Chapter 1

Chapter 1

A letter arrived from the Ning Family of the Border City: Miss Ning Yuanxi had fallen from a horse and lost her memory.

Upon hearing the news, Yan Qi’s hand, poised with a brush, froze.

Shi Shu looked at me helplessly and fell silent.

Without looking up, Yan Qi continued writing.

“Why did you stop reading?” he asked.

Steeling himself, Shi Shu finished reading the letter.

“Master Ning begs you to bring Miss Ning to the Capital City so that she may seek out famous physicians.”

Yan Qi set down his brush, the ink bleeding into the paper.

He looked at me and said, “Miss Ning did, after all, save my life. I should bring her here for treatment.”

I nodded.

Miss had saved me too.

Actually, it was more than that.

Even the marriage between Yan Qi and me had been arranged by her.

I still remember when Yan Qi was covered in wounds.

His blood had frozen into ice, gluing his clothes to his injuries. I had to cut away his garments, picking out the remaining bits of fabric and cotton batting from his wounds piece by piece.

Fortunately, he was delirious with fever, drifting in and out of consciousness, unaware of the pain.

By the time I finished tending to his wounds, it was already the middle of the night.

I touched his forehead; the fever hadn’t broken.

He grabbed my hand, murmuring, “Don’t go.”

So I leaned against the bedside and watched over him, our joined palms damp with sweat that dried and dampened again.

At dawn, Miss arrived.

She took the cloth from my hand and gently wiped the sweat from Yan Qi’s brow.

When Yan Qi woke, his eyes reflected Miss’s beautiful face.

“Was it you who saved me?” he asked.

Miss smiled and said, “You must get well soon.”

Yan Qi later told me he never imagined Miss would stay by his side all night.

He said that if he hadn’t caught hold of that hand that night, he likely wouldn’t have made it.

“Xiao Ye, can you understand?”

I lowered my eyes. “No.”

By then, Yan Qi had become a stable hand at Ning Manor. As fellow servants, we had grown close.

He said, “That’s true. You’ve never been so gravely injured. You don’t know how reassuring it is to have someone by your side when you’re on the brink of death.”

I looked at Yan Qi and said seriously, “It’s you who doesn’t understand.”

It didn’t matter whose hand he had grabbed that night.

What mattered was that the person who ordered his life to be saved was Miss.

Yan Qi replied dismissively, “As long as Yuanxi understands, that’s enough.”

He stubbornly called her by her name.

It was against the rules, but neither Miss nor he seemed to care.

Even though Yan Qi was a slave just like me, he lacked the cautiousness and humility a servant should have.

Like a son of a wealthy family, he rode horses across the grasslands with Miss.

As the horses’ hooves thundered over the green fields, splashing mud everywhere, Master Ning, consumed with rage, struck me across the face.

“You let her run wild with a stable hand? Is this how you serve Miss?”

Clutching my face, I knelt and begged Master for forgiveness.

Not far away, Yan Qi released a kite from horseback.

Miss clapped her hands, laughing joyfully.