"Princess… what are you doing here?" Ruhan stared as the lady in a bride's robe drank casually from his liquor jar. "Shouldn't you be at the feast? Celebrating your wedding?"
"What's there to celebrate?" Xiao Zhi said, the words falling out before she could stop them.
Ruhan stilled.
"…You don't look happy," he said finally, watching her as she took another sip of the drink.
She didn't respond immediately. Instead, she lifted her head to the night sky.
"Have you ever felt," she began slowly, "like you're in a strange world? In someone else's story… one that isn't yours? And you're just… lost. Not knowing what to do, or what's supposed to happen next?"
For a moment, Ruhan didn't answer.
Then, almost too softly, he laughed under his breath. A short, painful sound.
"Aren't we all?" he murmured.
She glanced at him, uncertain.
He lowered his eyes to the ground. "We're all just characters in someone else's story. Some of us… more literally than others."
She frowned, thinking he was being metaphorical, not literally like what she had truly meant.
But the words, whatever he meant, felt comforting. Like someone else finally breathed the same strange air she did.
Silence settled between them, but it wasn't empty. It was a strange, heavy kind of quiet, just two people standing side by side, watching the same moon.
Xiao Zhi exhaled, letting her shoulders loosen. Just for a moment, she let the sound of distant music fade. Let the palace walls disappear. Let herself exist not as Princess Lian Zhi, not as the unwanted bride of Prince Kabil, but as Xiao Zhi. A girl who once worked overtime and drank too much instant coffee and had no idea how she ended up in a novel she had read in one exhausted sitting.
Ruhan didn't speak again. But his presence was steady, like a quiet pillar beside her. The kind of presence one didn't notice the importance of until it was gone.
For a fleeting moment, the world felt still.
Until a voice broke the silence.
"Princess Lian Zhi!"
A maid appeared from the far end of the corridor.
She bowed quickly. "Princess, the bridal chamber is prepared. It is time."
The words cut through the air like a blade. Xiao Zhi's heart dropped, heavy and sudden. She felt the blood leave her fingertips.
Beside her, Ruhan went rigid. He felt something inside him twist painfully.
They both knew what those word means.
The maid waited, but Xiao Zhi didn't move. She couldnt. Nor that she wanted to.
"You should go, Princess," Ruhan finally said quietly.
But his voice… it wasn't steady. There was a weight in it, a heaviness she didn't know how to name.
She turned to him. His jaw was clenched too tightly, his eyes shadowed with something she didn't understand. He looked… torn. Almost pained.
She offered a small smile, soft and faint. Then she followed the maid.
Ruhan stayed rooted where he stood, watching her walk away, until the sound of her footsteps disappeared.
A moment later, a shadow appeared from the darkness.
Arkan.
He didn't speak immediately. He didn't need to. The tension rolling off Ruhan was enough to choke the air.
"Are you all right, Your Majesty?" Arkan asked at last.
Ruhan didn't answer.
He stared at the empty corridor where Xiao Zhi disappeared. His hands were clenched at his sides, trembling.
Only after a long moment did he whisper,
"How could I be?"
He inhaled sharply, as if trying to hold himself together. But the restraint finally cracked.
"I just sent her to her death," he said, voice breaking like thin porcelain.
Arkan's expression didn't change.
But his eyes darkened.
***
Inside the bridal chamber, Xiao Zhi sat stiffly on the edge of the bed, her fingers locked together in her lap. The heavy red veil covered her face.
Her palms were cold, and her heartbeat thundered inside her chest.
She was alone.
Completely, terrifyingly alone.
She swallowed hard, trying to steady herself.
This wasn't how she ever imagined a wedding night would feel. Not that she ever spent time imagining it. She had never even had a boyfriend before. She'd been buried in work, too busy drowning in deadlines to think about romance. Her fantasies had extended only as far as a good night's sleep.
And now here she was.
Married to a man she barely knew.
A man whom, until recently, she believed was cruel and barbaric. A male lead she had once feared and hated while reading the novel. A character whose personality ended up completely different from what she had imagined. But no matter what he turned out to be, he was not real.
A fictional prince.
Except fiction didn't feel fictional when he was a real man walking toward her in real life.
Her hands turned cold inside her sleeves. What was she supposed to expect? What was supposed to happen? Would he be… rough? Would he be gentle? Would he even speak to her?
Then the door flung open, waking her up from her daze. Her breath quickened.
Xiao Zhi flinched.
She couldnt see clearly under the veil, but she could see Kabil's stumbling steps.
He was drunk.
He stopped in front of her.
This was the moment, she thought. The groom would lift the veil, acknowledge her, complete the ceremony.
She waited.
Waited for his hand to reach for the silk.
Waited for something normal, something familiar, something like what she had read in romance novels.
But instead,
SLAP.
Her head snapped to the side, pain exploding across her cheek. The veil shifted with the force, slipping halfway off her face.
Xiao Zhi froze.
Her breath caught.
She lifted the veil with trembling hands, revealing her shocked expression.
"Prince Kabil…? What—?"
He stared at her with glassy, hateful eyes.
Then he laughed.
A low, mocking sound that didn't belong to the man she thought she knew.
This wasn't the gentle prince who had been kind to her for the past weeks, the one who took her on romantic dates.
This was something else entirely.
"You Hua trash," he hissed.
SLAP.
The second blow sent her sprawling back onto the bed, her vision fading. The world tilted. Tears blurred her sight.
Her cheek burned, and her ears rang.
"K-Kabil…" she whispered, voice trembling uncontrollably. "Please…why are you—?"
He stepped forward, towering over her on the bed. Then he took her by the neck, lifting her head roughly.
His face twisted with pure hatred.
"Don't think," he spat, each word dripping with venom, "that I would ever honor you as my bride."
Xiao Zhi's breath hitched. She pressed herself backward on instinct, her fingers clawing at the bedding.
He leaned down, so close she could smell the alcohol on his breath.
"I despised you," he said, voice low and cold enough to freeze her blood,
"from the moment I saw you."