Petals of vengeance

Chapter 1: Death by petals.

The peach blossom garden of the Mu Manor was said to be the most beautiful in the capital.

Today, it was Su Lian's grave.

Drums had been playing just an hour ago. The entire capital had come to see the marriage between the Su family's eldest daughter and the Mu family's promising son. They said she was lucky. They said Mu Jin was a gentleman who would cherish her.

Liars. All of them.

Lian lay collapsed against the stone table in her bridal courtyard. Her heavy red wedding hanfu, embroidered with a hundred gold phoenixes, was now tangled around her legs. She had vomited blood onto the silk - dark, almost black.

The petals kept falling on her. Pink, soft, innocent. She had loved peach blossoms since she was a child. Her mother used to say, "Our Lian'er is like a blossom, so soft the wind could break her."

The wind did break her.

Footsteps. Soft embroidered shoes appeared in front of her blurred vision.

"A-Jie? A-Jie, can you hear me?"

Su Rou. Her younger sister by two years. Her face was still perfect, her eyes filled with fake tears. She knelt down, her pink dress clean, untouched.

Lian tried to reach for her. "Rou... help..."

Rou caught her hand and held it, gently. If anyone looked, it would look like a sister comforting a sister.

Then she leaned close and whispered, her voice so sweet and so cold it made Lian's blood freeze more than the poison.

"Shhh. Don't struggle, Jiejie. The poison will be faster if you don't struggle. It's a special one, from the western regions. No pain at first. Just sleepy. Just like falling asleep among flowers, isn't it romantic? I picked it just for you."

Lian's eyes widened. "You..."

"Me." Rou smiled, and this time she didn't hide her jealousy. "For twenty years, everyone said 'Su Lian is so beautiful, Su Lian is so kind, Su Lian will marry a prince.' What about me? I am also a daughter of Su! Why must I always be 'Su Lian's younger sister'?"

Behind Rou, Mu Jin finally walked over. Lian's husband. Her childhood sweetheart who used to bring her candied hawthorns and call her A-Lian.

He didn't look guilty. He looked annoyed, like she was taking too long to die.

"Is she dead yet?" he asked Rou.

"Almost," Rou said, giggling. She tucked a stray peach petal behind Lian's ear. Her fingers were cold. "Say, Jiejie, when you're gone, I will take good care of your husband, your family, your dowry. I will live the life you were too stupid to keep."

Lian coughed, more blood spilling. Her vision was darkening at the edges. She used the last of her strength to spit out: "You... will regret..."

Rou stood up, letting Lian's hand drop to the dirt.

"We won't."

They left her there. The bride, alone, dying in her wedding garden while her wedding music still played faintly in the front hall.

The sky was turning pink. Lian stared at it, tears finally falling.

_If there is a next life... if there is... I will not be a flower anyone can pick. I will be the thorns. I will be the poison._

A high, sorrowful cry echoed above her.

Through her blurry tears, she saw it - a bird of fire and mist, feathers like flowing silk. A red phoenix. It circled above her once, as if mourning her, before disappearing into the clouds.

Su Lian closed her eyes.

---

Su Lian gasped awake.

The smell of peach blossoms was still there, but it was fresh, not sickly sweet. The sound of birds. Warm sunlight on her face.

She sat up violently, hands going to her throat, to her stomach. No pain. No blood.

She was not in the Mu Manor.

She was in her own boudoir in the Su Manor. Her old boudoir.

Her rosewood bed, her little embroidered pillow with lotus flowers she made when she was fifteen, her half-finished handkerchief on the table.

"No..." she whispered.

Her hands - small, soft, with no calluses from holding a bridal fan so tightly. Her reflection in the bronze mirror across the room - a young girl's face, cheeks still round, eyes still bright, lips not yet stained black with poison.

She scrambled off the bed to the mirror. She was twenty again.

A knock.

"Miss? Miss, are you awake? Second Miss is waiting for you in the garden! She made your favorite plum tea and said you must try it! Madam is there too!"

The maid's voice. Xiao Tao. Who had died of fever the year after Lian married.

And the words: _plum tea_. In her last life, it was on this exact day - her 20th birthday, two years before her death - that Su Rou started poisoning her slowly with plum tea, to make her weak and sickly so she couldn't bear children.

Rage, cold and clear like winter water, washed through Su Lian's entire body.

She stared at herself in the mirror. The soft girl was gone. What looked back was someone with the same face, but with eyes that had seen her own murder.

She picked up a jade hairpin from her vanity. In her past life, it was a decoration. In this life, she knew how to sharpen its end into a needle.

She slid it into her sleeve.

Then she practiced her smile. Soft. Sweet. A little foolish. The smile everyone expected from Su Lian.

Perfect.

She opened the door, her voice sweet as honey.

"Xiao Tao, tell meimei I'll be right there. Jiejie is so happy she made tea for me."

Outside, the peach blossoms were just starting to bloom.

This time, she would make sure they bloomed over someone else's grave.

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