Radiant Princess x aloof, vicious hound
Shen Yunxi was the most beloved princess of the Great Yu Dynasty. From the moment she was born, she had been the center of attention and could easily get anything she wanted. The one exception was Zhou Yinghuai, heir to the Duke of Cheng. She pursued him for two years, but he never once gave her so much as a second glance.
She was disheartened and was just about to give up on him when, during the winter hunt, she chased a deer into the woods and got lost. The person who came to find her happened to be Zhou Yinghuai.
They were trapped deep in the mountains. He carried her through the snowstorm from afternoon until the early hours of the morning, until he was nearly out of strength.
Not wanting to burden him, Shen Yunxi joked weakly, "Just leave me here. If an unmarried man and woman spend the night alone together, won't you have to marry me when we get back down the mountain tomorrow?"
He scolded her coolly, "Your Highness, please mind your conduct."
But his arms tightened around her, holding her even more securely.
*
In the tenth year of their marriage, a new emperor ascended the throne. The empress's relatives seized power, enemies threatened the borders, and the court was beset by troubles at home and abroad.
The founding emperor had laid down a rule that consorts to princesses could not take part in government. Zhou Yinghuai risked his life to submit a memorial arguing against it. After the empress's relatives provoked him, the new emperor flew into a rage and had Zhou Yinghuai thrown into prison on charges of treason.
Shen Yunxi went without food or water and knelt outside the emperor's palace for five days. By the time enemy forces breached the capital, she could no longer endure the humiliation and jumped from the city wall. She died without ever seeing Zhou Yinghuai again.
When she opened her eyes again, Shen Yunxi had been reborn on the day she first met him.
Remembering how he had once confided to a close friend while drunk, mocking himself for drawing a salary as a princess's consort while being unable to serve his country, she watched him from afar for a long time. In the end, she did not approach him.
Before long, rumors spread through the capital that the son of the empress's relatives and the princess were in love, and that he might become her future consort.
At a palace banquet, Shen Yunxi pretended to be drunk and lured him to the lotus pond. Just as she was about to kill him,
Zhou Yinghuai, who should have been away on campaign, suddenly appeared. His face dark with anger, he grabbed the man from in front of her and plunged him into the pond.
Shen Yunxi stared in shock as the man approached her step by step. The aura around him was as familiar as ever, yet the terrifying, murderous look in his eyes was one she had never seen before.
"Your Highness, do you intend to marry him?"
*
Reborn, Shen Yunxi didn't want Zhou Yinghuai to give up his ambitions for her again.
But once she stopped pursuing him, he chose to leave the court, don armor, secure the borders, and put down the foreign tribes.
Because she was a princess, she was a treasured daughter of the royal house in times of peace, and a target for all in times of chaos.
Zhou Yinghuai had once thought that it would be enough to protect her and give her a lifetime of peace, becoming her personal blade and killing every traitor in the land.
But whenever snow fell at the border, the image that always appeared before his eyes was the sight of her looking back with a smile beneath her umbrella on the day they first met in his previous life.
In that moment, he had been the first to fall in love.
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Theme: Country and family
