Chapter 1 — Kneeling before the Queen and Duke

Rain had just begun to fall, and dew still lingered on the tiled roof of the Tu palace. Sam Khinh Vu got up in the fifth watch and personally lit the stove in the small kitchen behind the garden to cook a pot of lotus seed porridge for her mother-in-law who was getting sick. She did not order her servants to do that, because during the three years she had been a daughter-in-law of the Tu family, she had gotten used to taking care of the most trivial matters herself, seeing it as a way to express her sincerity to her husband's family. The kitchen smoke stung her eyes, but she still smiled, stirring the pot of porridge with her hands, softly humming a lullaby that her nanny had taught her when she was a child.

Sam Khinh Vu was the only daughter of businessman Sam Dinh Ngan, a famous silk and sea salt merchant throughout the region, building a business from scratch. Her father passed away more than a year ago due to illness, leaving her all his assets and the right to manage merchant fleets and warehouses stretching from the capital Khanh Duong down to the coastal region. Before he died, he made a very clear will, giving his daughter the right to decide on all transfer documents, not allowing anyone, including his son-in-law, to arbitrarily take over that inheritance without her signature and seal. That was a normal thing in a cautious merchant family, but that normal thing became a thorn in her husband's side.

Tu Bach Quan was the only son of the Tu family, a family that once had a mandarin in the court but had now fallen into decline, only maintaining its external reputation but lacking internal strength. The marriage between him and Khinh Vu, in the end, was mostly a calculation by both families: Tu family needed a rich daughter-in-law to revive their business, while Sam Dinh Ngan at that time wanted her daughter to have a husband from a prestigious background, enough for her not to be despised by people because of her status as a merchant. Khinh Vu did not blame her father at all. On the contrary, she always told herself that she had to live up to that expectation, to make the Tu family truly value her, not just because of the dowry.

During the past three years, she had done more than what a normal bride could do. It was she who negotiated with large and small commercial associations, helping the Tu family restore broken business relationships when her grandfather Bach Quan was still in office. It was she who sat night and night calculating accounts until the third watch, looking for ways to make up for old debts that the Tu family kept hidden and did not dare to speak out. She was also the one who took care of her mother-in-law with every word, to the point that everyone in the palace, from the housekeeper to the smallest servant, all said to each other that the young lady of the Tu family was a rare person, wholeheartedly devoted to her husband and family, without any personal considerations.

Yet, day by day, the distance between her and Bach Quan became more and more apparent through every little thing. In the evenings, he used the excuse of being busy with work and came home late, still smelling of alcohol and a strange fragrance that was not hers. The times she asked kindly, he responded with a cold voice, sometimes even grumpy for no reason. She once thought that perhaps he was under pressure from shouldering the family fortune, from the voices of relatives far and near that he was just living off his wife's dowry, so the more she tried to be patient, the more she tried to do more to share that burden, without knowing that her devotion was being looked at by others with envious eyes.

That other person, no stranger, was Tham Nhuoc Lan, the adopted sister that her father took in and raised since they were both five or six years old. That year, Sam Dinh Ngan, on his way to do business, met an orphan girl wandering on the side of the road. Feeling sorry for her, he took her home and raised her as her own child. She was given a good education and upbringing, not inferior to Khinh Vu. The two sisters had been close since childhood, learning embroidery together, reading sacred books together, to the point that outsiders looked at them and thought they were siblings. When Khinh Vu returned to the Tu palace, she also asked her father to allow Nhuoc Lan to come and live with her, partly because of her sisterly love, partly because she loved her adopted sister who had no other refuge but herself.

That morning, after carrying a bowl of hot lotus seed porridge to her mother-in-law's room, Khinh Vu passed by the east hallway and accidentally heard Nhuoc Lan's soft voice echoing from the small room used to keep books. She originally intended to knock on the door to inquire, but her hand that was halfway up stopped when the next voice rang out, making her heart skip a beat.

"She still hasn't given up management of the southern fleet to you, right?" Nhuoc Lan's voice was soft but there was something unusually cold, completely different from the gentleness she always showed in front of Khinh Vu.

