The candlelight flickered, casting his silhouette against the gauze curtain at the head of the bed — light and shadow alternating without end.

There was nothing I could do. I turned my face to the side, refusing to look at him, not daring to struggle again, and let him apply the medicine to me with his own hand.

By now it was nearly deep into the night. The gauze canopy hung low, and the bright candles were burning down. In the inner chamber, there was only the two of us, alone together. In such circumstances as these, I happened to be dressed so disheveled, and to be in skin-to-skin contact with him on top of it all… Even though three years had passed in name as husband and wife, I could not suppress the nervous confusion of this moment. My fingers, beneath the coverlet, were quietly twisting a corner of it into knots.

Xiao Qi did not say a word. From time to time he glanced at me, and that expression of his — neither smiling nor quite not smiling — only made the chaos in my heart worse; my ears felt as if they were on fire.

“Come down and walk about a little.” Without asking, he lifted me from the bed.

The moment my feet touched the ground, I felt as if my whole body had gone soft and boneless. I had no choice but to grip his arm.

“You have been lying down too long.” Xiao Qi smiled. “Now that your internal injuries are healed, you may walk around a little each day. There is no benefit in lying in bed indefinitely.”

I glanced up at him, and found myself genuinely surprised by this. From childhood, because of my frail constitution, whenever there was even the slightest chill or fever, everyone around me had always been cautious and careful, insisting I rest and recuperate quietly. No one had ever spoken so casually as he did — and somehow, it suited my temperament exactly.

He guided me to the window, and pushed the long shutters open without ceremony. The night wind rushed in, bringing with it the fresh, clean scent of earth and the faint perfume of grass and trees.

I drew my shoulders in; although I felt the cold, I still greedily drew in a deep breath. It had been so long since I had felt night wind this fresh.

My shoulder suddenly warmed. Xiao Qi had removed his own riding cloak and wrapped it tightly around me.

I went still. My whole person sank into the crook of his arm, wrapped in the thick cloak, deeply enveloped by that distinctive, intense masculine scent that was entirely his.

I had never known until now that a man’s scent could be like this… an indescribable quality — warm, full of strength, making me think of the blazing noon sun, of leather and iron, of the winds that blow ten thousand li across the desert sands.

I remembered the scents of my brother and of Zidan. My brother preferred orchid; Zidan loved magnolia. As they moved, there would always be a faint, lingering fragrance. The noble families of the capital kept spices brought as tribute from the far west, and kept comely young maids of just the right age whose sole duty was to blend and tend incense. Even Helan Zhen, a man of foreign peoples, had a scent of incense smoke on his clothes.

Xiao Qi alone had none of this. In this man, I could not detect so much as a trace of softness. Everything about him was fierce, keen, and restrained.

Moonlight like white silk; wind, clear and still; the world around us, utterly hushed.

I seemed to hear the rapid, loud beating of my own heart, and fell into a kind of dazed bewilderment.

“I am not cold.” I worked up the courage to speak and tried to pull free from the crook of his arm, to pull free from this moment of flustered heartbeats.

He looked down at me, his gaze without bottom.

“Why do you not ask where I have been these past few days?” There was a hint in his expression that might have been a smile, and might not.

When he arrived just now I had noticed that he looked dust-stained from travel, and was still in full armor, with a look of weariness about his face. I had already guessed that he had come back from a journey to some distance.

That was probably the reason he had not come to see me for several consecutive days.

But if he had wanted me to know in advance, he could easily have sent word. Coming to ask me now — was this some kind of test?

I met his gaze coolly. “Your Highness naturally had military affairs to attend to. How would it be my place to ask after your whereabouts?”

Xiao Qi tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I do not like women who say one thing and mean another.”

“Is that so.” I smiled, tilted my face up slightly, and let the night wind blow across it. “And I had thought that men who hold themselves in high regard almost always prefer women who say one thing and mean another.”

He paused — then broke into hearty, unrestrained laughter that rang out across the stillness of the night.

I smiled too, and lifted my gaze to watch him quietly, a swell of unidentifiable feeling rising within me.

