Chapter 40
Chapter 40
I looked at him. In the candlelight, the deep contours inherited from his father’s people stood in sharp relief. For the first time, I clearly felt the Northern Qian hunger in his bones: conquest, possession, and madness.
“But I do not love you.”
“You have already married me.”
I drew a deep breath and finally recovered my reason and strength. “Xia Wan, whatever you think, in this life we can only ever be aunt and nephew.”
He said nothing. I softened my voice, as though returning to the days when I coaxed officials at court. “Listen to me. Uniting north and south is our first duty. Neither of us can afford distraction. If we succeed in founding a state and affairs become stable, I will pretend to die of illness and enter a small temple. You may still visit me. Xia Wan, when all beneath heaven belongs to you, you will understand how many beautiful women exist in this world. You will receive more love than you can imagine. And we will always remain the closest of family. Would that not be best?”
He smiled faintly. “First, it is not a matter of whether we happen to found a state. All the lands within the four seas will be my gift to you. Second, since I have taken a wife, what do the world’s other beautiful women have to do with me?”
Exasperation rose in me. “Why can you not understand – ”
My voice stopped when he drew back his sleeve.
Two vivid red marks crossed his smooth wrist.
“What are those?”
“A gelu curse.”
He looked at me with a tenderness that chilled the blood.
“I cursed myself. If I ever remain apart from Xihe for more than one hundred days, ten thousand poisons will pierce my heart and kill me.”
I stared at the marks, trembling. In panic, I seized his hand. “How can it be undone? Undo it! Break the curse, and I will promise you anything!”
“From the moment Xihe drank the blood wine at our wedding, the art became irreversible.”
Tears fell in my panic. “Are you a fool? You will be the ruler of a nation. What if someone captures me and uses me against you? I am nine years older. What happens when I die before you?”
He reached to wipe away my tears. I shoved him aside.
Throughout my life, I had traded, plotted, and smiled falsely with too many people. I had failed before, but never despaired.
He made me despair. I hated him, but what could I do? From the moment I learned he was Xia Wan, I was doomed to helplessness before him. He openly used that hold over me, forcing me to betray every law of kinship and shame.
At last, he embraced me. I sobbed against his chest.
“I will never allow anyone to take you from me again. If they succeed, it will mean I deserve to die,” he whispered above my head. “The road beyond death is too dark. If you die, I will not let you walk it alone.”
Years later, when I remembered my wedding night, its grief, pain, and despair had blended like too many pigments on one sheet of paper, muddy and indistinct. I remembered only the following morning. I woke very late, dimly aware that he entered and left again and again. When I finally opened my eyes, a cup of tea sat beside me at precisely the right warmth.
Something peered around the folding screen. It was the white deer called Little Persimmon, blinking innocent eyes as it stared blankly at me. The moment I sat up, it came over and nudged my hand.
“I remember now. At Danchi’s banquet years ago, there was also a white deer. The northerners cut its throat and drank its blood. General He Sulong refused, and everything that followed began there.” I stroked its head. Naturally, it could not understand that I was telling it a gruesome story about a deer. It began chewing the bedsheet with relish. I laughed despite myself. “You have suffered all these years following our Xia Wan, have you not?”
And how much had Xia Wan himself suffered?
Before it could swallow the sheet, I led it outside. A simple-looking maid waited at the door and became nervous at the sight of me. “M-My lady, the Heavenly Venerable was here with Little Persimmon waiting for you to wake. He left only because urgent military news arrived.”
“What news?”
“Something from the front. I do not know.”
I casually gathered a handful of wild grass for Little Persimmon. “If matters at the front deteriorate, disaster will reach the rear as well. Better to know something.”
Helan knew the military classics and excelled at formations and deployment. Zheng Long’s generals were also brave and battle-hardened. Even so, the prolonged war remained exceedingly difficult.
The people of Northern Qian understood little of political schemes, but their soldiers were powerful and their horses strong. One northern army often fought with twice the strength of Xia Wan’s army. Even the most ingenious strategy had limited effect against such overwhelming force. Battle could change in an instant, yet the longer the stalemate continued, the worse it became for Xia Wan’s army.
I insisted on attending every military council, and Xia Wan agreed. His indulgence of me seemed without limit. Yet our interactions were even more restrained and distant than when he had been Naihe. He slept in the warm side chamber outside my room. Every day, he personally brewed my medicine and tea and prepared my meals. If I ignored him, he remained quietly nearby. If I spoke – even only to say, “Pass me that book” – his happiness became impossible to hide. Watching him made my heart ache.
I wanted to embrace him and speak for hours, repaying everything we had missed during our years apart.
But I could not.
Even in our distant life together, I would sometimes look up and catch him watching me. His eyes were so gentle, yet filled with a possessiveness that bordered on madness.
He was still a child. Children fixate on what they cannot have.
But I was no child.
I did not know what he loved in me – perhaps my face, perhaps family devotion confused for desire. That was why he would sacrifice everything. But when he truly grew up and met the person he genuinely loved, his present childishness would plunge him into despair. I could not allow that.
Repeated defeats drove Helan beyond irritability. His absurd obsession blamed everything upon me. Though I rarely spoke during military councils, he could extend any subject far enough to raise his arms and proclaim, “When the hen crows at dawn, the state stands on the brink of ruin!”
No one paid him any attention.
Xia Wan showed no anxiety. He still found leisure each day to burn incense, play the zither, and seek out lost ancient books for me. At first, I thought he merely wished to steady morale. Later, I realized he was genuinely untroubled. He listened quietly to reports, made plans with perfect composure, then turned to tell me softly what dish he had cooked that day, his expression never changing. Watching him, I sometimes thought of Chen Dong and Danchi. Northerners possessed an almost feverish attachment to war. However they tried to hide it, triumph or fury always showed through. Xia Wan was different. From beginning to end, he remained elegant, like a man playing a game of chess whose outcome he already knew.
His calm infected me. For ten years in Northern Qian, I had lived in constant tension. I dared not drink too much even of tea sent by trusted followers, fearing poison. Eventually, there truly was poison.
But here, I gradually relaxed. I discovered that drinking tea could be a wondrous pleasure. Watching sunset beside him or listening to his zither, I could sometimes forget the war filling the world and the desolation of my life. Slowly, he was changing me.
Autumn deepened, and my health finally improved. Xia Wan’s army had swallowed more than half the realm, but Northern Qian’s five strongest cities still refused to fall. Northern Qian cavalry had begun its counterattack, and the cities held by Xia Wan’s army were falling one after another.
Beneath a tree, I sketched the northern deployments. Repeated defeats had weakened morale, while supply could no longer keep pace with losses. They had not even faced Northern Qian’s true elite forces, much less Chen Dong’s undefeated iron cavalry.
As I worried, the little white deer began tugging my hem again. I pulled it away, but it braced itself as though in a contest of strength. After several attempts, irritation overcame me.
“Are you short of fodder or fruit? Must you deliberately plague me? In Northern Qian, you would have been killed long ago. Do you know that?”
A laugh sounded behind me. “Young lady, it needs salt!”