Fan Changyu spoke quickly. "It would be a fake marriage."
She laid out the plan clearly: "After you marry into my family, you claim you did it to protect the property my parents left behind. I still have some money. Once the assets are transferred, I'll use it to find the best doctor in town and get you proper medicine. When you've recovered, you're free to stay or go. Your choice."
Xie Zheng raised his eyes. The coolness in them sharpened. "You're not afraid that once I leave, your uncle comes back for the property?"
"After the transfer, whatever he does won't touch me. And if you've already gone, I'll just say you had urgent business far away. No one will know any different."
Xie Zheng said, with no particular inflection: "You've thought this through."
Fan Changyu couldn't tell if he meant it as a compliment or not. "So... what do you think?"
"Let me think about it." His gaze dropped, expression unreadable, as if he were genuinely weighing it.
Fan Changyu felt the nerves creep in. She ran back through what she'd said. She'd promised to treat his injuries and let him go freely, but she hadn't offered him anything for leaving. She hadn't promised him anything for staying, either.
She thought fast and added: "If you want to leave after you've healed, I'll make sure you have travel money. And if you have nowhere to go..."
She glanced at him. His face was pale, his body a map of wounds. Carpenter Zhao hadn't been able to find clothes to replace the ones soaked through with blood, so Xie Zheng was still wearing the man's old coarse linen jacket over his inner robe. His hands, beyond all the cuts and scrapes, were thick with calluses and cracked skin. Whoever he'd been before, life had not been easy.
Looking at him now, genuinely sick and genuinely poor, Fan Changyu made a bold promise.
"Don't worry. I'll raise you myself. Kill pigs and feed you."
Xie Zheng said nothing.
The look on his face at that moment was truly something.
If anyone who knew him had been in the room, the sheer absurdity of hearing those words directed at him would have stopped their heart. Anyone in the world who dared to say they would keep him — it could only be this woman standing in front of him right now.
But if she knew his real name, she would never say such a thing again. She might not have even pulled him from the snow.
Thinking that, something sharp and faintly mocking crept into his eyes.
"Why?" he asked.
"Why what?"
He was, surprisingly, patient. He seemed to actually want to understand how she'd arrived at this. "You and I are strangers. If my injuries don't improve, there's a real chance I'll be useless for a long time. You'd raise a man you don't know. What exactly are you after?"
Fan Changyu answered plainly. "You're very handsome."
Xie Zheng went still. He had not expected that. After a moment, a faint frown appeared. "That's the whole reason?"
Fan Changyu blinked. More or less, yes.
Xie Zheng was not unaware that his looks were above average. But being told so directly, with that particular matter-of-fact sincerity, was new. "There are plenty of good-looking people in the world," he said.
"But the one I carried in from the snow happened to be you."
She'd meant it as a practical observation. But the look he turned on her afterward was strange in a way she couldn't quite name.
"I only mean," she rushed to add, "that maybe everything has its own timing. I found you, so..."
She'd happened to find someone with a decent face. If they got along well after he recovered, if he had nowhere else to be, then perhaps it could work. But she wouldn't force it. A twisted melon has no sweetness.
He didn't give her the chance to finish.
"Once the injury heals, I'll leave on my own," he said, his voice cooler now, the corners of his eyes and brows gone cold. "I won't trouble you further."
As though he'd decided she had some hidden motive.
Fan Changyu pressed her lips together. "...Fair enough."
He seemed to want no further entanglement, to owe nothing. His tone flattened. "Name your wish. The debt of saving a life will be repaid."
She waved a hand. "If you're willing to fake marrying into my family and help me hold onto what's mine, that's more than enough. That's the favor."
She was done talking herself into trouble.
Then she heard: "Marrying into the family will be taken as repayment for shelter. Nothing more."
Fan Changyu looked up, startled. She studied his face. "You mean... you're agreeing? To the fake marriage?"
Xie Zheng gave a small nod.
Fan Changyu nearly cried from relief. "We can draw up a contract and set a fixed term. When it ends, I'll write you a letter of release immediately — I'll never try to keep you. And if you want to leave early, I'll give you travel money and a letter of separation. No obstacles from me."
That way he'd have no reason to suspect she had designs on him.
Xie Zheng said: "...That won't be necessary."
He lowered his gaze. "What is your wish?"
Fan Changyu thought for a moment. "I want to get the pig shed my father left running again. A hundred pigs, eventually. That would be good."
A silence followed.
A hundred pigs. That was the wish.
After two long breaths: "You can think bigger."
Fan Changyu thought: a hundred pigs at current prices is at least a hundred taels of silver. A two-story house in town costs barely more than that. But she reconsidered out of politeness.
"Two hundred?"
Xie Zheng said nothing.