Looking at the faint shadow of stubble just showing along his jaw, I found the ease and natural grace of his bearing more striking than ever.

Even setting aside rank and renown, even stripping away the dazzling light that the world placed around him — on manner and presence alone, he was a remarkable man.

It was said that great heroes deserved great beauties. It seemed it was no mere invention of romantic writers after all.

If there had been no imperially decreed marriage, if we had first met only today, if I had never come to know Zidan… might we have been drawn to each other on sight, and made of this match a story befitting a great hero and a great beauty?

And yet the world takes its own strange turns. This marriage, from the very beginning, had never been whole.

The beautiful scene before me now — I could not bring myself to break it. Even if it lasted only a moment, only this brief and lovely interlude, that would be enough.

I pressed my lips together, and all the words that had circled through my mind a thousand times over could not, at last, be brought to my lips.

If we left the past unspoken and started from this moment — what would we become?

The night wind grew colder.

Xiao Qi walked to the window and closed the long shutters, then stood with his back to me, and said, almost carelessly, “These past two days, I went to a remote village at the frontier.”

I sat down beside the low table and turned this over in my mind for a moment — several things clarified at once.

“Were you going to meet with a particular kind of enemy?” I frowned at him.

Xiao Qi turned around and watched me with a slight smile. “What do you mean, a particular kind?”

I lowered my eyes. I was not sure whether to let him know my line of thinking — I hesitated a moment, and in the end opened my mouth slowly. “Sometimes an enemy can become an ally, and a friend can become an enemy.”

“That is so.” Xiao Qi gave a slight nod, his voice carrying approval. “This person is indeed my enemy.”

So he really had gone to meet Hulan. No wonder he had been gone for several days with no trace — those in the Prince’s household only knew he had been out inspecting military affairs; no one knew his whereabouts. For the commander of an army to meet secretly with an enemy chieftain was the grave crime of treason, and so this journey could not be allowed to leak even the slightest hint.

I frowned. “Xu Shou is dead, Helan has been brought to ruin, and all the evidence is clear and conclusive. Why was it necessary to make this trip?”

He did not answer. In the depths of his eyes lingered that unfathomable smile, holding a trace of surprised appreciation.

And yet I truly could not understand: even if Prince Hulan held other important evidence in his hands, Xiao Qi could have sent a trusted subordinate with a confidential letter to convey whatever was needed. Why take such a risk as to personally go and meet with that Turk prince?

Unless — he had some other calculation in mind?

“You are half right, but wrong about the person.” Xiao Qi smiled. “The particular enemy — it was not Hulan.”

I froze — and then heard him say, in a measured tone, “Hulan is courageous and skilled in battle, and makes a worthy opponent in the field. It is a pity that while he has valor in abundance, he lacks strategy; in cunning and schemes, he is no match for Helan Zhen at all.”

The candlelight fell on the side of Xiao Qi’s face; his lips were thin and finely drawn, and a faint contemptuous smile settled there. “Had this fool not sent me a report based on false intelligence — deliberately planted by Helan Zhen — delaying my deployment, you would never have fallen into Helan Zhen’s hands.”

He gave a cold snort. “When they cross swords in the future, Hulan’s end is likely to be a gruesome one.”

I was so startled I stood upright. “You are saying — Helan Zhen is still alive?”

Xiao Qi looked at me sidelong. A brief flash passed through his eyes — and he smiled without speaking.

“You went to meet Helan Zhen!” I was genuinely shocked beyond measure. That the man had survived the fall from the cliff with only a severed wrist was one thing — I could accept that. But what truly stunned me was that Xiao Qi had not only not sent men to pursue and kill him — he had met with him in private.

Facing that unfathomable gaze, I felt a chill spread through my whole body.

“Not only did I meet with him — I sent trusted men to escort him back to the Turk lands and drive off the soldiers Hulan sent in pursuit.” Xiao Qi’s smile was cold as a hard frost. He said slowly, “From here, everything depends on what fortune brings him. I can only hope he makes it back to the royal city, and does not let this effort of mine go to waste.”

