[One-on-one romance, both leads have only ever been with each other, sweet and doting, mutual salvation; a seemingly cold but secretly love-struck Duke Who Guards the Nation x a princess who keeps her feelings hidden and deliberately avoids love]
A word of caution: everything in this story is fictional, so please don't read too much into it. The romance develops slowly, with past and present lives, and a second male lead who goes mad with love.
The noble and aloof Emperor, merciless and stern, bestowed the name Anle upon Jiao, and once told her, “You may be as willful as you like, but never harm innocent commoners.”
Jiao means moon, with its lonely, desolate light.
But later, those tender words, “little moon,” steeped in affection, found their way into her heart. Only then did she learn that Jiao could also shine with radiance and brim with warmth.
*
“I've never gotten what I wanted.”
It was a simple, ordinary sentence, yet it nearly made the usually composed and self-controlled Duke Who Guards the Nation lose his composure in public.
A bright moon hung in his heart, close enough to see but impossible to touch. No one could ever take her place.
Mist curled through the air. The familiar prayer beads lay carelessly on the ground, and blood stained the porcelain-white bones of her wrist. Pei Ci's eyes were bloodshot; the tenderness in his gaze had been swallowed by an obsessive, sinister darkness.
*
In front of her, he was willing to lose everything!
That lonely evening, the night became a grand confession: “I love my life, for I was born in this very hour!”
