The River's Bride: Crown Prince Jianyu
When Lin Yue first entered the palace, I was thirteen years old. At that age, I had already learned that the palace was a place where people rarely did anything without a reason. A smile could be a greeting or a declaration of war. A gift could be an expression of loyalty or a reminder of a debt. Even the women who claimed to want nothing more than to serve the imperial family usually had something to gain from it. I had been the Crown Prince long enough to understand that much. I had also been young enough to believe that, if I watched people carefully, I could eventually understand them. Lin Yue proved me wrong. By the time I began paying attention to her, she had already made herself useful to the palace in ways that were difficult to ignore. She had helped resolve troubles that had inconvenienced the imperial household, intervened when matters threatened to grow beyond the control of the people responsible for them, and contributed to the successful marriage arrangements of the Emp...