I lowered my head. A flash of clarity swept through my mind, and a mass of tangled, bewildering threads all came suddenly clear at once.

He had originally joined forces with Prince Hulan to eliminate Helan Zhen, and had used the plot against him in turn to sweep away Xu Shou’s faction. But now, seeing that Helan Zhen had survived by luck while Xu Shou was already gone, he had changed course. Rather than kill Helan Zhen, he had instead helped him return to the Turk lands. With Helan Zhen’s nature, he would be consumed with hatred for Hulan. The rivalry for the throne, now compounded by a new and deep personal enmity — two tigers fighting between themselves would throw the Turk lands into chaos.

In that instant my whole spirit was shaken, and I seemed to drift back to the day I had stood on the Zhaoyang Gate tower, to that very first sight of the victory parade all those years ago.

At the time, all I had known was his imposing bearing and his commanding presence — and from that moment, the name of Prince Yuzhang, Xiao Qi, had become a legend in my heart.

When I was married to him, and spent those three years alone, all I knew was that I had married a man with a heart of iron. Beyond that I had known nothing of him.

Then the reunion at Ningshuo, the harrowing brushes with death, watching with my own eyes as he cut through enemies with blood on his hands — only then did I understand that the formidable name was built of nothing but that very blood.

And now, he stood before me, recounting it all in a casual, offhand way, as if the two of us were merely talking idly as any husband and wife. And yet with a turn of his hand, he had already set the winds and clouds in motion, laying out this vast and deep-reaching gambit — all probability meant that the borders of the heavenly court, the Turk royal court, and the fate of the people of both nations had been drawn into this great scheme of his, and who knew how many lives would be changed by it from this point on.

A hero could not have done all of this alone.

It felt as if I had woken from a long dream.

The man who stood before me now was no longer merely a hero of the battlefield. He was a prince with command over life and death, a man who could turn the sky upside down with a flick of his hand — not only a great general, but a powerful minister; and further, dimly, at the very bottom of my heart, there surfaced an intuition, almost a premonition, that this man would one day set the whole world in his shadow and cast his gaze across all beneath the heavens.

This sudden, unbidden thought shook my very soul and stirred within me a turbulence I could not contain.

“This is what a great hero ought to be…” I said from the depths of my heart. I nearly raised my hand and struck the table in admiration of this sweeping, far-sighted stratagem.

Xiao Qi smiled without speaking. He stood in silence, hands behind his back, only looking deeply at me — and in his eyes, undisguised appreciation.

After some time, he slowly spoke. “A woman who has lived within the inner chambers — and yet she sees the world so clearly.”

I had long since grown accustomed to elaborate words of flattery. This was the first time I had ever heard a word of praise from his lips — and I found myself inwardly pleased, though I said nothing.

But when I thought of Helan Zhen’s poisonous, resentful gaze, I could not help but sigh. “That man hates you to the very bone. Releasing the tiger back to the mountains — there is no knowing what vicious scheme he will devise against you in the days ahead.”

Xiao Qi said lightly, “Though a true kindred spirit is hard to find, to have a capable adversary — what a fine thing that is.”

I paused, then smiled and nodded in agreement.

The so-called great men of this age — I had encountered many. None had ever moved me to any true admiration. In the old days, my brother would always say I was proud and arrogant, with no regard for anyone. But what he did not understand was this: it was not that I held myself above others — only that I had never met anyone with the breadth of spirit and depth of character truly worthy of my respect.

And now, at last, I had.

I was just bent over my thoughts when Xiao Qi had crossed the room to my side without my noticing. He reached out and tilted my face up toward him.

“You are worried that Helan Zhen will bring harm to me?” he said. Something flickered in his gaze — burning, pressing.

I was struck dumb on the instant. I felt as if something had been branded into my heart. I hastily turned my head to the side and moved away from his hand.

It was still only May, and yet, inexplicably, a wave of heat moved through me — the room felt strangely stifling.

“Would you — like some tea?”

