Chapter Text
The night settled softly over Xigu Alley, as if the heavens have exhaled a breath of quiet frost following the festive flurry and merrymaking on Lunar New Year’s Eve.
Mirroring Xie Zheng’s fondest memories of Lin An town, the seasons brought the same sights back for the new year.
Snow danced in patient silence from the skies, gathering upon curved rooftops, stone pathways, wooden fences and bales of firewood, until the town is dressed in luminous white.
Red festive lanterns glow beneath the eaves, their warm glow trembling against the cold. In the shared courtyard with the Zhaos, the lanterns’ reflection shimmered faintly on frozen icy patches, like cinnabar on polished jade, with a dusting of frost.
From distant courtyards still came the muted sounds of celebration—conversations, raucous laughter, the clink of porcelain wine vats and the unmistakable joy in voices carried thinly on the icy winds.
It sounded like Jin Yuan Bao and the rest of the Northwest Pig Butcher Squad, who were most likely drinking for a second round after leaving their place, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Yan Zheng!”
The buoyant warmth in that voice sliced through the cold like a beam of sunshine, gently enveloping him in its glow.
“Chang Yu.” He acknowledged, eyes softening when he turned back to meet her gaze.
“Both fathers have had too much to drink, and I’ve just asked Mother to go to bed together with Chang Ning,” She smiled exasperatedly at the earlier sight of Grand Tutor Tao and Mr Zhao toasting and drinking themselves into oblivion over reunion dinner.
Gesturing at the slabs of uncut waxed pork belly on plates by the hotpot. “Come help with hanging up the leftover meat in the kitchen. If you’re not drunk, that is.”
“Far from it.” The Prince Regent nodded and walked over to where his wife was, gathering the slabs of waxed meats onto a common plate. “Let me help you.”
Amid the rowdy enthusiasm of the two fatherly figures in his life, Xie Zheng had taken a good amount of rice wine, but it would take a lot more than that to get him intoxicated.
In companionable silence, the young couple worked just like any other ordinary husband and wife would after hosting guests at their home.
Around them, the delicious smells of their reunion dinner feast lingered, and Lunar New Year couplets he had written on red paper adorned the walls of their humble Lin An home.
Compared with the mansions— first his parents’ and subsequently, his uncle’s— and luxury he had grown up in, their home in Lin An was so much simpler. Everything in the house was within sight, and there wasn’t that much to begin with in terms of belongings, valuables and collectibles, but Lin An was…home.
Even now, with his identity in the open, it had been a deliberate choice between them as husband and wife to maintain the dichotomy between the opulence that came with their statuses in the capital, and the much simpler, self-sufficient lifestyle in Lin An.
They grew basic crops, maintained the Fan family butchery and braised meat business with minimal assistance from hired help, did their own chores and enjoyed the simplicity that the capital could not give.
A typical day would see Madam Zhao, or mother-in-law as Xie Zheng now addresses her, nagging away good-naturedly at Mr Zhao or tasking him with some carpentry chores. Chang Ning would either be lighting up the room with her infectious joy, or fussing over Hai Dong Qing while feeding it scraps of fresh pork.
His father-in-law, Mr Zhao, would be his opponent in chess and ally in standing up against the three women in the household over the occasional childish banter.
Earlier on, prior to starting reunion dinner, Chang Ning was showing Grand Tutor Tao the New Year couplets which he had written.
“Brother-in-law has written them so nicely! See? He wrote for many other neighbors as well!”
“Really? Hardly impressive.” His teacher had raised an eyebrow, nitpicking at the form of the calligraphy just like he used to when Xie Zheng was a young boy.
“Look at the feeble strokes of this character. This old one here can do much better than this stubborn disciple of mine. Those neighbors do not know what they’re missing out on.”
Everyone had burst out laughing at the good-natured jabs aimed at Xie Zheng by the Grand Tutor.
Annoying? Very much so.
Heartwarming? Very much so, as well.
This is indeed, how the New Year should always be spent, Xie Zheng mused, as he hooked the waxed meat back onto the drying pole in the kitchen with practised ease. There was a deep sense of tranquility in doing all these seemingly mundane, yet incredibly fulfilling chores with the people he had grown to treasure.
“The waxed meat this year is exceptionally delicious.” The Marquis said appreciatively, smiling dotingly when his favorite butcher girl met his eyes with a grin.
