When they first met, Song Niannian was gloomy and withdrawn, an ordinary student at the National Academy with nothing going for her but her looks.
Jiang Siyue had looked down on her from the start.
But she was beautiful, with a graceful figure, and she refused to obey him.
Jiang Siyue decided to give her a memory to cherish:
“Don’t get any ideas about me. We agreed to be together for only two years.”
“After two years, we’re done.”
Their relationship began with his pity for her.
He enjoyed every moment of it.
So when the two years were up, he actually began to consider seriously whether he should promise her a future.
He thought she would be overjoyed.
But before he could tell her, he discovered that he couldn’t find her anywhere.
Without warning, Song Niannian had vanished from Nanzhao.
He never saw her return.
All that came back to him was the jade pendant she had once given him.
And now that pendant hung around the neck of his older brother, a man who looked seven parts like him.
So the two-year limit they had agreed on from the start had been hers to set.
So he had never been the one in control of their relationship.
They met again later.
It was at the investiture platform in the Kingdom of Liyue.
On the high platform, the young woman recited her oath, unruffled by praise or disgrace.
Her sacrificial robes set off her proud features, and she stood sacred beneath the gaze of the crowd.
He had never imagined that the person who had once come when summoned and left when dismissed
would one day require him to expend vast wealth and influence, planning painstakingly, just to see her once.
“People say the princess is the finest divine formation master around, able to calculate everything with pinpoint precision.”
“How come you didn’t calculate that you’d end up in my hands?”
If she fell into his hands again, he thought, he would make her regret it.
