Chapter 1

On the day my eldest sister broke off her engagement, I was catching butterflies in the courtyard. When I heard she'd called off that wretched match with the marquis's heir, I dusted the dirt from my hands and turned to my maid.

“Go and smash the warm jade General Xiao sent me. We're breaking off our engagement too.”

My stepmother called me an ungrateful fool. Xiao Lie was a hero with countless victories to his name, she said.

I didn't even look up. “I don't care. My sister raised me.”

“If she isn't marrying, neither am I. Since when does a concubine's daughter marry before her elder sister, born to the principal wife?”

That very night, Xiao Lie rode more than a hundred li back to the capital. Without even changing out of his uniform, he scaled the wall and came straight into my bedchamber.

His eyes were bloodshot. Both hands gripped my waist, and his voice was hoarse.

“Youwei, that bastard is blind. He doesn't deserve your sister. I've already given him a good beating.”

“I've been nothing but true to you. How can you simply decide you don't want me?”

His hard muscles pressed against me painfully. I pushed at his chest.

“You're hurting me.”

He froze, then hurriedly loosened his grip. But he kept his arms around me, refusing to move so much as a step away.

Those eyes, so accustomed to decisive slaughter on the battlefield, were now full of hurt and anxiety.

“I had my guards intercept the returned betrothal papers.”

He lowered his voice to coax me.

“Your sister broke off her engagement because Xie Jinghuai, the Marquis of Ping's heir, is a bastard.”

“He brought a cousin back from Yangzhou and insisted on making her a co-wife of equal rank before he was even married. Of course Su Changning doesn't want him.”

“But I haven't got a cousin. I don't even have a bedchamber maid. Su Youwei, you're being unreasonable.”

I looked up into eyes brimming with love.

Xiao Lie had been overbearing since childhood. He'd gone to war at fourteen and become a general at eighteen. Countless noble young ladies in the capital longed for so much as a second glance from him.

Yet after meeting me, he'd stuck to me like a plaster that wouldn't come off—a nondescript concubine's daughter in a minister's household.

“As though being unreasonable were anything new for me.”

I had perfectly good reasons.

“The winter I was six, my stepmother made me kneel in the snow. My sister drove those old servants off with a whip and carried me into the warm pavilion. She taught me to read. She made sure I had food.”

“Now she's been wronged and made the laughingstock of the capital. If I happily married into your household as its mistress and left her alone in this man-eating place, at the mercy of everyone here, what would that make me?”

That left him speechless. He paced two angry circles, then tugged at his hair in frustration.

“Who would dare mistreat her? Who would dare laugh at her?”

He ground his teeth.

“I've already broken one of Xie Jinghuai's legs. If anyone in your family dares run their mouth, I'll come and tear down the front of your father's residence.”

“There, Youwei. Will that do?”

I shook my head, resolute.

“Where she goes, I go.”

“If she never marries, I'll stay with her for the rest of my life.”

His face darkened completely.

He stared at me, his chest heaving. After a long silence, he finally forced out,

“Su Youwei, you ungrateful little wretch.”

Then he strode to the window, planted a hand on the sill, and vaulted out.

The night wind caught his cloak. A moment later, he had vanished into the dark.

Beside me, Chuntao trembled.

“My lady, is General Xiao so angry he doesn't want you anymore?”

I went to the table, poured a cup of warm water, and took a sip.

“Never mind him. Just wait. Tomorrow morning he'll be back over the wall with buns from Liu Ji on the east side of the city. Leave the window ajar.”

Dubiously, Chuntao went to check it.

I looked at the warm jade on the table, still unbroken, and brushed my fingers over it.

Xiao Lie was a good man.

But the one person in this world I could never abandon was my eldest sister—the one person I could always lean on.

Without her, Su Youwei would have frozen to death that winter night.

The next morning, the commotion in the front hall began before the buns arrived.

Xie Jinghuai had been carried to our door on a stretcher.

His engagement to my sister had been arranged years ago by the old Marquis of Ping.

The old marquis had barely passed away before his heir brought a supposed cousin named Chuchu back from Yangzhou and openly installed her in his home.

When I reached the hall, my stepmother was seated in the place of honor, wiping away tears as though her heart were breaking.

My eldest sister, Su Changning, stood straight-backed in a restrained blue-green gown, looking coldly at Xie Jinghuai on the floor.

“Changning, all I want is to give Chuchu a proper place.”

With one leg out of action, he was still trying to play the devoted lover.

