The Eunuch I Married

Qin Wanzhi is the legitimate daughter of the Shenfeng Marquis house. She arranged to take another bride's place and married Xiao Xun, the eunuch who holds the regency and is spoken of in the capital as disfigured and cruel. Xiao Xun keeps a sealed imperial decree with the power to unseat the throne, and his widow would inherit it. She played the attentive wife and carried medicine to him every evening. In the medicine she put poison, a small amount each night. Xiao Xun worked out what was in the bowl early and emptied it when she was not looking, and he said nothing to her about it. He then put on a bodyguard's clothes, gave the name Xiao Liu, and stayed close to her. From that position he watched her count and calculate behind the soft face she kept for the household, and he began to take an interest in her. The court and the families around it were fighting over position through all of this, and the two of them worked the same side of it more and more often. She helped him hold up the story that he was a eunuch so he could get out from under the palace's hold on him, and he taught her how to move through the palace and reach the people who took her family apart.