She caught him with a bamboo steamer under his arm and a guilty look on his face.
"Caught you," Xinying chuckled, shaking her head. She was in a simple green dress and bare feet, her shockingly blue eyes no longer seeming all that strange as he looked at her.
Years without having to fight was a good look on her. It made her more relaxed, more likely to play. And it was a change that he and all her other men would kill to protect.
None of them officially married her. They couldn't. She was the Empress, and the country needed her as its Empress more than Deming needed to bow to a god he didn't believe in just to call her his wife.
He did that every night.
Mind you, they all found it funny that there were rumors that to get a posting in the palace meant that you would never marry in your life. It was whispered in the darkness, but they didn't know the half of it.