“She has no one to rely on. I'm all she has. You're the Su family's eldest legitimate daughter, the future mistress of a marquis's household. How can you be so petty and jealous that you won't tolerate another woman?”

“You broke off our engagement in a fit of temper and dragged both families' reputations into it. Now even your concubine-born younger sister is joining the uproar and rejecting General Xiao. Are you trying to ruin your family?”

The cousin from Yangzhou knelt beside him, her tear-streaked face a picture of delicate beauty.

“Lady Su, it's all my fault. Please don't blame him.”

“I don't ask for a title. I only want to remain by his side and serve him. I'd be content even as a bedchamber maid. Please don't let me come between you.”

My stepmother immediately chimed in.

“Exactly, Changning. It's perfectly normal for a man to have wives and concubines. How will you ever hold your head up if people hear how jealous you are?”

“Take back the letter and apologize to him.”

Before my sister could speak, I picked up a cup of cold tea and flung the whole lot—leaves and all—into Xie Jinghuai's face.

The hall fell silent.

With tea leaves plastered to his head, he stared at me in disbelief.

“Su Youwei, have you gone mad? You dare throw tea at me?”

I slammed the cup onto the table.

“At a sanctimonious hypocrite like you? Gladly.”

I walked to my sister's side and looked down at him.

“You keep saying she has no one to rely on. There are plenty of helpless people in the world. Is your household opening a charity?”

“By all means, open one. Spend your own money and effort. You want my sister to marry you, use her dowry to prop up your grand façade and keep that girl from Yangzhou, and still expect her to worship you like a bodhisattva?”

“Xie Jinghuai, is your hide as thick as the city walls?”

Chuchu shrank into his arms.

“How can you insult people like that?”

“What if I do?”

I gave a cold laugh and continued, each word clear.

“You keep claiming you'd be content as a bedchamber maid. Who came to our door yesterday, waving the document that would make her an equal wife? You want all the benefits without admitting what you are. A whore demanding a monument to her chastity.”

“My sister is a phoenix in the highest heavens. Why should she sully herself with a pair of mud eels like you?”

“Su Youwei!”

My stepmother struck the table.

“An unmarried concubine's daughter, speaking such filth! Where is your propriety?”

“If propriety matters so much to you, Mother, why don't you marry him in my sister's place? Then all three of you paragons of devotion can be together.”

My retort sent her reeling back in her chair.

Xie Jinghuai's face turned livid. He struggled to get up and strike me.

“Su Changning, are you going to let your sister behave like this?”

My sister pulled me behind her. Her gaze was cold as a blade.

“Every word she said is exactly what I wanted to say.”

She spoke calmly, but her words rang hard and clear.

“Xie Jinghuai, the letter ending our engagement was delivered to your household yesterday. From now on, you may marry whom you please, and so may I. We have nothing more to do with each other.”

“If you dare come here to pester us again, or lay so much as a finger on Youwei, I swear I will make sure your household never knows a moment's peace.”

Beside himself with rage, he pointed at her.

“Fine, Su Changning! Don't regret this!”

“You think anyone in this capital will dare marry you after you reject me? You're a shrew no one will want!”

His words had barely fallen when a low, commanding male voice sounded from the doorway.

“I, on the contrary, find Lady Su's integrity and strength of character exceedingly rare.”

We all turned.

A man in plain black robes stepped over the threshold.

He was tall and strikingly handsome, with the imposing air of someone long accustomed to power.

The sight of him drained all color from Xie Jinghuai's face.

“Uncle?”

It was Xie Heng, the Grand Secretary—and the man who truly held power in the Marquis of Ping's household.

Without sparing his nephew on the floor so much as a glance, he went straight to my sister and inclined his head gently.

“I'm sorry you were subjected to this, Lady Su. My household failed to discipline its own and produced such a disgrace. The fault is mine.”

She bowed slightly.

“You are too kind, Your Excellency.”

He turned, his gaze sweeping over Xie Jinghuai.

“Guards. Our young lord has suddenly taken gravely ill. His leg is shattered. Carry him home and confine him for six months.”

“As for that woman from Yangzhou, sell her out of the capital. She is never to set foot here again.”

Xie Jinghuai struggled desperately and begged, but Xie Heng's men moved swiftly. They gagged them both and dragged them away.

With those two pieces of rubbish removed, the hall was peaceful again.

Xie Heng looked at my sister. Something deep flickered in his eyes, though his voice remained composed and restrained.

“I will explain the broken engagement to His Majesty myself. I will not allow my household to tarnish your good name.”