In my flustered discomposure, not knowing how to hide the chaos in my heart, I answered with something that had nothing to do with anything. I turned away — using the act of getting up to fetch the teacup as an excuse to put my back to him — and still I could feel his burning gaze.

I drew myself together by sheer force of will, took the cup, and poured the tea in silence. Yet within, my heart was pounding so hard that my wrist trembled ever so slightly… What was happening to me? Never in my life had I lost my composure to this degree.

Suddenly, a hand tightened around mine.

He had taken my hand from behind — and only then did I realize that the cup was already full to brimming and running over, yet I had been standing there in an absent daze, still pouring tea into it.

He smiled — said nothing — only took the teapot from my hand, reached for another cup, and poured afresh.

I was burning with embarrassment; he, at his ease and entirely unruffled, poured the tea, smiled, and extended the cup toward me.

“Better that I be the one to attend to the Princess Consort.” His voice was low and unhurried, his smile warm.

Even if I were dull to such things, I understood something of the matters between men and women.

The cup was already held out before me, steady in his hand — and yet I did not reach out to take it.

I looked up at him quietly, trying to read what was true and what was not in the feeling at the bottom of his eyes.

For a moment, we looked at each other in still silence.

His gaze was deep. That burning point of light in it went dim. “You still will not forgive?”

“Forgive what?” I looked directly into his eyes and forced myself to speak calmly. “Is there something you need me to forgive?”

I had always thought that if he would not explain, I would also never ask.

That wedding night — it was the greatest humiliation of my life.

The candlelight swayed and swayed, casting its glow across Xiao Qi’s face with particular clarity.

He frowned; his lips pressed to a thin, tight line. He seemed not to know how to begin — and after a long pause, he said with an apologetic air, “What happened that day was unavoidable — I had no choice…”

What a fine thing to say — no choice. Even now, he was still trying to put me off with that flimsy excuse.

I looked up in fury and said coldly, “Even if Jizhou had fallen and you were urgently needed to ride and suppress the uprising — it was hardly so urgent it could not wait even half an hour.”

“Jizhou fell?” Xiao Qi turned sharply. Something flickered in his eyes — a look of bewilderment, as at something utterly beyond belief.

I was angry past the point of hiding it, and even laughed from sheer fury. “Have you already forgotten?”

Xiao Qi was silent, his face without expression — and the bewilderment that had flickered through his gaze passed in an instant and left no trace.

“The Left Chancellor… your father-in-law — did he only tell you that Jizhou had fallen? Did he tell you nothing else?” he asked in a low voice.

“What does Your Highness mean by that?” My heart leapt. I looked steadily at him.

He knitted his brows, his gaze deep and unsettling. “Afterward — has the Left Chancellor always maintained this same account?”

This exchange, and the expression on his face, sent wave after wave of cold through my heart.

I raised my chin and held his gaze with every ounce of composure I could muster. “This one begs Your Highness’s pardon for her ignorance — please speak plainly.”

The room plunged abruptly into a taut, rigid silence.

I held his eyes; neither of us spoke — yet I could feel the weight of what bore down on him.

Without warning, the wick of the candle gave a soft pop, and a small spark jumped from it — and in that instant my mind flew to that night when the red wedding candles had burned on and on in an empty room.

A deep sorrow surged up from somewhere inside me, pressing so hard I could not draw breath.

Xiao Qi looked at me at length. Something in his gaze was unfathomable. “Do you truly wish to hear me speak plainly?”

“Yes.” I held his gaze without wavering.

He said slowly, “Very well. No matter how hard the truth may be, one must face it oneself.”

I bit my lip and gave a single nod.

He paced to the window and stood with his back to me. Slowly, he began to speak — his voice level, betraying nothing of joy or anger, as if he were recounting a story that had happened to someone else entirely.

“On the day of the wedding — had it not been for the written order of the Left Chancellor himself, how could I have mobilized the capital garrison under the Wang family’s control, and left the city that very night? The garrison is a force the Wang family holds entirely in their hands.”

It was as if someone had struck me savagely across the chest with a whip. My heart clenched in an instant.

