My Dangerous Wife

[In this deadly game played at their bedside, whoever falls in love first dies first.]

Everyone in Beiping knew the Song family had sent their sickly country-bred daughter to the general’s mansion to bring him good fortune through marriage. On their wedding night, Shen Yan lifted her veil. The woman on the bed was as pale as paper, trembling with coughs, and looked ready to die at any moment. He sneered. “Let’s see how many days you last.”

All of Beiping was betting that this fragile little flower wouldn’t survive three months.

She fainted every day, coughed up blood, and wept like a rain-soaked flower. Even her breathing seemed to come with a come-hither lilt. The whole household called her a harbinger of bad luck. Only Shen Yan watched her coldly. Her fainting poses were too precise, the amount of blood she coughed up too perfect. Even the moan she let out when she couldn’t take any more in bed sounded like an act.

Until one rainy night, he returned from quelling a rebellion in Jiangnan, poisoned and on the brink of death.

She stumbled in with a bowl of medicine, her hands shaking so badly that it splashed everywhere. Tears struck the floor. “Husband… drink your medicine…”

He suddenly clamped a hand around her slender, pale wrist, gripping so hard he nearly crushed her bones. “You’ve kept up the act for three years. The Western Regions’ foremost master of poison needles, and you’ve finally decided to strike?”

Thunder cracked outside the window.

She raised her misty eyes, tears still caught on her lashes. Her voice was soft and gentle. “But… only my blood can cure the poison in you.”

A silver needle slid from her sleeve and stopped precisely against his heart.

She leaned slowly toward his ear, her breath warm, her lips almost brushing the pulsing artery in his neck. “General, tell me: should I kill you, or save you?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. Then he suddenly laughed, clamped his bloodstained hand around the back of her head, and kissed her fiercely.

“Ask me another way.”

…