Dust-Covered

A princess sent as a substitute bride x a steppe heir

The princess is the top. She is a real princess, with a cross-dressing plotline: a beautiful girl as a child, a handsome man as an adult. Sister-and-brother romance.

Happy ending, but very angsty.

On the road to my wedding, I always kept a pair of gold dragon-and-phoenix scissors beneath my pillow.

They said a married couple should share a pillow and grow old together, but my mother told me that a princess must die rather than suffer humiliation.

On our wedding night, he took my scissors and gave me a little Hu knife.

Later, I traveled with that boy across 3,800 li of grassland. We dodged open attacks and hidden arrows, crossed icy mountains and snowy plains, and journeyed as far as the southern edge of the Green Tomb, where the wild geese vanished from sight. We lit an ointment lamp and gazed upon the iron armor.

On the eve of the declaration of war, I hid inside a cart transporting fodder. I watched him snap the whistle arrow and draw away the night patrol.

I thought he was going to put me in a prisoner cart.

But he said, "Pianpian, go home."

"You are the pearl of Great Zhou, and my pearl too. You shouldn't be left here to gather dust."

Theme: A pearl gathering dust.