The Last Camellia

In the bitter depths of winter, the twenty-fourth year of Zhaoming, the snow raged and the wind howled.

She sat motionless in the prison cart, being taken to the Western Market to be executed, heading toward the same fate as her father.

Jiang Wenjin still remembered how, a few days earlier, the emperor had stared at the tattoo on her forehead in the Western Garden. After a long silence, he had said, "Since you are the daughter of a former official, I will give you two choices: a cup of poison or a prison cart... Once you have chosen, you may be on your way."

Her face was blue-white with cold, snow covered her brows and lashes, and not a trace of life remained in her. Yet through the snowstorm, someone came against the wind and draped a cloak over her shoulders.

The man took the wolf-fang pendant from his waist and fastened it around her neck, telling her that the Crown Prince was getting married today and would not come.

She lowered her head and managed a faint smile of relief.

As the prison cart rolled down the long street, festive music drifted from afar. Suddenly, she remembered the umbrella held over her head at the Crown Prince's coming-of-age ceremony.

She had once believed that he alone in all the world could make her willingly kneel, enter his trap, and become his subject.

Only his subject.

But when he defied his father, kowtowing every three steps through the snow and declaring, "If I take a wife, it must be a Jiang," she closed her eyes, yet still could not stop her heart from trembling.

Later, on a day in late spring, Wenjin passed the examination for female officials. Disguised, she returned.

Beneath the high platform, the wind filled her sleeves. Along the roadside, the falling blooms of the glorybower brushed her temple, like frost and snow.

The Crown Prince broke off a flower and tucked it behind her ear, smiling as he said, "Flowers suit a beauty, and for Librarian Xie, this flower makes her even more radiant."

She paid no heed to his cryptic words.

But then his voice trembled as he said, "At the literary gathering in Jiangnan all those years ago, I saw a girl playing the flute beneath the moon. I have searched for her for ten years... Who are you, really?"

[In this life, with snow blanketing the heavens, she finally saw the depths of winter pass, while the glorybower still bloomed.]

Notes: 1. Shuangchu, HE, a redemption story dressed in political intrigue.

2. The setting is inspired by the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty. The heroine grows throughout the story.

3. The romance is not angsty at all: a gentle man pursues a steadfast woman. After faking her death, the heroine also has a nominal husband for the sake of her household registration.

4. The title is not a typo. The missing grass radical is intentional for reasons of my own.

5. My pen name comes from the talented poet Xie Lingjiang. The name was already taken, so I added the water radical, meaning to water Jiang so she can grow strong. "If I take a wife, it must be a Jiang" comes from the allusion "A wife should be a Qi Jiang," meaning a man should marry a woman surnamed Jiang from Wuxi. (The heroine's biological mother. Please don't make irrelevant comments, start a literary inquisition, or make malicious assumptions. Thank you.)

Theme: A noble person's principles remain steadfast unto death.