Chapter 1
“After considering everything, our family has decided it would be better for Hong’er to become my goddaughter.”
Madam Wei had come in person to return the birth-date card exchanged for the marriage match. She also offered a jade pendant in apology, her expression deeply awkward.
The excuse was painfully obvious. No one could fail to understand it.
Mother said nothing. Her face dark, she turned and went into the inner rooms.
The two women had known each other since their maiden days and had never fallen out so badly before.
I walked over and took the pendant from the mortified Madam Wei. “To have two mothers who cherish me is Hong’er’s good fortune.”
Moved, Madam Wei sighed and stroked my cheek.
“It is all because of that wretched son of mine.”
I knew.
For days, the capital had buzzed with the story of how Wei Xuan had removed his official cap and knelt before the throne, gambling the rest of his career to beg His Majesty to pardon a female prisoner who was about to be exiled for her family’s crimes.
For the privileged son of an imperial in-law to behave so shamelessly had enraged the emperor enough to strike him twice in person. Wei Xuan gritted his teeth and held firm, refusing to withdraw his plea even if it killed him.
When he returned home, his father beat him too. The whip snapped. They confined him and starved him for three days. None of it worked.
He went to enormous lengths to save the woman, then installed her in a residence outside the family compound. One murmur from her that her heart hurt was enough to make him nearly fall from his horse in panic as he raced to the empress’s palace to commandeer an imperial physician.
“With matters in such a state, I had no other choice.”
Madam Wei lowered her head in dejection. “My son has never asked anything of me in all the years since he was born.”
He had said he could give up everything, so long as the young lady of the Wang family remained safe.
I knew.
He had said the same thing on his deathbed in our previous life.
In that life, Wei Xuan and I were husband and wife for sixteen years. He never took a concubine, our household knew no upheaval, and we had both a son and a daughter.
Our relatives all praised us as a golden couple, devoted beyond compare.
Yet when he lay gravely ill at the end of his life, he would not even see me one last time.
He told our children, “In this life, I have repaid every obligation I owed your mother. But there is one person whom I have wronged for a lifetime.”
If Heaven had eyes and there truly was another life, he would rather be a distant brother to me than repeat the tragedy of the Wang family’s daughter, who had fallen into despair upon hearing of his marriage and died on the road to exile.
I thought his reasoning made perfect sense.
After I saw Madam Wei out, Mother sent a servant to call me back.
Cups and vases lay smashed across the room. Her anger had not abated, and she glared at me from the corner of her eye.
“They tossed out a flimsy excuse, and you rushed to claim another woman as your mother. I raised you to be such a spineless creature!”
I stepped around the broken porcelain and nestled against her with a smile.
“They may offer excuses as they please. We can still observe courtesy as we please. The one has nothing to do with the other.”
Mother snorted. “Such a glib tongue! Then why did you let another woman steal your fiancé and meekly agree to become his sister? You could search by lantern light and never find another match this good!”
The more she thought about it, the more she regretted it on my behalf. She blamed herself for storming off instead of fighting for the match a little longer.
How many years had it been since I last heard Mother fuss at me like this?
Only after I became a mother myself, with a son and daughter around my knees and a terror of letting the slightest storm touch them, did I understand the loving pains behind her endless insistence that I marry into the Wei family.
The Chu family had already declined by Father’s generation. Two years ago, he had contracted an epidemic while serving away from the capital and died in office. With no one to inherit his title, Mother and I were left a widow and an orphan.
Only through her careful maneuvering had we managed to retain even the most precarious foothold in the capital.
But…
“Mother.” I wrapped both arms around her warm, fragrant shoulders and leaned against her with longing. Lowering my eyes, I said softly, “If something is mine, I need not fight for it. If it is not, fighting will never make it mine.”
Thunder rolled outside, heralding rain. Within the room, thick plum incense drifted through the stillness as the gauze curtains stirred.
Mother sighed. “That may be so, but you must marry someday. You cannot keep me company forever. What are we to do about your future match now?”
I stilled. Carefully, I ventured, “The Wei family is not the only family in the world with an eligible son. Did someone not visit Grandfather’s family in Lin’an a few days ago, hoping they would write to propose a match for me?”
At the mention of it, the anger Mother had suppressed flared up again. She pulled my arms away and cursed.
“That is the man your older cousin refused to marry no matter what! Your damned uncle owes his family a favor, so he spun a honeyed tale and tried to throw the man at you instead.”
Mother regarded me warily.
“Open your eyes and look carefully. Do not choose that fellow in Lin’an merely out of spite.
“I made inquiries. A fever left him an idiot at seven. He recovered at seventeen, only to become a wastrel. Every decent girl in Lin’an thinks even mentioning him would dirty her lips!”
Mother cupped my face, proud despite herself. “A fine girl like you would be far beyond his reach even after three marriages.”
Overcome by the depth of her protectiveness, my nose stung. I suppressed a tremor and burrowed into her soft embrace.
But Mother…
How could I tell you?
This wastrel whom you despised so thoroughly had once saved my life.
In my previous life, war trapped us inside a besieged city, and Wei Xuan abandoned my daughter and me to escape with our son.
My hand was broken, and my daughter was faint with hunger.
Only that man turned back to find us. Covered in blood, he carried me on his back and my daughter in his arms through the dark, narrow alleys. Then he crouched down and let us climb over his back to escape through a breach in the wall.
We found a way to live. He fell forever behind that wall, pierced through by a storm of arrows, his eyes still open in death.