My sister lowered her eyes and thanked him.

Peering out from behind her, I couldn't help feeling there was something odd about the way this young Grand Secretary looked at her.

It was exactly how Xiao Lie looked at the wolf cub he'd seized and brought home from the Western Regions: restrained, yet full of a possessive determination to have it.

Less than two days later, my sister made a decision that shocked everyone.

With the private funds her maternal grandmother had left her, she bought a three-courtyard residence on the east side of the city and moved us straight out of Father's house.

Father raged in the ancestral hall, calling us unfilial daughters. Our stepmother spread the story that my sister had gone mad after being jilted.

We couldn't have cared less.

On our first evening in the new house, we set a little table in the courtyard and drank osmanthus wine as we talked.

The night breeze was a little chilly. My sister stroked my hair, her eyes gentle.

“Youwei, you even gave up Xiao Lie for me. If you regret it one day, how could I ever make it up to you?”

I bit into a cake and rested my head on her shoulder.

“I won't regret it!”

“You can't trust a word men say. Today they love you; tomorrow they've brought home a cousin from Yangzhou. Only you would never lie to me.”

When our stepmother first entered the household, she'd wanted to establish her authority. She'd seized on some excuse to make me kneel out in the bitter winter cold.

My sister had been only ten. Yet she'd stood in the snow with a little whip and sent those old women scattering.

Then she'd held my frozen body against her and kept me warm all night.

From that day on, I'd known that Su Changning was the only family Su Youwei had in the world.

I'd barely finished speaking when an emphatic snort came from the courtyard wall.

Xiao Lie sat on top of it with two food boxes in his hands, his face black as a pot.

“Su Youwei, who are you calling a liar?”

He swung down, strode to the stone table, and planted the boxes on it.

“My word is my bond. When have I ever lied to you?”

I ducked behind my sister.

She raised a brow and regarded him with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

“Scaling the wall of a house occupied by two helpless women in the middle of the night—is that part of your honorable code, General?”

Overbearing as he was elsewhere, Xiao Lie had to rein himself in around my sister.

He knew perfectly well that if he wanted to marry me, he had to get past her first.

He cleared his throat, made his voice as mild as he could, and bowed with clasped hands.

“Elder Sister, I've brought a late supper.”

“Roast chicken from Li Ji on West Street. Youwei's favorite.”

My sister said nothing. She merely looked at me.

Xiao Lie immediately sidled up to me, looking pitiful as a big dog begging for food, and lowered his voice.

“I've been tied up at the Ministry of War these past two days. The moment I got home, I heard you'd moved out.”

“You moved without even telling me. If my guards didn't have eyes and ears everywhere, I wouldn't have known where to find you.”

The more he spoke, the more aggrieved he became. His tall frame bent toward me as he tugged at my sleeve.

“I burned those returned betrothal papers. Don't give me up. Please?”

The faint shadows beneath his eyes softened my heart. I was about to speak when a measured knock came at the front gate.

Chuntao ran to answer it and soon returned with a visitor.

Dressed entirely in white, he looked exquisitely elegant in the moonlight. Yet somehow there was also something… secretly flirtatious about him.

What was Xie Heng doing here instead of sleeping?

At the sight of him, Xiao Lie's expression became very peculiar. He straightened at once.

“Shouldn't you be at the Grand Secretariat at this hour? What brings you here?”

Xie Heng's gaze passed lightly over him and settled on my sister. His lips curved almost imperceptibly.

“I heard you'd moved, Lady Su. I've come to offer my congratulations.”

The servant behind him presented an exquisite brocade box.

“A modest gift. I hope you will accept it.”

My sister rose, perfectly composed.

“You are too kind, Your Excellency. I couldn't possibly.”

These two men, powerful enough to shake the court—one arriving over the wall, the other knocking openly at midnight—had somehow filled our little courtyard.

They stood on either side like a pair of door gods.

Xiao Lie glared at Xie Heng.

Xie Heng watched my sister.

My sister lowered her head to drink her tea.

And I sat between them, inexplicably finding this more entertaining than throwing tea into Xie Jinghuai's face this morning.

“I imagine your late-night visit is about more than a housewarming gift, Your Excellency?”

My sister set down her cup and looked at him calmly.

Xie Heng smiled. In the moonlight, he looked utterly gentle and harmless.

For some reason, I was certain he had eighteen hundred devious schemes tucked away inside him.

“You are perceptive indeed, Lady Su.”

Without further preamble, he took a gilt invitation from his sleeve and offered it with both hands.