Chapter 1

The first thing I did after being reborn was break off my engagement to Wei Zheng.

Everyone said the imperial family’s Third Princess must have injured her head when she fell into the water. Why else would she give up such an excellent husband?

The eldest son of the Wei family was brave, resourceful, and strikingly handsome. He had always conducted himself impeccably; there was not even a bedmaid in his household.

I was born to the highest rank, while he came from a distinguished family of officials. I had inherited my mother’s beauty, and he was exceptionally handsome in his own right. We shared a love of bamboo flutes, swordsmanship, and military strategy. Even our interests seemed perfectly matched.

After returning from the northern frontier, Wei Zheng had been appointed by Imperial Father to assist the Crown Prince, so he often came to the palace. My elder brother had always doted on me. Knowing how I felt about Wei Zheng, he tried to bring us together whenever there was some elegant gathering–tea around a brazier, admiring snow, viewing flowers.

Whenever Wei Zheng found a rare manuscript or an out-of-print volume, he brought it into the palace under the pretense of giving it to my brother, who then passed it on to me.

Mutual affection. A union ordained by heaven.

In truth, no marriage could have seemed more ideal.

Yet the first thing I said after waking was still, “I want to end the engagement.”

Rumors raged outside. Breaking an engagement always damaged a woman’s reputation, and this was an imperial marriage sanctioned by the Son of Heaven. How could it be undone on a whim?

If it ended, the Wei family would be humiliated. If it continued after such a scandal before the wedding, resentment might poison the marriage afterward.

My maid A-Luo was beside herself, terrified Imperial Father would be angry with me. I had not fully recovered from nearly drowning. If I were punished now, my body might not endure it.

As if none of that concerned me, I quietly put the military treatises on my table into a box. I had no intention of reading them again.

I had never liked them in the first place.

I did not like bamboo flutes. I did not like swords. I had no interest in military strategy.

Before I met Wei Zheng, I had been famous for my restless, spoiled nature.

Imperial Father treasured me like a pearl in his palm. Food, clothes, housing, travel–the very best of everything came to me first.

When the first apricots ripened in the palace, I would sit on his shoulders and reach for them one by one. If I picked a sour one, I fed it to him. If I found a sweet one, I tucked it into my robe to take back to Imperial Mother.

The moon in the sky was the only thing he could not pluck down for me. Had it been possible, I might have ridden on his shoulders all the way to the moon palace for a look.

That was how much he indulged me.

Only after meeting Wei Zheng did I gradually learn to rein myself in.

Wei Zheng, the man I loved, was the finest young man in the world.

His discipline was absolute. He rose at dawn to practice his sword every day and had not stopped for rain or snow in more than ten years. In his first year in the army, he won battle after battle and drove the enemy back three hundred li.

He held the realm in his heart and all its people in his thoughts. His blood burned to serve his country, his spear piercing the bitter northern cold.

He was a pine upon the mountain, a glimpse of wonder in the mortal world. Merely standing there in silence was enough to make me love him.

He kept women at a distance and disliked frivolous, spoiled girls. So I removed the jewels from my hair, replaced them with a plain pin, and won a single compliment from him: unworldly and elegant.

I put away my storybooks and kites, tied up my hair, and sat at a desk to begin again with calligraphy, writing through night after night.

I traded swings and lantern fairs for porridge kitchens outside the capital, where I personally served the poor on the first and fifteenth of every month.

When years of war in the southwest emptied the treasury, I sold the jewelry I had saved over the years and donated the silver to the army. Once I took the lead, young ladies from other great families followed. Together, we raised tens of thousands of taels and sent it all southwest.

Imperial Father once rested his hand on my head and sighed deeply.

“Chang’an, you have changed so much.”

He told me that as his daughter, as a princess of Great Jing, I did not need to be quite so obedient or sensible. Seeing what I had become, he no longer knew whether the change was good or bad.

I told him it was good, of course.

What could possibly be wrong with it?

Wei Zheng said the same in private. He told me that my sense of duty set me above countless women. An imperial princess ought to care for the realm and serve as an example in every word and deed.

His praise delighted me like a kitten stroked behind the ears.

The truth was, I had grown up deep within the palace, spoiled and ignorant of the world. “All the people beneath heaven” was little more than a distant phrase to me.

It was only because the man in my heart cared for them that I made room for the realm in mine.

I did everything I could to catch up with Wei Zheng, all so I might be worthy to stand beside him.

Princess Huayang had grown up with me, and we were cousins of a sort. Whenever she quarreled with her husband, she fled to my rooms.

