For thirteen years of marriage, Song Yanli slept fully dressed on the little couch in the bridal chamber.
In public, he was the top scholar who never sought other women or took concubines, and doted on his wife as if she were his life.
In private, he was a stranger who shared neither bed nor meals with me, and never spoke to me.
Even when I went mad, clawing and fighting with him, he wouldn’t spare me a glance.
He would only say, “Madam, you’ve disgraced yourself today.”
But on the road to his new post, when bandits came at us with blades, Song Yanli tied me onto the only horse.
“Zhaohua, when we visited my teacher that year, Yue Lian was the one I wanted to marry.”
“I wronged you in this life.”
He faced the bandits pursuing me alone and had his throat slit.
The sight of blood pouring from him stabbed at my eyes. He spoke his last words to me: “In the next life, don’t marry me.”
I refused to be the one who owed him a debt.
I took the silver moon hairpin he had brought the first time he visited and plunged it into my chest, following him to his death.
When I opened my eyes again, my niece Yue Lian, who was about to enter the palace as a consort, was paying her respects to me.
I shoved her aside and rushed into my father’s study.
