Snow-Burdened Chang’an

It was snowing in Chang'an on the day the hostage prince returned to court.

He was the Sixth Prince, abandoned in the north for ten years. His maternal family had been executed, and he returned to the capital alone. No one even offered him a proper seat at the very end of the banquet. The entire court had thought him dead, and he had indeed lived as though he were dead, until the young woman behind the screen handed him a pot of cold tea.

She was the legitimate daughter of the General Who Guards the North: innocent, devoted, and incapable of scheming. She did not know that this down-and-out hostage prince had a ten-year game laid out in his heart, much less that the most important piece on the board was the 30,000 soldiers of her Shen family.

She trusted him. It began with a pot of cold tea, then an old hairpin, then a lantern at the festival, and then walking together on a snowy night. The more he pushed her away, the closer she came. The closer she came, the less she saw what he was plotting.

He knew, of course, that he should not keep her by his side. Keeping her meant having a weakness, and with a weakness he could not win this game. But he kept her anyway, pushing her away with one hand while holding her tighter with the other.

Eventually, she saw the truth. On the day she finally understood, the wind howled through Chang'an for three days without stopping. She went to find him. The hairpin at her temple was blown away, and she did not pick it up.

Later, he took the throne. The whole city celebrated, and the realm lay in his grasp. He had won the world.

But the person who had once handed him cold tea never came back.

Snow fell in Chang'an again. Standing atop the city wall, he remembered a lantern from many years ago, bearing four words: May you be safe and sound.

Had he ever known peace in his life?