Chapter 5

Something whistled through the air. The sedan curtain split, and a pebble knocked the dagger from my hand.

Someone stood outside.

A scar marked the corner of her eye. Wind and frost seemed to have scoured her body, and no effort could suppress the deadly force surrounding her.

She held out a hand. “Ningning, I’ve come for you.”

I froze.

Chaos erupted around us.

The wedding attendant screamed that someone was stealing the bride. Servants shouted the groom’s name and threatened to report us to the authorities. The woman’s guards stood fiercely on either side with drawn swords.

Anyone who refused to understand the situation, it seemed, would stain those blades with blood.

I stepped out of the sedan and stared at her face.

Wind had carved it, snow had battered it, and blades must have wounded it too.

It bore little resemblance to the beautiful face in my memory.

I walked past her and past my betrothed, who lay on the ground with no sign whether he lived or died. Dazed, I simply kept walking.

No one stopped me, because she followed at my back carrying a red-tasseled spear.

As I walked, I tore the cumbersome ornaments from my hair.

Then I began stripping off my clothes.

First the embroidered bridal cape, then the outermost layer, a red robe with broad sleeves.

I heard her footsteps quicken. The instant my fingers touched the middle, front-opening jacket, she seized my hand so firmly I could not move it another inch.

I tried to wrench free, but she pulled me into her arms and held me tight, as though flesh could fuse with flesh and we had never been parted.

“Ningning, I’m back.”

For some reason, those words broke the last of my restraint. I sobbed in her embrace.

Perhaps I wept for all my years of desolation—for the countless silent nights spent counting the blooms on a lampwick, the drops of rain, and the fleeting winds, waiting quietly for death amid mountains of gold and jade.

Or perhaps I wept for her years amid windblown sand, beneath the long river and setting sun, with banners snapping over mountains of corpses and seas of blood, facing a road whose end no one could foresee and from which she might never return.

Her armor was cold and hard. My tears struck it, and the sun burned them into mist.

I opened my mouth to call to her.

But I could not make myself say “Mother.”

We had been apart far, far too long.

So long that everything before me felt like a dream.

I feared I would wake and the person in my arms would vanish like smoke, leaving me alone in this cold, cruel world with sores covering my body.

Through my daze, I heard her sigh.

“Sleep, Ningning,” she said. “I’ll watch over you.”

Birdsong woke me with a start.

Yuntang had been slumped beside the bed. My movement woke her, and she looked up at me with swollen red eyes.

“Miss, how could you… how could you ever try to do such a thing?”

Her words reassured me.

Everything yesterday had been real.

My surroundings were unfamiliar. Yuntang explained,

“The general only just returned to the capital. Her residence isn’t ready, so she had us stay at this inn for now.”

“Where is she?”

“At the palace. The general said she would break your betrothal and take you away from the Zhou family.”

Could such things be done easily?

I did not know.

An attendant brought hot water. After I washed and dressed, a commotion arose outside the inn.

I opened the window and immediately saw my stepmother.

Servants from the marquis’s residence stood behind her. Beside her was a richly dressed lady.

Farther to one side sat a man with sallow skin, dark circles beneath his eyes, and bloodstained cloth wrapped around his ankle—the sickly wretch himself.

They had come for me, but the guards at the inn’s entrance barred their way.

Those guards were seasoned soldiers whose swords had tasted blood. The household servants were too frightened to advance.

The richly dressed lady raged, “Even the Son of Heaven is subject to the same law as a commoner, much less an unchaste woman! In broad daylight, before the eyes of all, Madam Duan stole a bride and nearly killed my son. Is there no law left in this land? To say nothing of our honor—I would give my life to obtain justice for my son!”

Her words rang with conviction and accomplished nothing.

The guards did not answer. They merely drew their swords.

What did it matter that they stood beneath the emperor’s feet? A military order was as immovable as a mountain.

Yuntang marveled, “The general is incredible!”

When the richly dressed lady saw I would not respond, her fury remained, but she did not truly throw herself upon the guards’ swords.

She glared at my stepmother. Helpless, my stepmother instructed an old maid beside her to persuade me.

“Eldest Miss, since ancient times marriage has obeyed the parents’ command and the matchmaker’s word. Your marriage contract with the Earl of Rong’s son has already been registered with the authorities. Though you never completed the ceremony of bowing to Heaven and Earth, you are already a woman of the Earl of Rong’s household. You may hide for a time, but not forever. You should return home with the young master at once.”

I sat beside the window, swaying where I was.

Yuntang cried, “Miss, don’t believe them. The general has a way!”

What way could she have?

Books said that when generals commanding great armies acted arrogantly, the emperor would grow suspicious of them.

One careless step could cost her life.

And she had abducted me before a crowd the moment she returned to the capital. That was brazen by any measure.

I had always considered myself useless.

She was a general who had carved a future for herself among men. I was a sheltered daughter with no weapon but death.

If she were destroyed for my sake, history would record it, and people would curse me until my spine splintered beneath their pointing fingers.

Sunlight scorched my eyes. In my daze, the silk handkerchief slipped from my sleeve. I reached for it, but Yuntang caught me around the waist.

The handkerchief embroidered with green lotuses sailed away on the wind. Just before it fell into the mud, a hand caught it.

The hand was rough, wholly at odds with the lustrous silk.

The guards called in unison, “General!”

Everyone looked at her and immediately found the scar at the corner of her unpainted eye.

She said nothing. One glance from her was enough to frighten the richly dressed lady back a step.

Only my stepmother kept her eyes on the handkerchief, her thoughts wandering somewhere unknown.

Duan Qing’s lips curved in an amused smile. “How lively.”