“That’s partly because you listened to me and went easy on the salt.” Chang Yu fondly recalled one of their shared experiences during the time he spent in her house as Yan Zheng.
“Though now it feels silly that I told the noble Marquis of Wu’an to scrimp on salt because it is expensive.” She chuckled, carefully pouring the remaining spicy broth from the rapidly cooling hotpot into a wooden bucket with the other food waste.
“It wasn’t silly in the least. It was one of those moments that got me thinking,” Xie Zheng wiped grease off his hands with a rag on the countertop. “Ah, so this is how the majority of the Dayin folks live.”
He smiled wistfully and continued, “This is what it feels like, when you toil for what you put on your table at the end of the day. Managing the finances, stretching the resources for the household. It showed me, how life can be so much more than endless court politics, bloodshed and battles.”
The earlier mirth in Chang Yu’s sparkling doe eyes retreated to give way to a mixture of admiration and gratitude.
“But it was through your valiant conquests and relentless bravery in facing battles and the evildoers at court, that the rest of us common folk can lead our lives in peace. For that, I am eternally grateful.”
Chang Yu brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face, before setting the food waste aside for disposal.
“It’s so ironic. I detest war, but I wouldn’t have become General Huaihua if not for the battlefield. I would never have crossed paths with Grand Tutor Tao, much less be taken in as his adoptive daughter.” Picking up a scoop full of well water from a large vat by the kitchen doorway, she washed her hands quickly in the snow, wincing at the biting cold.
“Jin Yuan Bao would certainly still be our resident thug, terrorizing innocent villagers. Man Cang, with his voracious appetite, would probably continue a life of petty crime to secure his next meal, and Man Di, he would—“
Chang Yu’s words trailed before they withered in the frosty cold of the winter winds, as they carried the ache of memories which she thought time could bury. A light film of tears, which she had thought to have already run dry, traitorously clouded her eyes.
To her pain, Xie Zheng did not immediately react. Having lost countless family members, comrades and friends to the cruelty of the battlefield, the former Marquis only knew too well what his wife was feeling.
The clinking of crockery in his hands were the only sounds in the space between them, until she broke the silence.
“It’s so much quieter this year, isn’t it?” Her voice was unwavering like the general she is, yet her words were colored with melancholy. “Even the fireworks are no longer.”
Chang Yu didn’t have to spell it out— Xie Zheng knew for certain, she was thinking of the footsteps that had once faded down this very road outside their house, and never returned.
For those who have lived through loss, grief always hit more profoundly on festive occasions like Lunar New Year’s Eve, when family reunions take place across the country.
The Lin An massacre had taken so much out of Chang Yu, and he would be lying if he said he hadn’t spent nights thinking of the alternative fates of the townsfolk, should he had possessed greater wisdom as the Marquis of Wu’an in preempting the vicious attack on Lin An.
“It is quieter indeed,” The Prince Regent gently agreed, closing the distance between them with a dry rag in his hands.
Sitting himself down by his wife’s side on the stone step at the doorway, he tenderly reached for her hands, meticulously drying every digit with the rag. “But plum blossoms, stubborn and delicate, bloom amid the frost.”
For a second, Chang Yu looked at Xie Zheng in questioning silence, not knowing how she’d have once again stolen his breath in that instant with how vulnerable, resilient and beautiful she looked with moonshine on her face, and snowflakes on her lashes.
Then the underlying message, adorned by Xie Zheng’s lyrical prowess and linguistic mastery, dawned upon her.
“Sometimes, in the coldest hour,” The Marquis of Wu’an brought her hand to his lips, softly pressing a reassuring kiss to dispel the cold in her skin. “Endurance carries life faithfully through inky darkness. Just like the plum blossom that blooms in bone-chilling cold,”
“Small, luminous,” He quietly said, eyes locked with hers as he took in the moonlit picture of beauty in front of him.
A warm calloused hand cupped her face, thumb rubbing warmth into a winter-kissed cheek. In that instant, Chang Yu couldn’t help the single tear drop that slowly escaped the confines of her eyes.
“Yet quietly defiant.”
She looked at him in stunned silence, touched beyond words, as though he had reached into the bitter winter she had been living through and quietly shown her that spring could still return.
Xie Zheng’s words reached her with a quietness that somehow struck deeper than any other voice ever could. Truth be told, the general had carried her hurt so long, it had seeped into her very being to feel like a parasitic part of her.
