Chapter 7

Even if our marriage was an alliance, we still owed each other loyalty and good faith.

I could not be the first to turn away. If I did, the Feng clan would be the party at fault.

Fortunately, Mother had known I was walking into a den of wolves when I entered the capital, so she had prepared…

I turned to Kaixuan. “Where is the divine beast figurine Mother gave me?”

She blinked. “Still packed in one of the trunks, I think.”

“Find it quickly! I won’t feel safe without it!”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Mother said it was a divine beast from a foreign land, used especially to calm the temper. It was known as the God of Serenity.

But our belongings were in such chaos that Shengli, Kaixuan, and I searched all afternoon without finding it.

Without the divine beast’s protection, I had a nightmare that very night.

I dreamed of the year I turned seventeen. The southern harvest had been abundant, and the Feng Army had won another battle. It had been the best year we had known.

That morning, I accompanied Father on an inspection of the border. We passed farmland where farmers moved through golden fields and rice stood piled high. We passed the horse ranches, where herders called to one another while our carefully bred warhorses galloped free.

Father laughed from the heart. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” he boomed the entire way.

We were so happy that Ran Ling and I drank more than usual when we returned.

I had been only fifteen when we married, and our circumstances were poor. Mother feared childbirth might kill me and had hinted that we should wait, so we had never consummated our marriage.

That night, flushed with happiness and wine, we lost control.

When we finally understood what was happening, both of us froze. Ran Ling was still sweating above me when a horn blared outside.

The camp was under attack.

Those damned barbarians had doubled back!

Ran Ling nearly ran out without his trousers.

The bitter fighting lasted three days before we drove the enemy beyond the defensive line again. We won, but most of the farmland had been trampled and plundered.

Father had a violent temper. Ignoring Mother’s attempts to stop him, he took Ran Ling and pursued the enemy deep into hostile territory on a long, solitary campaign. They did not return until winter.

They had won…

But another cruel winter followed.

Mother’s orphanage had barely enough food to keep the children alive. They lacked warm clothes and medicine, and once a child fell ill, they often could not endure it.

One little boy under Mother’s devoted care seemed about to recover, only to die in her arms.

It was the only time I ever saw her lose control.

Holding the child’s body, she slapped Father across the face. “What use is killing the enemy? Even if you slaughter every last one of them, all our own sons and daughters will be dead too!”

Father knelt beside her. Even that iron-hard man wept.

To keep military commanders out of court politics, my great-grandfather had sworn that the Feng clan would guard the southern frontier and never return to the capital.

But that night, Father told Mother, “We’ll put our son-in-law on the throne and go to the capital ourselves to demand justice.”

Then the dream changed.

Ran Ling broke his promise. Hand in hand with Pei Ruoxue and followed by a crowd of noble ladies, he ascended the throne.

The southern frontier received nothing but one bitter winter after another.

The farmers in the rice fields, the galloping horses, my laughing father, my mother smiling through her pain, the carefree children…

One by one, they vanished.

The homeland in my dream became a wasteland.