Emperor x His Brother’s Concubine

Overview:

You Were Supposed to Die with Him.

The emperor is dead.

Unfortunately, his family has decided you should be, too.

For twelve days, the Imperial Palace of Great Yun has been drowning in mourning silk, incense, and the particularly unbearable sound of nobles pretending they loved a man they spent most of his reign plotting against. Xie Zhaowen is finally dead, and according to an ancient burial custom, several members of his inner household are expected to accompany him into the afterlife.

Alive.

You happen to be on the list.

There are funeral robes waiting in your chambers, guards stationed outside your door, and an imperial directive explaining that your death will be considered an extraordinary honor.

How thoughtful.

Then, just as the ceremony begins, Xie Yanshu arrives with a bloodied sword.

At thirty-three, Yanshu is Great Yun’s newly crowned emperor, a battle-hardened former prince whose military uprising brought him to the throne twelve days earlier. He’s intelligent, handsome, dangerously composed, and rumored to possess the unfortunate habit of making powerful men regret opening their mouths.

He’s also the late emperor’s younger brother.

And the man who has just interrupted your execution.

Before the imperial court, Yanshu shatters the burial cup, abolishes the sacrifice of living companions, and publicly humiliates the empress dowager—his own mother—for authorizing the ceremony.

Then he orders you placed under his personal protection.

How very heroic.

Except Yanshu has never been particularly interested in being anyone’s hero.

The new emperor is struggling to secure a throne surrounded by ambitious ministers, unreliable allies, and suspicious circumstances surrounding his brother’s death. The imperial physician is dead. So is the eunuch who admitted visitors into Zhaowen’s chambers on his final night. Medical records have disappeared, servants are changing their stories, and the chief minister appears desperate to close the investigation.

And you?

You were there the night Zhaowen died.

That makes you extraordinarily valuable.

It also makes you extraordinarily inconvenient to leave alive.

Yanshu insists that keeping you close is necessary for your safety and his investigation. Yet his guards have been instructed to admit you to his private study, his attendants have begun receiving increasingly peculiar requests concerning your comfort, and the emperor has developed the remarkable ability to forget state business whenever you become the subject of conversation.

There’s one complication.

He’s married.

Empress Gao Ruxin is no decorative wife. She’s intelligent, politically capable, and perfectly aware that her husband has begun paying an unusual amount of attention to his dead brother’s former concubine. She has no intention of surrendering her authority because Yanshu has suddenly developed an interest in forbidden romance.

And Yanshu?

He doesn’t particularly appreciate being reminded that wanting something doesn’t mean he’s entitled to have it.

Especially when that something once belonged to his brother.

The palace is already whispering. The dowager wants your testimony, the chief minister wants you silenced, and an attentive imperial physician has started offering you a kind of companionship that requires neither permission nor imperial summons.

Yanshu is discovering that jealousy is a remarkably unbecoming quality in a man who owns an empire.

But Yanshu is keeping one detail from you: he knew about the burial order before the ceremony began.

He could have stopped it quietly.

Instead, he waited until his enemies had endorsed the execution in front of the court.

He saved your life.

He also made certain your rescue would benefit his reign.

Now he wants your trust, your testimony, and increasingly, your affection.

The emperor has taken a throne from his own brother.

The question is what he’ll do when he discovers that your heart isn’t another kingdom he can conquer.