Khinh Vu held her breath, pressed her body against the wall, not daring to move, nor daring to believe what her ears had just heard. Inside, there was the sound of footsteps going back and forth, then a man's low voice responded. That voice was familiar to her with every breath. It was the voice of Bach Quan, her husband.

"She's too careful, always saying she must keep her father-in-law's instructions. I've been married to her for three years, but even a signature on the transfer document still has to wait for her to nod. What else can I do in the eyes of the world?"

Khinh Vu stood still, feeling as if someone had just poured a bucket of cold water down her spine. She always knew that Bach Quan was sometimes dissatisfied with the fact that every big and small decision required her consent, but she never thought he would discuss it privately with Nhuoc Lan, and even more unexpected that his tone when talking about her would be so cold and distant, as if he were talking about a stranger, not the first wife who had been with him for many years.

"If you say so," Nhuoc Lan raised her voice, slowly saying each word as if considering it, "then perhaps you should think about the fact that one day, everything will no longer have to wait for someone to nod."

That sentence hung in the air, not clearly said but made the listener's hair stand on end. Khinh Vu tightened the hem of her shirt, feeling cold all over her body, but she still tried to keep herself standing, trying to suppress the gasp that was about to spill out of her chest. She told herself that perhaps she was thinking too far ahead, perhaps it was just a casual sentence between two people who were as close as sisters, without any profound meaning. That woman was so used to trusting the people she loved, so used to finding every reason to defend them, that she didn't dare face the worst possibility looming right before her eyes.

She quietly left the hallway, her steps were shaky but she still tried to maintain her straight gait as usual, returned to her private room, sat down at the dressing table, looked at herself in the bronze mirror. The face reflected back was a twenty-year-old woman, with eyebrows and phoenix eyes, still possessing the innocence of her girlhood mixed with the maturity of someone who had spent three years as a bride in a foreign land. She gently stroked her cheek, wondering where she went wrong, what she missed that made her husband become increasingly distant, and made her adopted sister whom she loved so much say such incomprehensible words.

At noon, when Nhuoc Lan came to her room, carrying a tray of fresh fruit that had just been sent from the countryside by her family, still with her familiar gentle smile, asking her if she was tired or if she had had enough sleep, Khinh Vu once again reassured herself. She looked at her adopted sister's delicate face, remembered the many years the two of them relied on each other, remembered her father's words before his death that she must always love and protect Nhuoc Lan like her own sister, then brushed aside the doubts that had just arisen, telling herself that perhaps it was just a temporary misunderstanding.

That afternoon, Bach Quan returned earlier than usual, with an unusually warm attitude, and even personally poured her a cup of fragrant tea, saying that he had thought about it again, wanted to discuss more carefully with her about managing the family business, and did not want her to have to work hard alone anymore. Khinh Vu heard that, the corner of her lips suddenly curled up, her hands that were folding the tablecloth suddenly stopped midway, thinking that the doubts of the morning were just her making herself miserable, thinking that her husband still understood and appreciated what she had sacrificed over the past three years. Little did she expect that unusual gentleness was just the prelude to a carefully planned plot, a plot whose initiators were the two people she trusted most in the world, her first husband and her adopted sister who had called her sister for fifteen years.

That night, after finishing the meal, Khinh Vu stood by the door, looking at the autumn moonlight hanging on the tiled roof of Tu Phu, suddenly a vague, nameless feeling of insecurity arose in her heart, as if an invisible hand was gently squeezing somewhere in her chest that she couldn't name. She looked towards the book room in the east hallway, where in the morning she had heard the words that made her heart skip a beat, then blamed herself for being so bothered by such an idle sentence. She turned around and went back to bed, pulling the blanket over her chest, telling herself that when she woke up tomorrow everything would be as peaceful as before. Little did she know, in just three days, right at the very celebration of life party where she was eagerly staying up late to prepare every needle and thread, a seemingly ordinary cup of lotus tea would be delivered to her, and everything she had believed in, loved, and sacrificed all her youth to cultivate for three long years, would be shattered in just one moonless night.