Spring in a Cage

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My next novel, Ashen Jade, will be starting soon.

On a snowy night in the palace women's quarters, she took off her outer robe and wrapped it around his shivering body. When he woke up, he turned his nose up at her lowly servant status, tore off the robe, threw it into the snow, and wrote "Filthy" in charcoal.

In the rear courtyard of the estate, she followed a medical recipe and warmed his medicine until it had boiled three times. He either left it until it was cold, untouched, or complained that she was too slow and slammed the bowl onto the table.

In the depths of winter, she spent more than a month making him knee warmers to protect him from the cold. But his eyes were fixed on Shen Zhiyi's graceful figure as she played the qin, and he casually tossed the knee warmers to a servant.

After she had built up enough disappointment, she said she wanted to go to Jiangnan. He only sneered, "A servant dares dream of freedom?"

It wasn't until she packed her old clothes, hid away her few bits of silver, and said, "I'm leaving," that he panicked for the first time.

When his heart palpitated, no one brought him a brazier. On stormy nights, no one waited outside his door. No one even warmed his medicine to just the right temperature.

He grabbed her hand, his voice hoarse. "Don't go. I was wrong!"

But she didn't look back. She slung her luggage over her shoulder, smiling through her tears. "My lord, you rejected my warmth for three years. You don't need it anymore."

Theme: A New Lease on Life