Page 5 of The Nightblood Prince

My earliest memories were of the questions I’d asked my father.

What use is power, without freedom? What good is the life of an empress if she is a prisoner chained by rules and tradition and others’ opinions?

Questions my father didn’t know how to answer.

Questions he said were dangerous beyond my years and told me never to repeat, not to Siwang and certainly not to anyone who might relay them to the emperor.

Fate chose you as the future empress of the Warring States, he’d whispered. Your destiny was appointed by the gods themselves. Mortals cannot defy the will of the gods, Fei. If you try to outrun the path the gods have blessed you with, you will risk their love turning into wrath.

If this was my life, my body, shouldn’t I get a say in what happened to it, and how I wanted to live?

Why should gods and emperors be the ones to decide my fate?

Why should my voice sound the quietest in this crowded room of men, set on dictating every aspect of my existence?

Who gave them the right?

My hundreds of questions boiled and fumed like tiny sparks hungry to be set ablaze.