He was the former crown prince of the previous dynasty, the one who crawled out of a fire in the Eastern Palace. He lived under another man’s name for ten years, then clawed his way out of a mass grave to become a general.
She was an illegitimate daughter abandoned in her tutor’s back courtyard for eighteen years. No one cared whether she lived or died, and even the servants dared to beat and berate her.
That night, he climbed into her courtyard, covered in blood. She saved him not out of kindness, but simply because she didn’t want to watch him die. That was all.
Later, he married her, and the whole capital laughed. A peasant-born general marrying an illegitimate daughter cursed with misfortune: a perfect match.
He taught her to ride, wield a sword, and read. She organized intelligence for him and managed the household in his absence. On the day he left for war, she donned his armor and stood at the gates of his residence to block the soldiers sent to confiscate it.
Someone asked what she wanted from him.
She said, “I wasn’t waiting for him to come save me.”
He discovered that the emperor himself had caused the fire all those years ago. With the enemy at the city gates, she was dragged up to the battlements, a dagger hidden in her sleeve and a light in her eyes he had never seen before.
What he often remembered later was not the snowy night when she saved him.
It was the afternoon she stood in the wind wearing his armor and said, “The general is away, but his wife is here.”
One had crawled out of the flames, the other had grown up from the mud. It wasn’t that one saved the other. Together, they fought to live as human beings.