Fine. He'd leave her extra silver when he went.
Fan Changyu, reading the silence as disapproval of her greed, pulled back awkwardly. "The saying goes, saving a life is worth more than building seven pagodas... I'm not actually asking you to repay anything..."
He listened to her mangle the proverb and felt a faint twitch in his eyelid. "I will remember your kindness," he said, cutting her off.
Fan Changyu decided to let the subject die. "So. Since you've agreed to the fake marriage — is there anything else you want to ask me?"
The man by the window gave a shallow shake of his head. He did not look particularly troubled by the arrangement.
Which made sense, Fan Changyu supposed. It was fake. They weren't truly marrying. No need to know eighteen generations of family history.
"The wedding will have to be quick. Probably within the next two days."
"You arrange it."
His dark lashes dropped, covering whatever was in his eyes.
"My household registration documents were taken by the bandits," he added. "If I'm to be registered here, I'll need to go through the county office."
"That's easy. Since you're marrying into my family, we just add your name to my household register."
With that settled, Fan Changyu stood to go home and begin preparations.
Before she left, she noticed his bowl of pork lung soup had barely been touched. "The soup's gone cold. You should drink it."
"...Yes."
He watched her go.
Left alone, Xie Zheng opened the window. The sky outside was newly clear after the snowfall, pale light settling at the horizon. His eyes went dark and still.
The man who had seized his military authority was a rabid dog. With no body recovered, he would soon comb through every refugee who'd fled to the surrounding prefectures. Xie Zheng had a false identity, but no forged household registration — and if the Jizhou authorities started checking refugees without papers, he'd be exposed quickly.
Under the laws of this dynasty, a spouse who had married into a household could transfer their household registration to the place of marriage.
That was why he'd agreed.
As for the woman...
His gaze drifted to the bowl of pork lung soup sitting nearby.
He'd offered her a wish in repayment for saving his life. The fake marriage would clear the remaining debt. He owed her nothing after that.
He thought about the way she'd said you look so good — completely unguarded, entirely sincere. His brow furrowed without him noticing.
Superficial.
He pressed two fingers to his lips and blew a clean, sharp whistle. Within moments, a Haidongqing falcon — pure white, immaculate — swept down from altitude and landed on the windowsill with quiet precision.
Xie Zheng held the bowl out. "Eat it."
The bird fixed its small black eyes on the pork lung floating in the broth and refused to move.
He glanced at it.
The Haidongqing, with great reluctance, picked up a single piece and swallowed it.
It happened to be that very day — the same day Fan Changyu had secured the agreement — that Officer Wang sent someone to report quietly: Fan Daguo had already paid a scribe to draft a formal complaint and submit it to the county office. The hearing could come any day now.
When Carpenter Zhao and his wife heard this, they were so agitated their mouths blistered. Fan Changyu stayed calm. "We keep everything simple. A small ceremony, then invite the neighbors for a meal. Everyone in the area will know I've found a husband."
She hadn't told the old couple yet that the marriage was a sham. She didn't want them to worry — and she didn't want the wrong expression at the wrong moment to give anything away.
Aunt Zhao's face fell. "There's no time to sew a proper wedding dress..."
"We'll make do with red. It'll be fine."
Between the pork money she'd saved and the debt settled after the casino incident, she had three taels total. Every coin had to count.
Still, she at least had new clothes to wear. The groom did not. His original clothes had been cut away — blood-soaked, ruined. He'd been recovering in loose inner robes under Carpenter Zhao's borrowed jacket. She would have to get him something proper for the wedding, no matter the cost.
Fan Changyu gritted her teeth and spent half a string of coins at the cloth shop on a length of ochre-red fabric, then took it to the seamstress at the end of the alley to have it made up.
She'd picked the dark red deliberately. He could wear it for the wedding and use it as an everyday outer robe afterward. Practical.
The seamstress, hearing that a wedding was coming together, smiled and said all the right auspicious things. Knowing Fan Changyu's situation, she refused payment outright. "Let this dress be my gift," she said.
But the measurements still needed to be taken.
Fan Changyu wanted to ask Uncle Zhao to help, but he was out buying supplies for the ceremony. So she went up to the attic herself.
"You don't have anything decent to wear for the wedding. I need to take your measurements so the tailor can cut the cloth."
Xie Zheng cooperated without complaint.
For accuracy, he set aside Carpenter Zhao's outer jacket and left on only his inner robe, turning to expose his back.
Fan Changyu forked her thumb and index finger wide and measured from his left shoulder to his right. Through the thin layer of cloth, the muscle beneath her fingertips was warm and solid.
She had touched him before — when he was coughing up blood, when she'd had to brace him and pat his back. But then it had been pure emergency, no room for anything else. Both of them had been too frightened to speak. The room had been so quiet she could hear every labored breath.