“Go on.” I straightened my spine and fixed my gaze on the flame before me.

His voice remained measured, its emotions impossible to discern — as if he were telling a story about a stranger —

“His Majesty was dissatisfied with the Crown Prince’s waywardness and the power wielded by the imperial consort’s family. He had long harbored the desire to change the succession. But the Crown Prince had the strength of the Wang family behind him; to change the succession, the Wang family’s power had to be cut away first. Over the years, the Empress and your father had held half the court in their hands; only Right Chancellor Wen Zongshen and the Emperor’s royal kinsmen had pushed back against the consort family’s interference in governance and quietly supported His Majesty’s wish to change the succession. The two factions had long held each other at a stalemate. Powerful noble families and great houses at court had each been drawn into the struggle, and with all their attention fixed on that, no one had the mind to spare for the frontier — guarding the borders and expanding our territory rested entirely upon the strength of military men like myself, who came from humble stock. By the time I had pacified the frontier and held sole command over four hundred thousand troops, the court at last grew wary. Right Chancellor Wen Zongshen argued forcefully for stripping military men of their power, but he did not dare move rashly for fear of shaking the foundation of the frontier. What he did not know was that the Empress and the Left Chancellor already had another plan in mind.”

He paused. I had already understood what he was implying.

It was as if a full bucket of ice water had been poured over my head — cold to the bone in an instant. Of course — even then, they had already thought of the stratagem of a marriage alliance.

No wonder my aunt had always opposed my feelings for Zidan. No wonder my father had always declined those who came to propose on my behalf. Among them were no small number of noble families of the capital — some even ranking houses to match the Wang family’s standing. At the time, my mother had laughed and sighed, “I expect in your father’s eyes, no one but a prince would be worthy of his precious daughter.”

At the time, I had thought so too. But what I had not known was that the son-in-law my father had set his heart on long ago was not Zidan — a man with only a distinguished title to his name; even if Zidan were to ascend the throne one day, my father would never have been satisfied with the mere title of Imperial Father-in-Law. And my aunt — she would never have allowed another to take her son’s place on the throne.

The Wang family needed greater power — beyond the court and the inner palace, they needed the support of the military.

From the very beginning, they had already fixed their eyes on Xiao Qi. And Xiao Qi had also set his sights on the Wang family.

I had an impulse to laugh — and as I laughed, I looked toward Xiao Qi. “The decision to have His Majesty issue the imperial edict of marriage — was that your idea, or was it by instruction from the Empress?”

“It was mine.” Xiao Qi turned and faced me. Under my questioning gaze, his eyes held a deep and genuine remorse. “I was summoned by Her Majesty’s decree to a private meeting with the Empress and the Left Chancellor…”

He did not need to finish. I already understood.

I smiled. I could only smile — there was nothing else left to prop up whatever small store of pride remained.

“And what happened on the day of the wedding?” I said slowly, forming each word with care, doing all I could to keep my voice from shaking.

Xiao Qi frowned and looked at me. A shadow of guilt and reluctance was there — his gaze lingered long on my face.

I tilted my chin up, unyielding, and waited for him to continue.

“By the merit of pacifying the southern frontier, I petitioned the Emperor in person to take a daughter of the Wang family as my wife. The Empress gave her personal promise; His Majesty, left without recourse, issued the edict of marriage at court. Right Chancellor Wen’s faction grew deeply uneasy, and working in secret with the Emperor, they devised a plan: they would use the occasion of my return to the capital for the wedding to quietly order Lord Changnin to make for Ningshuo, bearing His Majesty’s secret edict, to take command of the army. Once I had completed the wedding ceremony, the imperial edict would descend at once — appointing me Grand Tutor, ranking me nominally among the Three Excellencies, but in truth stripping me of military authority and keeping me confined to the capital. With the Emperor himself giving support to this plan, it was carried out in secrecy and with great speed. By the time I and the Left Chancellor learned what was happening, it was already the day of the wedding. We made the decision on the spot — using the fall of Jizhou as our pretext, we mobilized the imperial guards and left the city under cover of night. As it happened, the Turks launched their northern incursion at that very moment. Heaven itself aided me: Lord Changnin proved unable to hold the city, and I had him executed under military law. With that, the tide was turned by force, and the Emperor’s plan to strip me of my power came to nothing. Thereafter, I used the Turk incursions as my justification, held firm at Ningshuo, and did not return for three years — while the Left Chancellor worked from within the capital, and I from without, leaving the Emperor without any means to act against us.”

