My Late Husband Became Emperor, and My Second Marriage Failed

[Coming soon: The Obsessive Crown Prince Mistook Someone Else for His First Love. A sweet romance about marriage first and love later. Please add it to your favorites!]

At sixteen, Lin Wan married Wen Jing and became the mistress of the Wen household. Their marriage was uneventful, and they never consummated it.

That changed when Wen Jing came down with a terminal illness. The doctor said he had only six months to live. Only then did Lin Wan become a devoted wife, carefully looking after her husband, who was wealthy beyond measure and supposedly on the verge of death.

Before long, Wen Jing stopped wearing a cold expression every day. They consummated their marriage, and their relationship became fairly harmonious.

Though Wen Jing was vigorous and full of energy every night, with no sign of dying, the doctor insisted, so Lin Wan believed him.

Six months later, Wen Jing truly became gravely ill and was on the brink of death. As he lay dying, he held Lin Wan’s hand and earnestly told her to take good care of herself. He also asked her not to remarry for five years.

Lin Wan tearfully agreed.

*

Three years later, the neighbor boy she’d grown up with passed the highest imperial examination and returned home to ask for her hand in marriage.

Lin Wan had secretly been in love with him when they were young, so she agreed to marry him and went to the capital to reunite with him.

But at the engagement banquet, the emperor arrived at the top scorer’s residence with a wedding gift.

Lin Wan had heard that the new emperor was breathtakingly handsome and ruled with an iron fist. Hidden among the common people as a child, he had kept his identity secret for many years before reclaiming it and ascending the throne.

Everyone bowed. Lin Wan’s fiancé pulled her down with him.

The emperor told them to rise. His voice sounded incredibly familiar.

Lin Wan froze, then looked up.

In an instant, the gifts she held slipped from her hands and fell all over the floor in front of everyone.

Their eyes met, and Lin Wan knew she wasn’t mistaken.

The new emperor was none other than her supposedly deceased former husband.

*

Alone in a side hall, Lin Wan backed up against a desk, with nowhere left to retreat, and glared furiously at the emperor as he approached step by step.

“Your Majesty! My former husband is dead, and I’m engaged to someone else!”

Unexpectedly, the new emperor stepped closer, gently stroking the little mole at the corner of her eye as he whispered,

“Wanwan, didn’t I tell you to wait for me? Why didn’t you listen?”

With a crash, the brushes, ink, paper, and inkstone scattered across the floor.

*

Later, he traveled a thousand miles, snow covering him from head to toe, only to see her standing in front of an unfamiliar man, smiling and chatting happily.

When she looked his way, her voice was as cold as ice. “A broken mirror can never be made whole again. Please go back, Your Majesty.”

The emperor, who never let his emotions show, had tears in his eyes for the first time.

The following is the blurb for another upcoming novel: The Obsessive Crown Prince Mistook Someone Else for His First Love

On the day Shen Qichi was to marry her childhood sweetheart, the usually aloof and self-possessed Crown Prince Pei Che stormed into the wedding hall and forcibly took her back to the Eastern Palace.

The wedding candles flickered, their shifting red light reflected in Pei Che’s eyes, which were full of tenderness.

“Zhengzheng, how could you leave me and marry someone else?”

First of all, he was the one who was someone else. They’d never met before.

And second, how did he know her childhood nickname?

In the wedding chamber, the air was filled with lingering fragrance and the sound of panting. Her chest rose, and dewdrops glistened on her jade-white skin, adding to the sensual atmosphere.

After they spent their wedding night together, Shen Qichi finally learned the whole story from someone else.

It turned out that the first love Pei Che had longed for was her elder sister from the same father, Shen Qingyan.

What was done could not be undone. Everyone knew she had entered the Eastern Palace in her wedding dress. Fortunately, Pei Che was reasonable enough to grant her the title of Crown Princess, though he never set foot in her bedroom again.

That suited her just fine. Even if she went out at night dressed in black, no one would suspect her.

An old case was reopened, and the court was thrown into turmoil as suspicion and fear spread.

When she broke into the imperial palace at night to protect crucial evidence that could overturn the case, she was badly wounded and surrounded by heavily armed soldiers.

The dense crowd parted at once, and Pei Che, clad in white and bathed in the bright moonlight, walked toward her.

He sighed softly. “Zhengzheng, how did you end up hurting yourself like this?”

*

When Pei Che was young, he was traveling south with his father, the emperor, when he was set upon and stranded in a foreign land. Just as he was at his most wretched, a little girl took him home and treated him to good food and drink. Her father even helped him return to the capital.

A few years later, a shocking case occurred in the south. The main culprit and his entire family hanged themselves at home, and Pei Che thought he would never see the little girl from that year again.

But one year at a palace banquet, he saw her in a crabapple grove dampened by light rain, a flower tucked into her hair as she smiled faintly at him from afar.

Pei Che felt as though he’d fallen into an old dream, unable to pull himself free.

Theme: It’s better to treasure the person before you