Now it was quiet for a different reason.
She was careful to keep contact brief. On one side, worried he'd think she had designs on him. On the other side, trying not to notice the warmth radiating from under her fingers and focusing on the measurement.
"One chi five cun." Done. She passed him Zhao's old coat immediately, asking him to put it back on himself, and stepped back.
She was thinking: he looked lean. She hadn't expected the shoulders and back to be so broad and solid. His measurements were nearly the same as her father's.
Before she left, she told him the rough plan for tomorrow. "The ceremony is set for late afternoon. You won't be able to manage the stairs on your own, so Uncle Zhao will carry you down."
Some families held the ceremony at dusk. It was considered an auspicious hour.
He refused, cleanly and without discussion. "No need. I'll go down on crutches myself."
"Won't that tear something open?"
"It's fine."
She could see he'd made up his mind, so she let it go and went home.
There was still a banquet to arrange. She took out one or two silver coins to buy a pig, and Aunt Zhao went around the neighborhood to ask which of the aunties could come help cook the next day.
Wedding sweets and pastries had to be bought.
She'd said she wanted to keep it simple. But when she added everything up, all three taels were gone. Not a single coin left.
Fan Changyu worked through until the hour of Hai without sitting down once. Aunt Zhao, who had no children of her own, hovered around her all day with the fussing worry of a mother seeing her daughter off, trailing behind her from task to task.
When Changning finally fell asleep, Aunt Zhao pulled Fan Changyu aside and pressed a small booklet into her hands.
Fan Changyu flipped it open, then snapped it shut. Her face went red. "He's still injured. This isn't... relevant right now..."
Aunt Zhao fixed her with a look. "There's always a time when it will be."
Fan Changyu took the booklet and said nothing more.
The seamstress was fast with her hands. That same night, the wedding clothes were finished.
Fan Changyu had only asked for a set for Xie Zheng. But the seamstress, finding ways to stretch the fabric further than expected, had managed to cut a matching set for Fan Changyu as well.
"No bride and groom should wear mismatched colors," the seamstress said, smiling. "I saw there was enough left over, so I ran it up for you too. Don't mind the plain style — I did what I could with what there was."
The seamstress had Fan Changyu's measurements on file from past commissions, so it fit without guessing.
Fan Changyu's chest felt full of things she couldn't name. "Thank you, Aunt Fang."
"Go try it on. Let your aunt and me see. If anything needs adjusting, now's the time."
There hadn't been enough fabric for anything elaborate, so the seamstress had kept the cut simple — clean lines, nothing fussy. But something about it was elegant despite itself.
Fan Changyu went inside to change and came back out. Aunt Zhao and the seamstress looked her over and said she looked beautiful. The seamstress laughed. "Tomorrow, once the veil goes over her head, she'll be a proper bride!"
Fan Changyu blinked. "If the groom is marrying into the family, shouldn't the veil go over his head?"
The two women burst out laughing. "You ridiculous girl..."
Fan Changyu was genuinely curious. She really did plan to have the man marry into her family. She was fairly sure that if she'd tried to put a veil over his head, he would have thrown her out the door on the spot.
The seamstress was still smiling when she gathered her things. "I heard your husband-to-be was rescued from bandits out at Hucha Pass. Is he handsome?"
Before Fan Changyu could answer, Aunt Zhao spoke for her. "Come to the wedding tomorrow and see for yourself."
The seamstress laughed some more, said a few more cheerful things, and headed home.
When they were finally alone, Aunt Zhao looked at Fan Changyu for a long moment. Tomorrow her girl was starting a family. No matter how she tried to hold it back, the sadness crept into her voice.
"Those daughters from wealthy families get carried down from their embroidery rooms on the day of the wedding. They sit in the sedan chair the whole way to the husband's house..."
Fan Changyu wasn't sad. But the words made her think of the man upstairs — how she'd said she'd have Uncle Zhao carry him down tomorrow, and he had refused instantly, without a flicker of hesitation, his face as cold as a shut door.
Was that the reason he'd refused?
A few houses down from the Fan home, in the Song family's courtyard, there was still a lamp burning.
Song's mother woke in the night and saw the light under her son's door. She knocked lightly. "Yan, it's late. Get some rest."
A calm voice came from inside. "I'll sleep once I've finished this chapter."
She sighed — half love, half worry — told him not to stay up too long, and went back to bed.
Inside the room, the candlelight moved across the walls. Song Yan held a scroll he had not turned a single page of for quite some time. The inkstone had been knocked to the floor. The room was a quiet mess.
The hand holding the scroll was tight enough that his knuckles had gone white.
She was getting married.