When Shen Tang was seven, she was sold as a child bride. She grew up alongside Pei Yan, and the two relied on each other to survive. He promised to marry her once he had made a name for himself, but after passing the provincial exams at seventeen, he personally sent her to another man’s bed, all because a young lord from the Marquis’s household had taken an interest in her, and Pei Yan had nothing to offer her then.
Three years later, Pei Yan had risen to immense power and taken a wife and started a family, yet he came back and pursued Shen Tang obsessively. He used her husband’s life to force her to spend one night with him. Beneath her pillow, she found the dagger he had prepared. He was waiting for her to kill him, as atonement.
But what truly made her give up on him was seeing him on the Lantern Festival, holding his wife and child, his eyes alight with happiness. At last, she understood: he had already begun a new life, while she alone remained trapped in that winter night when she was seventeen.
In the end, she chose to stay, not because she had forgiven him, but because she had finally learned to live for herself.
