The day I came down from the mountain, my younger sister was found in a refugee camp.
She was so thin she was barely recognizable, wrapped in a straw mat, her breathing faint.
But the moment she saw me, her dim eyes suddenly lit up.
“Elder Sister.”
She reached out to me, her voice soft and weak. “Nuonuo hurts so much.”
I hadn’t seen her in ten years.
In my memories, my sister had been raised plump and carefree, unable to walk past a candied hawthorn skewer without stopping.
My eyes stung, and I nearly crushed the skewer in my hand.
“Who did this to you?”
But she obediently shook her head, her lips murmuring the same words over and over:
“My husband loves me.”
The maid who had accompanied her as part of her dowry staggered in fright and fell to her knees with a thud, trembling as she said,
“Madam’s husband is the young marquis, His Majesty’s most beloved.”
“Crack, ”
My pupils dilated as shards of crushed sugar pierced my flesh.
The one the young marquis had defied an imperial edict and endured a flogging to marry three years ago, the woman he loved
was my sister, whose mind was no older than eight.
