A chance encounter outside the palace brought her, a princess born to wealth and privilege, face-to-face with Gongsun Yin.
At last, she had met someone whose outlook matched hers and whose soul resonated with her own.
To hold on to this rare connection, she defied convention, shed her splendid robes and imperial finery, and went to the academy and the military camp, pursuing the love that was hers with open-hearted passion.
Even when rejected, she dared to break free of the palace’s constraints and charge forward without hesitation.
“I want the ten thousand volumes in your family’s library as my betrothal gift.”
A jest, yet it revealed her yearning for a carefree life. She had never wanted wealth or power, only a lifelong companion whose soul was in tune with hers.
When the head of the academy and the princess overcame every obstacle and joined hands, the years that followed brought poetry and distant horizons beneath a starlit sky and tiled roof, a boat and a game of chess amid the misty rains of Jiangnan, and year after year of finding worthy opponents in each other, with love that only grew deeper.
