Chapter 1 — The Secret the Empress Dowager Concealed

The entire family was dragged to the execution grounds, the sun beating down with a blinding, relentless intensity. The executioner’s blade leaned against a wooden stake, its steel edge gleaming with a lethal clarity that made my eyes ache. To my left, Mother knelt, her face as deathly pale as if she had been hauled straight out of a coffin. To my right, my younger sister, Xie Xiaoman, was sobbing so violently that the mucus bubbling from her nose was threatening to burst. My younger brother, Xie Wencheng, knelt on the far edge, desperately trying to maintain the stoic mask of a scholar, though his lips trembled more violently than a sheet of parchment in a storm.

At the very front knelt our father, Xie Guihong. As the Marquis of Zhenbei, he had been the most arrogant, ostentatious figure in the capital only yesterday. Today, however, he was a condemned man, branded with the charge of treason and facing the total annihilation of our entire clan. On the viewing platform sat Emperor Yuan Sheng, presiding over our demise, surrounded by civil and military officials who stood like silent, shivering statues. I had braced myself for Father to bellow a final protest of his innocence or perhaps deliver a defiant, poetic last stand. Instead, he suddenly lunged forward, letting out a wail so loud and wretched it echoed like a slaughterhouse siren.

"Your Majesty!" he shrieked, slamming his forehead into the dirt with enough force to draw blood. "I have something to say!"

Emperor Yuan Sheng’s brow twitched. "Xie Guihong, are you still trying to cry injustice?"

Father lifted his face, his features a pathetic smear of tears and mucus. "No injustice! Not at all!"

My heart turned to ice. If he wasn't claiming innocence, what was he doing? Father pointed a trembling finger directly at me. "Your Majesty, the eldest daughter was a foundling I picked up off the side of the road! She is not my flesh and blood!"

I felt the wind on the execution ground simply stop. My mother whipped her head toward him, her eyes burning with a look that suggested she wanted to flay him alive. My sister forgot how to weep, her nose-bubble popping with a sharp, anticlimactic snap. My brother sat frozen in shock. The officials stood paralyzed, and the Emperor’s tea cup hovered in mid-air, forgotten.

"What did you say?" the Emperor asked.

Father scrambled forward, weeping with even more theatrical intensity. "When I was returning from the frontier years ago, I found her abandoned in a tattered basket, crying her lungs out. My heart softened, so I took her in." He looked at me, his eyes brimming with a sickening, performative tenderness. "Ming Duong, my child, I have failed you. I have kept this secret for seventeen years."

I ground my teeth. "You wait until we are on the chopping block to tell me? That is how you’ve failed me?"

Father ignored me, pointing frantically at my sister. "The younger girl isn't mine either!"

Xie Xiaoman gasped, "Father!"

Father wore an expression of profound suffering. "When you were born, I was off chasing bandits! I checked later—you were never entered into the family register!"

Xiaoman stared, jaw agape. "So for fifteen years, I haven't even had the right to write the surname Xie on paper?"

Father nodded, looking strangely proud. "My oversight. A marvelous oversight!"

Xiaoman lunged toward him, but the guards pinned her back. Mother looked as though she were about to pass out from pure, unadulterated rage. "Xie Guihong, you are spouting madness!"

Father then turned his gaze toward my younger brother. Wencheng, sensing his turn, shrank back, his face draining of color. "Father, I am your biological son!"

Father looked at him with tragic solemnity. "Wencheng, I have grown quite fond of you, too."

My brother turned ghost-white. Father spun back to the Emperor, roaring, "Your Majesty! My wife, in her younger years, was not exactly virtuous! The bloodline of this son is highly suspect; he should not be implicated in this execution!"

Mother’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed completely. If my sister and I hadn't been bound, we would have rushed to her side. My brother’s lips quivered. "Father, would you really invent such slurs just to save me?"

Father whispered, "Survival is all that matters. Who cares about face?"

