He pulled the paper from its sleeve and unfolded it. The first line took him by surprise. My family married me, Bai Shen wrote passionately, to the other side of heaven. That incorrigible bastard. Not a single word was Bai Shen’s. He’d copied Princess Xijun’s famous lament at being married off to a foreign land. The actor refused to set foot into the house, but he had no objections to asserting influence and stirring up trouble. Fei Long scanned the rest of the verses about the loneliness of living in a strange country and the princess’s sorrow-filled longing for her homeland. Li Bai Shen. Shameless. As if he needed the blade of guilt to be driven any deeper. Yan Ling wasn’t a privileged princess, prone to sentiment and melancholy. She was a strong, practical woman. She might mourn her departure at first, but soon she would acclimate to the steppes as quickly as she had adopted Changan and the daily routine of their household.
