Chapter 1
The armies faced each other across the battlefield. With a steel blade pressed to the princess’s neck, the enemy shouted, “They say Princess Jinyu is the most precious daughter of Yue’s imperial family. If you want her alive, give us a prince!”
The princess trembled all over, sobbing so helplessly that she could barely speak. “Lu Wei, save me…”
General Lu Wei’s face was grave.
Three days earlier, the princess had arrived at the border on a pleasure trip, throwing her royal weight around.
Somewhere, she had heard of a valley on the frontier filled with exotic peonies. She insisted on seeing them.
When the officers tried to stop her, she snapped, “Isn’t that what you soldiers fight for—so I can go wherever I please to admire flowers? What else is the point of your victories?”
“Try to stop me again, and I’ll have Father cut your supplies!”
Lu Wei and I were away surveying the terrain. With neither of us in camp, no one dared defy her.
So she took a few maids and guards to the valley near the border.
She even brought an artist to paint her among the blossoms—a portrait titled The Princess Admiring Flowers.
While she was enjoying herself, enemy troops sprang from their hiding places among the flowers. They killed her maids, guards, and artist, taking only the princess alive.
Lu Wei and I had been certain of victory in today’s battle.
None of us had imagined that, at the crucial moment, the enemy would produce the princess as a captive. Suddenly, our entire army’s hands were tied.
The battle ground to a halt.
An officer shouted at their outrageous demand. “An imperial prince is far too important to be exposed to danger on the frontier!”
The enemy commander’s gaze fell on me. “Isn’t there one right here?”
Lu Wei looked at me too.
My father had abandoned me in the army as a child, leaving me to fend for myself. Disguising myself as a boy was the only way I could protect my reputation.
The army, the court—everyone believed I was a prince. Only Lu Wei knew that I, too, was a princess.
But unlike Jinyu, the adored imperial daughter, I was Zhaoning: a disgraced princess burdened from birth by the crimes of my mother’s family.
For more than ten years, I had followed Lu Wei, braving death at his side and helping him win one victory after another.
He alone knew I was a woman. Beneath the moon on the frontier, he had once promised me his life.
Yet the sight of the enemy’s sword against the princess’s throat plainly hurt him.
“Once we’ve brought her back, I’ll come for you.”
“There’s no other way,” he told me. “You’ll have to suffer this for now. Let them think they’re getting a prince. As soon as she’s safe, I’ll rescue you.”
I raised my eyes to his. “Is that a military order?”
He hesitated for a moment. “It is.”
He made it an order: I was to buy the princess’s safety.
I agreed. Lu Wei delivered me into the enemy commander’s hands himself. The steel blade left Jinyu’s neck and settled against mine.
Thinking I was a man, the commander handled me roughly. His blade drew a line of blood across my throat.
As pain bit into me, I saw Lu Wei gather the princess tightly into his arms.
“General, I knew you would save me!”
Like an injured rabbit, she burrowed against his chest.
Her frail, trembling body invited tenderness.
He held her with such concern that her tears must have thrown his heart into chaos.
Otherwise, how could a general so decisive in battle have missed his best chance to save me?
By the time he had soothed her and remembered my rescue, the enemy had already dragged me into their camp.