[Star-crossed lovers / Love and hate / Matched in wit and strength]
Brilliant, proud, ambitious schemer (female) x a two-faced, unhinged man lying low (male)
In the thirteenth year of the Dingning era, the Marquis of Zhengxi lost the political struggle, and Empress Jiang was confined to Changqiu Palace.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, Jiang Yuyi jolted awake from a nightmare and saw someone standing tall beneath the dim moonlight.
Pale moonlight illuminated half his face like smooth jade, lending his dark, ink-black eyes a misty look. He gazed down at her in silence, his expression strangely sorrowful.
Yuyi smiled and looked at him with a hint of teasing.
"What? Have you come to depose me?"
Yin Song said nothing. After a long while, he came to her side, knelt on the bed, and held her tightly. He pressed a hand to the back of her head, pinned her spine in place, and buried his face against her neck, breathing her in deeply.
He truly hated her. He hated her with all his heart.
But more than he hated her deception and betrayal, he hated that the bond between them wasn't tangled deeply enough, that they weren't bound tightly enough...
He wanted them to fit together like interlocking joints.
He wanted their flesh and blood to become one.
He wanted their bloodlines to be forever linked.
He wanted them both to turn to ashes, to melt into one, to endure the changing seas and shifting mountains, and never be free of each other.
All his resentment became no more than a barely audible sigh.
"You know that I have never been able to bring myself to hurt you..."
Yuyi was stunned for a long while. In a daze, she thought of the distant twenty-fourth year of the Xicheng era. The man who was now a noble of the imperial house and the supreme ruler had once been scorned and imprisoned. Yet when she looked into those deep, shadowed eyes, she seemed to see the same unquenchable blaze burning beneath his cool exterior as the one inside her.
So she reached out to him.
She had always hated looking back, yet she couldn't help wondering: if, even then, there had not been calculation, compromise, and ambition...
What if their feelings had held a little more truth, or perhaps a little more pretense...
What if...
She closed her eyes, and at last a tear fell.
Guide:
1. Both leads have only ever been with each other. At the start, the male lead has a political marriage with a princess, as I found in my research that most ancient feudal princes married before taking up their posts. In reality, however, there is no emotional entanglement between them!
2. This is a fictional setting. Some official systems are modeled on the Han dynasty, so please don't nitpick the historical details.
3. This is a new author's first long novel, so the political maneuvering may have logical issues. Reader friends are welcome to point them out.
4. The ending is tragic. Please don't read if that's not for you.
5. No matter what, thank you all for reading. Having my work read by you is the greatest happiness for an author!
Theme: Ask the world, what is love?
