Chapter 7

We were not always so fortunate.

Over the next three years, Xu Xingzhi and I faced assassination attempts as well. The south was thick with forests and mountains. Sometimes we could use the terrain to shake off our pursuers and turn on them.

Sometimes we were separated from our guards and only found our way back after many detours.

At our most desperate moment,

Xu Xingzhi took an arrow meant for me and shielded me as we rolled down a slope.

The forest was dark as ink, its growth dense. By the time I recovered my senses, he was unconscious, his face deathly pale, his body covered in small cuts. The blood on his shoulder had already dried black.

Fortunately, the arrow was not poisoned.

Nor had it struck anything vital.

I drew a deep breath, tore away the clothes that had stuck to his flesh, broke off the arrowhead, and pulled out the shaft. Mouthful by mouthful, I sucked out the foul blood. Then I searched the forest for herbs to stop the bleeding and ease the pain, applying some to the wound and giving him others to swallow.

The pain of all this woke him.

He lowered his eyes to my disheveled figure and sighed.

“I’ve made you suffer, my wife.”

That night, we hid in a cramped mountain cave.

Along the way, I had left the secret signs of both the Xu and Cui clans.

Xu Xingzhi soon developed a high fever. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Fortunately, I had gathered fever-reducing herbs in advance and was able to feed them to him without losing my composure.

From time to time, voices sounded outside. I drew Xu Xingzhi’s sword and kept it in my hand. Using the terrain to my advantage, I also cut down a soldier who found us.

At last, everything fell silent.

The full moon hung high, sending threads of pale light through the branches that screened the cave mouth.

Xu Xingzhi’s fever had broken. Looking at that light, he asked, “If this troubled age ever ends, what would you like to do?”

If such a day truly came,

I did not have to think. “Retire to the countryside and live as an ordinary, comfortable household.”

I had long since tired of this life.

He smiled. “Good. I’ll go with you.”

The Xu men found us, and we recuperated at the nearest official’s residence.

Before long,

a letter arrived from home in Wu Commandery.

Father told me Marquis Xie had been badly wounded in battle. After waking, his temperament had changed entirely. He urged us to be watchful.

Nothing like this had happened in my previous life.

My heart gave a jolt.

Perhaps Xie Ruo’an had been reborn, too.

But in this life, he had the moon he had longed for in his arms.

Despite some setbacks, he was now a lord holding territory in the north. Perhaps he would be happier still than he had been before.

Yet half a month later,

someone rode a thousand miles, crossed the river south, and arrived by moonlight.

Alone, he knocked on the courtyard gate, demanding hoarsely to see me.

I went out.

One glance told me he had returned, too.

Which made his visit all the harder to understand.

In the darkness, countless arrows were trained on him.

He seemed not to notice. His lips, dry and peeling after days of riding, trembled.

In anguish, he forced out a question.

“Why did you marry him?”

He asked,

“I never mistreated you in our last life. Nothing improper ever happened between Chu Ying and me. I merely took a little extra care of her. Why abandon me and choose him?”

I almost wanted to laugh.

It had been the same in my previous life. Everyone said I had a good life.

But both before and after our wedding, I had seen what he was like when he loved with all his heart. I had been young then. To have such a husband had filled me with joy. I truly had given him my heart.

That was why his indifference after finding Chu Ying again had been all the harder to bear.

He could have divorced me and married her. At least then, I could have vented my anguish without restraint.

But he had not.

For his reputation as a gentleman, and for the support of the Cui clan, already so deeply entwined with the Xie,

he had given Chu Ying up, yet never quite let her go.

And so, in others’ eyes, my grief became mere self-pity and ingratitude. My heart was full of bitterness I could not put into words.

Now he was still asking, “And our child? Could you abandon even your own flesh and blood?”

My lips twitched. I cut him off.

I asked only one thing.

“What about Chu Ying? You have what you wanted. Why are you still pestering me? If you come looking for me now, what does that make her?”

The night deepened, heavy with dew.

Xie Ruo’an fell abruptly silent.

He stared at me, bewildered.

Not a word would come.

Then I understood. He had one thing, and wanted the next.

How absurd that I had died of sorrow in my past life, and in the end, it had all come down to that.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

“A blade cannot tell whom it strikes, Marquis Xie. Go home.”

He should not die here.

The northern lords were fighting for supremacy. If Marquis Xie died, someone else would take over the Xie clan.

No. There would never be another opponent whose weaknesses I knew so well.

Perhaps he had not expected to leave unharmed.

He gave me a long look, seemingly moved.

“Jingshu, when I rule the realm, I will make things right for you all.”