Silence reigned over the execution ground. Even the executioner lowered his blade, afraid to miss the spectacle. Emperor Yuan Sheng finally spoke. "Xie Guihong, according to your account, your eldest is a foundling, your youngest is not in the register, your son’s parentage is suspect, and you and your wife are essentially strangers. So, who exactly is left in your household?"

Father straightened his posture, beat his chest, and proclaimed with righteous vigor, "Only myself." He paused, looking as if he were prepared to die for his country. "Take this one man, and do with him what you will."

The officials were left speechless. My only thought was that Father had lost his mind—but he had lost it with a frightening, calculated efficiency. The Emperor set his tea cup down and locked his eyes on me. "Xie Ming Duong. Your father claims you are a foundling."

I looked up. The Emperor’s gaze was unreadable, caught somewhere between a cold interrogation and a spectator enjoying a fine play. "Tell me yourself," he demanded. "Who are you?"

I knelt there, struck by the absurdity of it all. Who was I? Yesterday, I was the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Zhenbei. Today, because of Father's frantic improvisations, I was a basket-case abandoned in the dust. My social standing had plummeted faster than Mother’s consciousness. I caught Father’s eye; he was blinking at me furiously—three times left, two times right. I didn't understand. He grew desperate, his lips forming a shape. I deciphered it: *Accept it.*

I closed my eyes. Fine. Survival over pride. I lifted my head, my voice steady. "Reporting to Your Majesty, I do not know. I have always believed myself to be a daughter of the Xie house. Hearing my father’s claims today has come as a great shock to me—especially that he remembered such a thing only moments before his execution."

Someone in the crowd let out a stifled laugh. The Emperor looked amused. "Xie Guihong, do you have proof?"

"Yes!" Father yelled, gesturing to our old steward, who was huddled nearby. "Old Xu! Tell him! Did I not find Ming Duong on the North Slope road?"

Old Xu, trembling, glanced at the blade and then at the Emperor. "Yes... yes, it is true. A great snowstorm that year. The Duke found a baby girl wrapped in red silk, wearing a piece of jade around her neck."

The Emperor leaned forward. "Jade?"

I reached to my neck, pulling out the pendant I had worn since infancy. I had always thought it was a simple swallow, but the Emperor’s face shifted as the lead eunuch brought it to him. The eunuch, a veteran of the Imperial Palace, went deathly pale.

"Your Majesty," the eunuch whispered, "this pattern... it resembles the old seals of the Phoenix Feather Bureau."

The silence that followed was suffocating. I didn't know what the Phoenix Feather Bureau was, but I watched the Minister of Rites turn ashen. Father kept his head bowed, hidden from view. He was smiling. He had to be.

"Xie Guihong," the Emperor said, his eyes darkening. "Did you investigate her origins?"

"I tried," Father replied, his voice back to its pathetic, sniveling tone. "I could find nothing. So, I raised her. I am a soft-hearted man."

Mother, having revived, let out a dry, bitter laugh. "Soft-hearted? You complain about the cost of feeding a stray dog."

Father looked hurt. "Wife, please, have some mercy on my dignity before His Majesty."

The Emperor toyed with the jade, his expression inscrutable. I finally understood. This purge wasn't just about treason. Father hadn't gone mad; he was systematically discarding us from the net of the Xie house, throwing us away in the most shameful, public manner possible. It was ugly, it was humiliating, but it was a lifeline.

"Xie Ming Duong," the Emperor decided, "will not be executed today."

Father slammed his head to the ground. "Your Majesty is merciful!"

"And as for the younger daughter," the Emperor continued, "that shall be investigated as well."

My sister wept with joy. My brother, desperate to escape the grave, scrambled forward, "Your Majesty, what about my questionable lineage?"

Mother opened her eyes wide. "Xie Wencheng, don't you dare!"

My brother froze, caught between his mother’s death glare and his father’s desperate, encouraging nods. He stood on the precipice of survival, and finally, he crumbled.