Surely, she often wore her cheery disposition like an armour, but there was something hidden beneath every breath, every smile, every pause.
Yet as her husband spoke, each gentle sentence seemed to find the places she had kept guarded most fiercely. It was not that the agony vanished all at once, but under the reassuring warmth of his voice it chipped away, loosened and softened.
Bare branches of the trees dotting the pathways of Xigu Alley stretched toward the sky, etched in ink against the moonlight. For the first time in a long while, Chang Yu felt something inside her begin to thaw.
Above the lovers, the moon hangs clear and watchful, casting silvery glow on the dancing snow, across tiled roofs and silent streets.
“It’s New Year,” Xie Zheng said matter-of-factly, tenderly brushing at the sparkling trail of tears on Chang Yu’s face with the pad of his thumb. “So don’t cry, because crying will bring you bad luck for the rest of the year.”
She couldn’t hold back a chuckle at that— whoever would have known the fearsome Prince Regent, Marquis of Wu’an, would one day be comforting her with the superstition he once scorned?
“Since when has Dayin’s Prince Regent become so superstitious?”
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly at her, but his lips wore an endearing smile.
“Since you.”
“Well,” Chang Yu’s eyes, still slightly red-tinged and watery, lit up with a mischievous twinkle. “The new magistrate of Qingping County has thoughtfully gifted me a new box of meat carving knives when he came by to introduce himself and pay his respects. I believe we’d need to consecrate those blades with blood—“
“I’ll pass on that, thank you.” Xie Zhang was quick to reply, hoping his wife didn’t catch his involuntary shudder.
That got the general laughing out loud, before she teased good-naturedly, “If the skin on your arms are not enough, we can use your butt.”
Before the day she’d picked him up from the snow, all bloody and battered, the Prince Regent would have been mortified at hearing a young lady speak in such language.
Now, all he could think of was how precious her innocence and unpretentiousness was. Chang Yu was exactly the breath of fresh air he painfully needed and craved in life, but unfortunately had lacked the privilege of knowing amid his noble upbringing.
In that moment, as her laughter faded, Xie Zheng leaned in to close the distance between their faces.
“This is how I hope you will always be,” He confessed, sincerity underlying every word. “Carefree, contented and happy.”
She gently sighed, her eyes reminding him a little wounded kitten. “I’ll try.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“So confident?”
“Of course.”
Their breath came in faint clouds, mingling in the chill as Chang Yu leaned into his reassuring embrace, allowing herself to momentarily forget the sorrow of the Lin An massacre.
When he dipped his head to kiss her, it was a chaste peck at first, almost uncertain, as though he feared breaking the familial peace that gathered around them.
Her lips were cold from the winter air, but warmth unfolded slowly between them.
“Yan Zheng…you’ll always be here, won’t you?” Her voice was a fragile whisper.
Chang Yu surprised herself with how those words came tumbling past her lips— she didn’t mean to sound so helpless and needy, but life had put her through, far too many times, the excruciating pain of loss.
“Always.” He whispered in reply against her lips, knowing how she never feared death when it came to herself, and yet was terrified of losing him.
This is the woman who had drugged him to knock him out before courageously taking his place on the battlefield and also, the very same one who would rather an honorable death by throwing herself off a cliff, over allowing Sui Yuan Qing, the heir of Prince Changxin, to violate her.
Heart swelling with affection and admiration, Xie Zheng gently covered her lips with his, savoring their connection as he recalled his first Lunar New Year’s Eve reunion dinner in Xigu Alley, when an inebriated Chang Yu had passed out before he could kiss her.
Back then, he had tried for a second time to claim those inviting lips in a quiet moment, only to be interrupted by a sleepy Chang Ning walking in on them.
Tonight, the former Marquis of Wu’an was determined to let nothing come in his way.
The kiss was tinged with rice wine and the festive flavors of Lunar New Year, a joyous and familiar combination that he never had the privilege of knowing before Chang Yu came into his life.
As Xie Zheng deepened their kiss, gently nudging Chang Yu’s lips apart with his, he was once again reminded of how beauty lingers not in fame and grandeur, but in the quiet poetry of what endures.
So much had happened, but what truly mattered was that they were both still here.
Still together, still navigating this journey called life.
Time felt suspended as the two hearts found each other in soft rhythm, as though the world around them had paused between breaths, held in the fragile stillness of winter.
