fingernails once grew.

Only odd noises escaped her mouth as she swallowed the icy, dry air. They tore her tongue out.

Reddish rusty hooks went through her back and curved out of her upper chest.

The cold lessened some of her excruciating pain. It numbed every part of the skin it could reach through the garment.

Her eyes wandered to the distant powdery snow covered Southern Mountains. Her birthplace was Huangcheng, the Capital of the Dayan Empire.

It was near the snaking Yellow River below the Southern mountains in the Central Plains.

She remembered her early childhood days, and the pleasant memories of her mother. Her mother left the Central Palace with her brother, Hushiyi, and her to live as commoners.

The freezing wind blasting on her body reminded her of the cool breeze bringing the smells of the flowers blooming in the village while her maternal grandfather trained her uncle, Hushiyi and her in martial arts.

Uncle used to get the most beatings from grandfather for forgetting his stances. She used to hate training but watching uncle beaten amused her.

Mother's voice calling them to dinner, and her maternal grandfather telling them stories about the Dayan Empire and the neighbouring state, remained as precious family memories of a distant past.

Everything changed when she turned six. Mother died and their Emperor-father sent for them. She never saw her maternal grandfather or uncle again.

Her eyes closed.

Don't expect any help from the Dayan Empire, she thought to herself.

No one will come.

Her half-brother assassinated her full blood brother, the late Emperor Hushiyi. He did this in a bid for the throne. Any shred of hope for help vanished at the bitter thought.

The warlike customs of the Empire indulged in kin-killing. They did this especially to remove any threat. To the new Emperor Huqi, she and any of those connected with the late Hushiyi posed a threat of revenge killing.

She left the Dayan Empire at fifteen, as Princess Yinyue of Dayan. She married the royal prince of the Gaoyang state, now the King of Gaoyang, to link the Dayan Empire and Gaoyang.

Gaoyang gained benefits from the Dayan Empire through the alliance marriage. She gained nothing, not even a bit of political power.

Yinyue was a political pawn, disguised as a reward paid to the state of Gaoyang. Gaoyang had acted as a buffer against the Xirong Empire and two other states to the south.

The King of Gaoyang knew she was a disfavored princess. He gave her due respect for fear of offending the Dayan Empire. She mistook his treatment as love and thought him shy at first.

Was she so desperate for love? She clung to him, lapping up any kind words and yearning for his touch. She felt dirty. Not by the blood or dirt sticking to her skin. 

The thought of his touch made her feel disgusted now.

What love can a man with a harem of competing women give?

She knew the answer.

None.

He poisoned her food with red safflowers over the years to keep her childless. Meanwhile, his concubines gave him ten princes and four daughters.

Assassins threatened his life during a power struggle. Yet she took the arrow meant for him, the ingrate.

When Hushiyi ascended Dayan's throne last year, the King of Gaoyang paid her more attention and care. She was still foolish and too sentimental. The man had fooled her with seductive words whispered into her ear.

Hushiyi's death signalled her end. Women held little or no power. The power of their maternal families protected them before and during marriage. In the Dayan Imperial family, Hushiyi was her sole protector.

Forget her half-blooded siblings or her stepmother, the Empress Dowager. They didn't care if she died.

After a woman bore a son, her son became her primary protection. As a woman without a son or her full-blooded brother, her life laid at the mercy of others.

After Hushiyi died, the King of Gaoyang took every opportunity to get rid of her. He used his scheming concubines to frame her. Still, she hung on to a shred of hope of his love.

The King told her the truth a few days ago. He used her as a political tool for Gaoyang to rise.

Nothing hurt more when he told her how he had to tolerate every moment with her. His words of truth and his look of disdain shattered her illusion of love. It smashed her heart to smithereens.

She blamed her stupidity more than him for believing and trusting him.

A sudden wind blasted through the snow-covered fortress. Its iciness shot through her body.

"Let's see what YOUR brother will do…oh wait…my brother fed his cold dead body to the wolves," a woman mocked her.

The voice belonged to Shoula, the Fifth Princess of the Dayan Empire, Huqi's sister. And Yinyue's half sister.

Yinyue refused to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. 

Shoula gloated about how many times the conniving bitch of her mother, the now Empress Dowager, schemed against Hushiyi and her when she arrived in Gaoyang.

At first, her revelations of the Empress Dowager's misdeeds shocked Yinyue into tears and a nervous breakdown.

Now her insults and words of humiliation felt like the wind blowing in her ears.

Like a background noise.

Shoula married the King of Gaoyang a week ago. Yinyue wanted to laugh at the King.

He didn't realize why they sent Shoula over to his boudoir. What a foolish man.

Then again, Yinyue was a fool, too.

Fooled by him and even the Dayan Empress Dowager.

Yinyue used to like the Empress Dowager. The Empress Dowager was the primary consort of her late Emperor-father and Shoula's biological mother. She saw the Empress Dowager as her own mother because her mother died when she was five.

Yinyue regretted trusting the Empress Dowager. She did so despite her brother's warnings over the years.

She looked up at the cloudy sky and thought, 'brother, I should have trusted you, instead of defending a snake.'

Six months before her seventh birthday, Hushiyi separated from her to train as a prince.

The Empress Dowager played her by acting as a mother-figure. She gained her trust and turned her against her own brother.

"My brother wanted our bloodline to be cleared of your mother's whore blood," Shoula said.

Yinyue ignored her rambling.

She didn't want to hear any more.

Nothing mattered to her in this life.

Nowhere to run.

She felt alone in this world.

Not even someone to mourn her passing.

She will vanish like she never existed.