Your Husband Wouldn't Dare Talk Back to You

The blurb for my latest serial, She Really Wants Me Dead:

Wei Cen dies and wakes up as a maid in the Prince of Qin’s residence.

Though she is a servant, she lives far more comfortably than the common folk outside, with good food, clothes, and a place to sleep.

But Wei Cen has known freedom. How could she willingly spend the rest of her life as a servant?

*

Pei Xingyan was named heir to the Prince of Qin’s estate at birth. Unfortunately, he was frail and had to wash down every meal with medicinal broth.

As he watches the foolish maid in front of him with pastry crumbs all over her mouth, he cannot help remembering the snow pine he kept many years ago.

“Cough, cough... A Cheng,” Pei Xingyan covers his mouth and coughs twice. “Keep eating like that, and you might not fit into the summer dress you just had made.”

Wei Cen’s hand freezes as she brings another pastry to her mouth. Then she changes her mind: Never mind. Why argue with a sickly man? Once he dies, she can ask for permission to leave the estate.

As for how she’ll make a living after that, she can simply go back to her old line of work.

Having reached this conclusion, Wei Cen picks up another piece of hibiscus cake and brings it to her lips. Munching, she says, “It’s all right, Your Highness. I’ll stay by your side for the rest of my life, as long as you don’t mind me getting fat. I don’t care about new clothes or anything like that.”

Pei Xingyan stops coughing. He breathes shallowly, his eyes still fixed on her lovely, fair face.

Good. She has promised to stay with him for the rest of her life.

*

Wei Cen never dreamed that Pei Xingyan’s illness was fake.

Nor was his promise to let her leave the estate any more real.

Luckily, after his “recovery,” Pei Xingyan is kept busy with the new emperor’s assignments and is away from the capital for months at a time. Using her mother’s serious illness as an excuse, Wei Cen begs the old princess consort for permission to leave and secures her contract of service.

But after obtaining a travel permit for Jiangnan and boarding a passenger boat to Yangzhou under cover of darkness, she sees a group of soldiers surrounding the vessel on government boats, torches in hand.

Wei Cen smears dirt over her face and lets her hair hang in a wild tangle. She kneels with her head bowed among the trembling crowd, thinking that if she hides well enough, she might escape unharmed.

Then she sees the pair of crane-patterned brocade boots she made herself stop right in front of her.

“After serving me all this time, you’re leaving for Jiangnan without even saying goodbye? Or have you had your fill of the pastries at the Prince of Qin’s residence, little Orange, and want to try the local delicacies elsewhere?”

Pei Xingyan speaks casually, as if making idle conversation.

Yet the hazy yellow torchlight falling across his face cannot dispel the sinister darkness in his eyes. Just looking at him makes her spine grow cold.

“I’ll count to three. If you still won’t get up, no one on this boat is leaving.”

“...Three!”

“Don’t!”

Wei Cen looks up in alarm, meeting those mesmerizing eyes, cold as a deep pool.

“...Pei Xingyan, what do you want from me?”

Pei Xingyan looks at the woman before him, chin raised as she angrily questions him, and pain tightens around his heart.

What does he want?

All he wants is to keep her with him.

If he cannot keep her willingly, then he will use any means necessary.

After all, he never promised that he would let her go. That was just something she’d made up.

The blurb for this novel:

Lin Shiyu has been married to Shen Fei for three years. She serves his parents and raises his younger sister. Everyone in the capital praises the virtuous and gracious Mrs. Shen.

But in Shen Fei’s eyes, all that virtue and grace is nothing but a burden.

He wants a wife who will grow old by his side, not a lifeless clay statue of a bodhisattva.

Back then, an imperial decree arranging their marriage had arrived at the Shen residence out of nowhere, leaving Shen Fei no choice but to accept the match.

Now, he finds her coldness increasingly unbearable.

Only when he sees his divorced former wife chatting happily with Wu Qinglou, the newly appointed Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, does he realize she can be so radiant and charming.

*

“Lin Shiyu, in our three years of marriage, did you ever smile at me like that?” Shen Fei grits his teeth as he gazes at the beautiful woman before him.

“...No.”

Lin Shiyu lowers her head, then looks up and smiles. “Shen Fei, our marriage was only a stopgap arrangement. Now that you’re about to marry a new bride, why waste your words on me, your cast-off wife?”

“Or do you want to rekindle our relationship? But this time, I’m the one who doesn’t want you. Give up.”

He will never understand that without Wu Qinglou fighting fiercely to protect her during those dark, agonizing days, she would not be the person she is now.

An explanation? The truth?

For two people who are now strangers, none of it matters anymore.

All she has to do now is wait for her aunt, Consort Lin, to celebrate the sixth prince’s first birthday, and then she can leave the capital.

Lin Shiyu thinks a few cold words will be enough to drive Shen Fei away. But as soon as she finishes speaking, everything before her eyes suddenly goes black.

When she wakes again, she is back in the courtyard where she lived for three years.

“Lin Shiyu, you can hate me, but I will never let you leave me again.”

Shen Fei whispers in her ear, “If I could marry you once, I can marry you a second time.”

“Madman!”

He was the one who pushed her away. Why is he acting crazy now?

Shen Fei is unmoved. “My wife is always right. Your husband wouldn’t dare argue.”

Theme: Love yourself a little more