Sorrow In Autumn

Chapter 21 To Return Is Not To Remain

So in the drama and I think in the book, the SID team became family to Shen Wei.

Xiang Gong is an formal term meaning husband and lord, used by a spouse. It's a marriage to protect them both but to Shen Wei, Wang Zheng is more of a sister, preferring to call her mèi (younger sister) in private.

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As the soft petals fell to the earth with the quick hands of winter, one lone figure stood untouched.

When counting the petals failed to calm her raging spirit, Wang Zheng resisted the urge to pace around the circular pavilion, cut into the walls of the mountain and watched a flock of birds as they passed over the city. Wishing she too could fly.

The urgency to come here to this small mountain city only a few days travel to Hanga, had eased into a constant aching worry. All she knew, all anyone knew it seemed, was that the Emperor was injured and had decided against advice, to return to the Hanga lands to mourn for Kunlun.

She might have believed it, had it been any other year. If the world had not been rife with rumors about Lord Kunlun once more.

She alone knew his pain like no other. Wang Zheng knew what it was to cry endless tears for a lost love. To sit in the silence and hear a voice you have longed for, only to realize it is but a memory. To never glance at the night sky, no matter how beautiful for fear of the nightmares you will have, the scream trapped in your throat.

A grief so powerful you dreaded the change of the seasons, the chasm between past and present widening with every year. For her, summer came with grief threaded through each day, with memories of Sang Zan and the scent of flowers bringing tears to her eyes. Sometimes it felt as though she could turn and he would be there, with that shy smile, looking at her with those soulful eyes. Sometimes she looked at her daughter and saw Sang Zan in every smile and gesture, in her daughter's boldness, in her bravery.

For a child so young Anujin understood that both her parents carried pain, carried sadness in secrets never shared and stories never told. She knew her mother needed distractions in summer when the days were not humid or dry and her father needed space in late autumn. Wang Zheng never asked, for she had no answers to give, but she wondered if her child thought it was the pain of the war. There was no one Dixing untouched by the war, no families left that did not bear the scars of loss and her daughter was surrounded by such echoes.

All she could do was make sure summer days were everything her daughter could hope for and breathed a sigh of relief when she had things she could devote her attention to. Like Anujin's archery competitions and her own music practice, as the Empress was expected to open the summer festival showcasing her musical talent.

For Shen Wei summer was always a busy time, but as soon as the leaves began to fall, his heart would always turn cold. He tormented himself by returning to the valley each year in autumn, where Lord Kunlun had sacrificed himself, but the daughter of the same lands, could not...had never found the strength to return.