His fingers weaved into her hair, holding her close with a reverence that made her chest ache with want. When she parted her lips in a soft gasp, Xie Zheng wasted no time in running his tongue over hers, savoring her like an intoxicating wine.
Whatever caution and reservation there had been, was all thrown to the wintry wind.
When they finally broke apart, chests heaving, neither of them moved away. Still holding Chang Yu close, Xie Zheng’s forehead rested against hers, their breaths mingling in pale clouds between them.
In the austere winter landscape, with the chilly wind swirling softly around them, the Prince Regent and General Huaihua understood that the ghosts of their past do not fade— they could only lean on each other, hold on tight, and learn how to keep warm.
When her eyes finally fluttered open, what Chang Yu saw in her husband’s eyes sent her pulse racing once again.
Unguarded, the depth of Xie Zheng’s eyes held hunger tempered by affection, slow and controlled enough for her to feel every breath he stole, yet ardent enough to ignite her senses and send tingles through her fingertips.
Tenderly, lips still trembling from cold and passion, Chang Yu lifted a hand and brushed away a lock of hair the wind had loosened from Xie Zheng’s top knot, giving him a small smile which spoke volumes of the affection she held for him.
“Chang Yu…”
By now, words seemed unnecessary. Lips parted, still drawing shaky breaths of frosty air, she nodded almost eagerly, knowing the direction they were headed on this night.
Eyes stormy, a lazy smile spread across the Marquis’ breathtakingly handsome features; by now, Chang Yu could no longer tell if the redness coloring his chiseled cheekbones was from the glow of the New Year lanterns hanging above, or the passionate kiss they had just shared, or from desire.
“…I haven’t even told you what I was planning to do to you,” He breathed sensually, the warmth that accompanied his words fanning over her lips. “And you nod so readily?”
Eyes widening, Chang Yu visibly gulped, realizing that she could have let her guard down a little bit too much around this devastatingly handsome man. He could either charm his way to her heart like a sweet wounded puppy, or lay claim to her body and soul like an untamed wolf.
If you can’t feed the wolf, you can’t get the cub.
The words echoed in her mind, and she squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head to dispel those intrusive thoughts.
The last time she had let go of all inhibitions to let Xie Zheng take charge, they had spent seven passionate nights in their honeymoon chambers, wrecking their marital bed in the process. At some points during that seven days, she had either passed out, or had been utterly convinced that she was going to die of carnal pleasures, as ludicrous as it sounds.
“…what are you planning to do?”
“…do you remember the…” His eyebrows were raised ever so slightly, eyes pinning hers to observe her reaction. “…manual that Mother passed to you on our first wedding night?”
No way.
Well, he had the basic decency to look a little embarrassed, but…still.
No way.
“Xie Zheng,” She addressed him by his real name, which is the Prince Regent’s sign for when his wife truly means business. “It’s Lunar New Year tomorrow.”
An elegantly arched eyebrow was her cue to continue.
Cheeks flaming, Chang Yu lowered her voice into a piteous, urgent whisper. “I need to walk.”
“Why would there be anything wrong with your leg—“ Xie Zheng started matter-of-factly.
“No.” She interrupted with pleading eyes, grabbing his hand with hers and squeezing his fingers for emphasis. “I have to walk. As in normally, that is.”
“Oh.” The initially quizzical look on the Marquis’ face was replaced by a knowing, and…an incredibly smug expression. “Ohhh.”
“Have you forgotten? We are going to set off for the capital on the third day of Lunar New Year to pay our respects to the Emperor and Empress Dowager—“
“So it’s a no for tonight, I guess...” Xie Zheng pressed his lips together in a thin line, feigning dejection by staring at the snow by his wife’s feet.
“No, I mean—“
“Then say it. Say you want me too.” His eyes softened adorably, as his lips fought the upward tug at their edges.
Seriously, what was he expecting, after kissing her like that?”
“Very well…one page.” Chang Yu pouted slightly and narrowed her eyes in mock reproach. “From that manual.”
“Three.”
“We are not bargaining, Your Lordship.” She scrunched her nose up at Xie Zheng, finding it almost impossible to reject him when he was looking at her expectantly. “You do realize your teacher is staying over at our place? And that he is joining us on our journey to the capital?”
“Two pages.”
“Fine, two it is.”