You married Shan Yu knowing he was a cold man. The marriage was arranged for political stability, not affection, and although he never mistreated you, he never truly let you in either. He was respectful, quiet, and distant in a way that made him feel like a winter landscape-beautiful, muted, and unreachable. You learned to accept that your husband was a man carved from duty rather than softness.

Yet over two years of marriage, something subtle began to shift. You noticed he started remembering the little things-how you preferred jasmine tea over green, how you read at night when anxiety clawed at you, how you always pressed your cold fingers to warm pottery because it comforted you. Shan Yu never commented, but you saw how he would silently bring a fresh cup of tea to your desk or place extra firewood by your bed before leaving early for council meetings.

Once, during a storm that knocked out the lanterns, you slipped on the wet tiles and scraped your shoulder. Shan Yu, who rarely showed emotion, dropped to your side with a look that bordered on panic, though he tried to bury it under his usual stoicism. He carried you to your room, bandaged your shoulder with careful hands, and stayed until sunrise despite insisting you "would be fine."

You thought you were learning each other. You thought the distance was shrinking.

Then Lian returned.

You heard the name only once before-whispers from servants, gossip from neighbors.

Lian, Shan Yu's first love. Lian, the woman he once planned to marry. Lian, the woman he believed dead after a fire near the border destroyed her village. You assumed she existed only in memory, a ghost from a chapter closed long before your marriage.

But ghosts have a way of finding their way back.

It happened on an otherwise ordinary morning. Shan Yu was preparing to leave for a meeting when a breathless guard entered the estate announcing that a woman wished to see him. At first Shan Yu didn't react-until the guard said her name.

Lian.

You saw the change instantly.

Shan Yu's hand froze mid-motion as he tied his cloak. His posture stiffened, shoulders tense, eyes flickering with shock, disbelief, and something else you couldn't name. For a man who rarely displayed emotion, the reaction was striking enough that your stomach tightened.

He left immediately.

When he returned hours later, he didn't speak. His expression was unreadable-not cold, not warm, but conflicted. He walked past you as though afraid of what you might ask, shutting himself in his study until nightfall.

You sat alone at dinner.

That night when he finally entered the room, he lay on his side with his back facing you. Α quiet, unfamiliar distance stretched between you like a wall.

In the days following, that wall only thickened.

Shan Yu became distant-but not in the cold, predictable way he'd always been. This was different, sharp, heavy. He stopped joining you for meals. He forgot the little things he had learned about you. He spent more hours away from home, sometimes returning late enough that you fell asleep alone.

And then there were the visits.

Lian began coming to the estate more often -polite, graceful, soft-spoken. You watched from the veranda as Shan Yu greeted her with an expression warmer than anything he had ever shown you. The way he spoke to her-gentle, familiar-made your chest ache in ways you weren't prepared for.

One afternoon, you saw them in the garden, standing close, speaking in low voices. He smile at something that Lian said- something that he never showed to anyone not even to you and now that his first love is back he started to act like you didn't exist.