Once, the cause of their cold war was almost laughably small. Her husband had risen late on his day off and still had several case files waiting on his desk, so he had not accompanied her to their country estate for a spring outing.

To me, it was scarcely worth mentioning. If such a trifle justified a cold war, I might as well have dashed my head against a pillar years ago.

Huayang was still furious, twisting her handkerchief into a knot.

“As my husband, shouldn’t he put me first in everything? It was his day off, so why was he still handling case files? He was simply being lazy! He was never like this when we first married. He–he clearly doesn’t love me anymore! Tomorrow, I’ll divorce him!”

I caught my angry cousin before she could storm away and soothed her gently.

“Cousin, calm down. If love is meant to last, why must it cling to every morning and night?”

Every morning and night?

What I wanted with Wei Zheng was a lifetime.

In my previous life, I had exhausted myself becoming the woman he wanted and finally married him. Though we were often apart, I had gained what I sought.

He spent most of each year stationed in the north. Even his occasional returns to the capital were hurried. He had to report to the emperor, reunite with old colleagues, settle countless small matters, worship the ancestors with the uncles and cousins of his clan, and travel on one official assignment after another.

While he worked, I stayed home and kept everything in order.

From sunrise to dusk, I traced his image in my mind, then went about my own affairs–serving porridge, reading, sketching troop formations.

When headaches kept me awake, I quietly drank my medicine and put myself to bed. I never made him worry.

At first, I too had felt the sort of grievance Huayang felt.

But what did I love about Wei Zheng?

I loved every moment he appeared before me. I loved the turn of a page beneath his hand, as though worlds lay hidden in his sleeves. I loved the clean sweep with which he mounted a horse, ready to fulfill his life’s ambitions. I loved the confidence between his brows when he drew a bow and the force of his brush biting through paper.

He was so brilliant that I, too, ought to shine in my own world.

That was what love should be.

We stood independently.

We met at the summit.

I suppressed the longing I felt for him at every hour, refusing to be trapped by petty affection, seeking instead a meeting of minds.

Then came the Lantern Festival reunion feast.

It was the fifteenth day of the first month. Several baskets of live lake fish had arrived from the far south, a rare delicacy in winter. My sister-in-law, the Crown Princess, cooked them herself and invited several of us siblings to the Eastern Palace.

As the feast drew to a close, she suggested warming a few jars of wine. The maid who brought them must have been nervous, for she stumbled. Had I not reached out in time, the wine would have spilled all over the Crown Princess.

The day was bitterly cold, but the floor heating burned hot indoors, and my sister-in-law wore only a light gown. The wine would have soaked her through.

Fortunately, nothing happened. My brother had been Crown Prince for years and was known for his lenience. His wife shared his gentle temper. She waved a hand and was about to dismiss the maid when my elder imperial sister spoke from the side.

“She behaved disgracefully before the imperial family and offended her betters. Such a maid ought to be dragged out and beaten.”

The Crown Princess frowned. “It is the holiday season, and no harm was done. Why resort to violence?”

My elder sister swallowed a sip of wine and sneered. “One day, the Crown Princess will be mother to the realm. Do not let a woman’s softness ruin the rules.”

She had not always been like this.

After she married, her husband secretly seized commoners’ fields and was reported. When he was imprisoned, she begged our brother to use his influence. But the Crown Prince lived beneath countless watchful eyes. There was little he could do.

Imperial Father later showed mercy and released my brother-in-law, but one of his once-healthy legs had been crippled. From then on, my sister grew distant from the rest of us.

Her quarrel with the Crown Princess was ultimately between women, and the men present could hardly interfere. Seeing the mood sour, I stepped forward to mediate.

“We are all family tonight. Let us not speak like strangers. It was a small mistake. Dock the maid half a month’s pay and remove her from personal service. Brothers and sisters, please do not let this spoil the evening. This wine is excellent, so allow Chang’an to offer the first toast. May all your affairs go smoothly in the years ahead.”

My sister refused to let it go.

“A country has laws and a family has rules. By the law, she should be beaten. By family rules, the Crown Princess should decide the punishment. Little Sister, you have overstepped your place.”

The feast ended in bitterness. I was unhappy, but I knew my sister’s words had another target. After what had happened to her husband, I forced myself to endure them.

What I never expected was for Wei Zheng to say quietly after we returned home, when no one else was present, “Your elder sister did have more reason on her side.”

I turned to look at him where he stood in the fading lamplight.

His brows were still sharp as swords, his eyes bright as stars, his face as flawless as carved jade.

Yet after all those years, it felt as though I were seeing him clearly for the first time.