Chapter 1
Three days after I married the fool prince, he suddenly announced that he wanted to move out of our bedchamber.
I grabbed his sleeve and demanded to know why.
His face turned red all the way to the tips of his ears. He stammered for a long time before finally blurting it out.
“When I sleep beside my wife… I always wet the bed.”
My eyes dropped downward.
And in an instant, I understood.
My own face burned as I helped him, but I still could not resist teasing him.
“Only little boys wet the bed. Why is Your Highness acting like a child?”
Later, when my clingy fool of a husband recovered and turned back into the cold, untouchable prince everyone once feared, he pressed against my ear night after night and paid me back word for word.
“Only little boys wet the bed? Then why is my princess acting like a child?”
The story begins now.
At the spring flower banquet, I saved Prince Adrian from drowning.
In full view of half the capital, both of us came out of the water soaked through, our clothes clinging to our skin, our bodies pressed together in a way that left no room for innocence.
The Dowager Empress arranged our marriage on the spot.
On the day of the wedding, my nurse stood behind me in my bridal chamber, adjusting the last ornaments in my hair with trembling hands and tear-filled eyes.
I caught her reflection in the bronze mirror and laughed softly.
“It’s a wedding, not a funeral. You should be happy for me. Why are you crying?”
She squeezed my hand so tightly it hurt.
“I’m crying because your life is too hard, my lady.”
People in the capital all knew what had happened to Prince Adrian.
On New Year’s Eve, an assassin had entered the palace. Adrian had thrown himself in front of the Emperor and taken the blow to the head. He survived, but the injury left his mind broken. Since then, the once brilliant, admired youngest royal prince had become simple, childlike, and unpredictable.
Every noble daughter in the city had laughed at me after the marriage decree was announced.
They said I would rather marry a fool prince for status than accept a proper match.
I did not care.
Marrying a fool was still better than being handed over to Simon Prescott.
Even my nurse gasped when I said his name.
“The Earl of Evermont?”
I nodded.
Simon Prescott was past thirty, crippled after a riding accident years ago, and famous in the capital for his vicious temper. When he could no longer enjoy the things men like him once valued, he turned his bitterness toward women instead. Everyone knew he kept mistresses only to torment them.
And my father had planned to marry me to him.
I looked down at my lap and spoke quietly.
“When my mother was dying, my father brought his pregnant mistress into our house before my mother had even taken her last breath.”
A few months later, the cry of that mistress’s newborn child seemed to become the final curse placed on my mother’s grave.
After that, my father watched silently while my stepmother mistreated me and my younger half sister bullied me. He looked away every time. And now, for the sake of currying favor with the Prescotts, he was willing to push me into a pit and call it duty.
I had lived too long hidden away inside inner courtyards, powerless and obedient. The only thing stronger than a father’s command was imperial authority.
That was why I had jumped into the lake that day.
Prince Adrian was the Dowager Empress’s favorite son. He had nearly died saving the Emperor. If I saved him in return, I could gamble for one thing.
A decree strong enough to save me.
I lifted the bridal fan to hide my face and whispered to my nurse, “Before his injury, Prince Adrian was said to be gentle, noble, and kind. Even if he is different now, his heart cannot have changed completely. Being chosen to marry him may not be a curse at all.”
Then, because I knew she needed it, I smiled.
“So stop worrying. I’ll be fine.”