When the Wind Blows at the West Window: The Crown Prince Is Addicted to Reading Minds

The day I was exiled to Shu, I buried my father’s ashes with my own hands.

When I stood up, a man in bright red wedding robes was waiting in the snow, his eyes blank and unfocused. This was my legendary blind husband, Xiao Jinghuai, the deposed crown prince.

He took off his cloak and handed it to me. “Put this on. I’m wearing two layers.”

Wrapped in his cloak, I was screaming inside: He really is handsome! Too bad he’s blind. But having a blind husband is great. He won’t notice me sneaking out at night to make paper, and he won’t stop me from investigating the wrongful case against my father. Exile is totally worth it!

His hand, holding the teacup, paused almost imperceptibly.

Later, I discovered that this blind prince was very strange. He poured wine without spilling a drop and peeled eggs even better than I did. Every time I thought, “This man is so handsome,” his hand would shake as he lifted his bowl.

Stranger still, when I went to the back hill at night to strip paper mulberry bark, he followed in the dark and brought me his cloak. When I caught a fever after getting soaked in the rain, he stayed by my side all night. When someone bullied me, he stepped in front of me and said, “She is my wife. Anyone who wants to touch her will have to come through me first.”

I thought he was a pitiful blind man, never knowing that...

He had pretended to be blind for twelve years, just to protect one life in the darkness. And my irreverent inner monologue was the only truly honest voice he had heard in all those years.

He said I was a light that had blundered into his darkness.

I said he was the home that made me want to keep living.

Later, when the Empress Dowager moved against me and the court came after me, my “blind” husband opened his eyes for the first time, revealing the edge he had kept hidden for twelve years.

“My home is wherever she is. Anyone who wants to harm her will have to step over my body first.”

I thought I was being exiled, never realizing I was helping someone who would one day defy the whole world for me.