In her previous life, she was Princess Consort Jing. She helped him seize the throne, only to be repaid with her heart cut out, her blood drained, and her entire family executed. As she was being poisoned to death, she remembered the man who had climbed over the wall late one night to ask her, “Is marrying him what your heart truly wants?” He was the Crown Prince. She never knew why he had asked, and there was no time left to find out.
Reborn one day, she returns to the age of fifteen. Her stepmother tries to spoil her into ruin, her half-sister schemes against her, and her father uses her marriage as a bargaining chip. She meets every challenge with decisive ruthlessness. But the Crown Prince who questioned her in her previous life keeps appearing at her side in this one: he visits to praise her as “beautiful inside and out,” secretly helps her bring wicked servants to heel, and sends her a personal female guard. When she asks why, he only says, “There is no reason.”
She doesn’t trust men, and she trusts kindness without cause even less.
Not until Prince Jing’s defeat does she go to see him one last time. He smiles and tells her, “Do you know why he climbed over the wall? Because he loved you. Before leaving on a mission, he meant to ask the emperor to arrange your marriage, but by the time he returned, you had already been promised to me. Do you know whose name was in the late emperor’s decree? His. Do you know why he never became emperor? Because I told him, ‘If you fight for the throne, I’ll kill her.’”
“He gave it up for you. Then he left the capital and barely survived. When he came back, you were already dead. He killed everyone and followed you in death. He was reborn before you and protected you through two lifetimes.”
She turns around and sees the man who never speaks his feelings standing at the prison door.
“I’ve waited for two lifetimes,” he says. “One life ended in heartbreak. In this one, we’ll have our happy ending.”
And at last, she understands: there really is someone in this world who loves her more than life itself.
Hum hum hum.