The Dim Lonely Lamp

He said, "The palace walls stand high between us, and the nights are long. Alone beneath a lonely lamp, have you ever thought of me?"

She said, "On the battlefield, swords clash, and life and death are decided in an instant. When you wheeled your horse around and reined it in, did you feel even a little regret?"

One fleeting glance, dazzling as a startled swan, and half a lifetime was lost.

At first, it was nothing more than the most ordinary love at first sight: a scholar in a splendid blue robe, and a bright, carefree young woman.

Should they blame the thread of fate for being too frail to bear their longing, or their bond for being too shallow to survive the trials ahead?

In the fourteenth year of Tianbao, a thunderclap from Yuyang shattered half the realm. It wasn't only Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei who were left with a lifelong regret. One stroke of the blade broke the land apart, and their fates were divided from that moment on.

With the enemy at the gates, Chang'an was in danger. She gazed out from the city tower, but not at her own husband.

A young man in armor, dressed for battle. No one knew he had once been a scholar in blue. He had meant to wield his writing brush to shape the world, but instead was made to ride into battle with a spear.

"The realm is in turmoil, sovereign and subject have traded places, and brothers slaughter one another," she said. "The world has been turned upside down!"

Every word was cool and clear, each one striking like a deadly blade. She was trying to kill just one man: him.

"Now I ask you..." Her face was close enough to touch. Her eyes, black and white so clear; her crescent-shaped brows, which he had never had the good fortune to paint; the scent of rouge on her red lips, all within his breath.

Zheng Yu's heart was in turmoil. In that instant, his killing intent melted into scalding blood, drowning him in the space between her breaths.

"Zheng Yu, can we... be together... now?"

One lifetime is too short. This life is too hard.

[Have you ever wondered if the person you love might not be the same person at all after being reborn?]

[She said, "In every life to come," and I promised her.]

My historical romance, Song of Shao, is currently being serialized in my author column. Thank you for stopping by!

According to the Annals of Dong'an, Biography of Emperor Zhongzong, Princess Shaoyang married only twice in her life.

In the nineteenth year of Zheng Tong, she married into the kingdom of Silan and became the second queen to King Cheriton Han Johnston of Silan. In the twenty-seventh year of Zheng Tong, the king of Silan died, and the princess returned to the capital. The following year, she remarried Liang Song, an academician of the Hongwen Academy. In the twenty-ninth year of Zheng Tong, Liang died during the Prince of Tong's rebellion, and the princess lived as a widow thereafter.

These few short lines of ink give no more than the faintest glimpse of the upheavals Princess Shaoyang faced in her life.

Nor are her two marriages enough to explain the strange rumors that she was cursed to bring her husbands to an early death, rumors that lasted a hundred years.

In stories and popular accounts, Princess Wei Yan of Shaoyang is portrayed in many different ways. Some call her a ruinous seductress or a star of ill fortune; others praise her as a heroine among women, a fearless champion.

But whatever the people say, they always come back to two things.

First, her ill-fated destiny, which left her with few family ties.

Second... the passionate affair between the princess and Situ Changjia, the heroic Marquis of Yingwu, who died in his prime.

Alas.

She was a woman burdened with misfortune, who ought to have known neither love nor affection.

He was a loyal, pure-hearted minister, unable to live as he pleased.

If only... they had not met so soon.

Tell me, how must a promise made in youth be shattered before it can no longer be called a betrayal?

Let others judge their merits and failings.

In this heart and this life, I seek only a place to belong.

Theme: Beneath a lonely lamp, I long for you until my heart breaks. I roll up the curtains and gaze at the moon, sighing in vain