[Princess sent away for a political marriage × disgraced official]
Chu Randeng was the illegitimate daughter of the prime minister, raised in a temple and forbidden to return home.
On a rainy night at the mountain temple, she found a boy covered in blood behind the mountain, hid him in a meditation room, and carefully nursed him back to health.
The day his wounds healed, he grasped her wrist. His gaze was deep, and he seemed to have something to say, but said nothing.
Who could have guessed that when they met again,
he would be an imperial envoy, and she a minister's daughter sent to marry in place of a princess?
On the day they parted, Pei Zhaoye made her a promise: "Your Highness, take care. I will come and bring you home."
Chu Randeng held on to that promise. She watched the geese fly south three times, and at last, the familiar black armor appeared.
She gathered up her skirts and ran toward him. "Pei Zhaoye, have you come to take me home?"
But he turned his head away and pushed her back without mercy.
Six months later, Great Song defeated Yan.
Princess Jinyang returned to court, but Pei Zhaoye was shackled and imprisoned for deceiving the emperor.
The emperor took pity on her suffering and granted her a reward.
She said, "I want a person."
"Who?"
"Pei Zhaoye."
In prison, she found Pei Zhaoye with nothing left but his pride.
She rescued him and confined him in the deepest courtyard of the princess's residence.
She made him kneel beneath the snowy eaves, ordered him to warm her fingertips with his lips, and laid new marks over his old wounds, smiling as she asked, "General Pei, where is all that swagger you had back then?"
Knowing how full of vigor he was, she leaned close as he struggled to maintain the propriety of a subject and whispered teasingly, "General Pei, why are you trembling?"
It wasn't until that night that Chu Randeng pieced together the truth from his feverish ramblings.
Back in the Yan palace, the imperial edict in his hands had originally read: "Kill the princess and eliminate future trouble."
But Pei Zhaoye had cut down the supervising official with his sword and burned the edict. He had paved the way for her return as a princess, while choosing a path to his own death.
The snowy night was bitterly cold when she came with a lamp.
She bent down, took his chin, and forced him to look at her.
"Pei Zhaoye, the emperor is unjust and brothers fight among themselves. In this game, we're both pieces. Will you join forces with me and become the one who moves them?"
He raised his eyes, reflecting her radiant face.
After a long while, his pale lips curved into a faint smile. "What would Your Highness have me do?"
Her fingertips glided over the corner of his injured lips. "I want you to take the highest seat. From then on, you will be the king, and I will be..."
Before she could finish, he seized her wrist.
In the darkness, his gaze was like that of a beast long confined in a cage. "Your Highness, do you know that joining me means stepping into an even more dangerous abyss?"
"Why should I fear an abyss?" She didn't retreat. Instead, she pressed closer, almost tangling their breaths together.
"I only want to know: do you still dare to get entangled with me for one more stretch of the road?"
2026.3.16
Theme: Keep kindness in your heart