Xiao Qi delivered this account at a rapid pace, choosing only the most critical passages and seeming reluctant to lay out every detail.

For a moment I was somewhat dazed. I looked up blankly. “And that was the whole of it — the cause and the course of events?”

“Yes.” He looked deeply at me, his gaze filled with sorrow and guilt — and he said nothing more than that one word.

I bowed my head and went back over every word he had said, looking for a single crack through which I could push back, to prove that all of this was a lie.

It was no use. Not only could I find no crack — the more I turned it over, the clearer it became. Details I had long forgotten came drifting back now, and every one of them fell into place, one by one, with what he had said. And more than that — there were things I myself had once quietly questioned, in the old days… only then, I would never have allowed myself to think that all of this had come from the very people I trusted most and loved most.

I hadn’t been able to. I hadn’t dared.

How could my father and my aunt have deceived me — deceived me, used me, and gone on hiding it from me to this day, loading all the blame onto Xiao Qi’s back, leaving me to sink forever in loneliness and resentment, becoming another figure like my aunt — with no one to care for her, dependent for the rest of her life on the family, loyal to the family, until at last she had given everything she had to the family.

And yet — it had been them. It was precisely them.

Others could deceive me. But I could no longer deceive myself.

Everything was clear. It could not have been clearer.

It was the fifth month, yet it felt as though I had been submerged in ice water — a cold that reached into the very marrow of my bones.

“Wang Xuan.” I heard Xiao Qi’s voice. I heard him call my name.

I looked up at him, dazed — watched him come to stand before me, place his hands on my shoulders, and draw me gently into his arms.

His embrace was warm — warm as his voice, full of tenderness. “You are shaking.”

“I am not!” I lifted my head. The stubborn pride that surged from the very core of me made me suddenly find the strength to pull free from his hold. “Who says I am shaking — I am not… Do not touch me!”

I felt pain — pain through my whole body — and could not bear for anyone to touch me.

“Go.” I gripped the edge of the table and steadied myself by sheer force, unable any longer to hold back the trembling that seized my whole body.

He looked at me in silence. That look of guilt and self-reproach only cut into me the more, like a blade.

I turned my head away, no longer looking at him. My voice came out hollow. “I am fine. Leave me be for a moment.”

He said nothing. After a long silence I finally heard him turn and go, his footsteps moving toward the door.

I could hold myself up no longer. I crumpled against the table and buried my face in my palms.

My mind was empty — utterly blank. There was nothing I could think, nothing I could say. Only tears, rolling down, unchecked and unrestrained.

Then suddenly a warmth settled around my shoulders. I started and looked back — too late to wipe my tears away.

Xiao Qi leaned down and draped that great cloak over my shoulders. He said only, very quietly, “I am just outside.”

I watched him turn and go — and all at once I was overcome with a terror I could not name. The loneliness pressing in from all sides felt as vast as the sky.

“Xiao Qi…” I called to him in a hoarse voice. And in the moment he turned back, the tears came again.

He stepped forward and folded me into his arms.

“It is all over.” He stroked my hair. “All of that — it is already over.”

He held me so tightly that his arms pressed against the site of my injury.

I bore the pain without a sound, not daring to make a noise — afraid that if I did, I would lose this warm embrace.

His chin came to rest against my cheek. The faint scratch of his beard pressed lightly against my skin — a barely-there sting, and yet strangely soothing.

“Though it is behind you, you must still face it in time. You cannot spend your whole life hidden beneath the shelter of your family.” His eyes held mine, and he spoke word by measured word: “From this day forward, you are my Princess Consort — the woman who walks through this life by my side. I will not allow you to be weak.”