The Empress’ Favorite by itsvlada
The Empress’ Favorite
Description
Hanako gave up everything-her dreams, her freedom-to be the older daughter her noble and respected family wanted. On the morning of her twentieth birthday, she walks in on her fiance with her younger sister. By nightfall, her parents have made their decision: the sister keeps the prince. Hanako goes to the mad empress's harem. The Empress Meisho is everything the rumors promised-commanding, ruthless, intimidating, and utterly without any shame. Her palace runs on pleasure and obedience, and Hanako wants no part of it. She's not like these women. She doesn't want this. She doesn't want her. At least, that's what she keeps telling herself.
Chapter 1
Jun 22, 2026
[Hanako’s POV]
"That's it—louder. Let me hear you." Kenji's voice through the half-open door, low and rough and nothing like the polite tone he uses at dinner. "Gods, you feel better than she ever—"
"Kenji." Aiko's whisper cuts through the sound, sharp as a slap. "Stop—she's standing right there."
I am standing in the doorway of my sister’s room with my hand still on the frame, and that is the last thing I do as the person I was this morning.
Aiko's bare legs. Silk bunched at her hips. Kenji between my younger sister's thighs, the jade piercings in his nipples catching daylight. He turns his head and scowls—not at what he's done, but at the interruption.
He rolls off the futon, reaches for his robe, ties the sash without rushing. My knees have quit and the floor is tilting and my lungs have forgotten their one job.
"Get out, Hanako." He steps past me close enough that Aiko's perfume reaches my nose from his skin. "This doesn't concern you."
This doesn't concern me. My fiancé, my sister, seven days before my wedding—and his voice carries the mild irritation, like his tea has arrived cold. You feel better than she ever could. He didn't even finish the sentence and my brain is finishing it for him, each version worse—even though he has never tried anything with me.
I hope his hair falls out. I hope his jade piercings get infected and his—no. No. I'm not going to stand in this hallway cursing a man who's already gone, because that would mean I care, and caring is what got me here in the first place.
He disappears down the corridor without looking back. Today is my twentieth birthday, and the only person who's acknowledged it so far is the universe, with this. So that's going well.
Aiko sits up, tucking hair behind one ear, fingers steady enough to thread a needle. She's eighteen and looking at me as you'd look at a clock that's chimed at an inconvenient hour.
"You're still standing there." She pulls her kimono over her shoulders and ties the obi without a single tremor in her hands. "Close your mouth—you look like a carp."
"He's my fiancé." My voice comes out wrong—thin, cracked down the middle. "I was going to marry him, Aiko."
"I know." She smooths a wrinkle from her sleeve, her mouth barely curving. "You were going to marry him."
"You're my sister." The words taste absurd even as I say them, as if that has ever meant between us what it means in other families.
"And you were going to walk into a perfectly acceptable marriage while I got shipped off to the empress's harem." Aiko stands, straightening her collar, and her voice drops to something I've never heard from her—not cold, not careful. Hot.
"Have you heard what that woman does? She keeps a collection of bodies, Hanako. And I was supposed to become part of it—because that's what the family decided for the second daughter."
"So you stole my fiancé." My throat is closing around each word and they have to push through sideways.
"My older sister." Her mouth twists. "Always gets the best of everything. The match, the honor, the future—and I get whatever's left over. The scraps. The empress's bed."
She steps closer and my back finds the door frame, and I can't move because the wood is holding me up.
"So yes—I took him. The one good thing they ever handed you while I got nothing." She holds my gaze and her eyes are burning dry. "Go cry about it to Mother and Father. See how much they care."
She walks past me, shoulder against mine, head high, and the cedar scent of Kenji's room is the only thing left in the doorway besides me.
My nails are digging crescents into my palms so deep I'll find the marks tomorrow. Twenty years of being good, of being quiet, of folding myself into every shape they asked for—and this is what it bought me.
A plan that fit inside a box I was never going to open: learn to like his laugh, bear sons, paint in secret, die at a reasonable age having been perfectly fine. Now my sister is walking down the corridor wearing my future around her shoulders, and not one piece of the plan survived the morning.
The wedding kimono still hangs on the stand by my window. This morning I ran my fingers along the embroidered cranes and practiced the smile I'd wear in seven days. That was three minutes and an entire lifetime ago.
But one bright, vicious thought cuts through the rest: Mother and Father will finally see their golden daughter for what she is.
I run. Through the garden, past servants who pretend not to see me, until I reach the main room where evening tea and old wood fill my lungs.
Father sits behind his low desk, Mother beside him pouring tea. And there—settled on a cushion as though he belongs to this family more than I ever did—sits Kenji, robe tied, expression blank.
"Aiko and Kenji—I found them together." My voice shakes so badly the words barely hold their shape.
"We know." Father lifts his cup and drinks without so much as a pause. He still hasn't looked at me.
"You know?" My hand grabs the door frame because my legs have given up on the concept of standing. "You already knew?"
"Sit down, Hanako." Mother's voice carries the tone she saves for mud tracked on the engawa. "Don't make a scene. We've discussed the situation with Prince Kenji and reached an agreement."
"An agreement?" I repeat the word because my mouth needs something to do while my mind comes apart.
"Aiko will marry Prince Kenji." Father sets his cup on the desk with a small, final sound. "The arrangement is more suitable for both families."
My teeth press together so hard my jaw aches. Every sacrifice I made—my painting, my nights, the parts of myself I folded away and buried—all of it unraveling in this room, and not one person at the table has the decency to look uncomfortable. "And what happens to me?"
"You'll go to the empress's harem in Aiko's place." Mother refills her tea as though she's told me we're having fish for dinner.
"No." The word escapes before I can swallow it. "I gave up everything you asked—I stopped painting, I agreed to this marriage—you can't—"
Kenji stands. Slow, deliberate. Every protest in my throat dies against his face—not cruel, but utterly closed, a door shut and bolted from the other side.
"It's already decided, Hanako." His voice doesn't waver. "Nothing you say will change it."
He reaches into his robe and draws out a collar—jade beads strung on black silk cord, each stone polished to the same green as his piercings. Every girl in the province knows what it is: the empress's mark on her concubines.
I step back, but there's a wall behind me. His hands are at my neck, fastening the clasp, and the jade sits against my collarbone cold and absolute. My fingers fly to the stones but they're smooth and I cannot get them off.
"Tomorrow we ride to the palace." He's already turning away. "I'll deliver you to my sister's harem personally."
The collar is cold against my throat and it is my birthday. I was going to marry this man. I was going to learn to like his laugh, paint in secret corners and call it a life. Instead he's fastening me like a parcel, addressing me to someone else, and not one person in this room so much as blinks.
The Empress’ Favorite
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