❝ SHE WAS TRYING TO COME OUT OF PAIN AS IF SHE WERE TRYING TO COME OUT OF A DIFFERENT REALITY THAT HAD LASTED HER WHOLE LIFE UNTIL NOW. ❞

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【 Qiú ─ capital city of the Lóng Empire 】

The city's interior had already been bathed and clothed in a vibrant and festive gold and red theme. For the empire that worshipped and whose royal family claimed ancestry from the Dragon Lord, the gold and red theme also paid homage to their nation and peoples roots.

The city which was normally bustling and full of life was enveloped by an odd tense aura. Needless to say, this was due to both the union of the Dragon and Phoenix for the first time in history since the beginning of creation and the crowning of the first Emperor of the entire Great Continent.

In a separate palace in the grand walled estate of the royal palace, the soon to be Empress of the Great Continent sat surrounded by maids rushing and working around her.

While Tuyến brushed the Northern Princess's white hair, eight maids entered the room carrying eight decorated lacquer boxes covered in red cloth, a shared Tiênese and Lóng wedding custom which was a gift from the groom. With Liên's nod of permission, they placed them on a long side table and left the room, walking backwards in a continued bow.

Heavy embroidered robes embroidered with the symbol of the northern phoenix were placed on her and her hair was delicately braided and pinned back. Tuyến reached for a box that they had brought from Tiên with them and opened it but before she could do anything with the item, the head maid protested.

"Ah! What are you trying to do to the future Empress's hair?" The chief maid scolded, frowning greatly at a foreign round disk-like hat that Tuyến was about to place atop the Princess's white hair.

However, before Tuyến defended herself, Liên raised a hand for silence, her bright blue eyes contrasting with the deep red of her wedding attire. "It is called a khăn đóng." ¹ She answered on her behalf. "It is in our customs to wear it for weddings."

"Ehem..." The chief maid stumbled to convince the stubbornly set girl. "That may be so Your Highness, however, you are to be wedding into Lóng...?"

"Oh, come now. What trouble is it to let her wear her own home's cultural dress?" A knock sounded on the door and slid open to reveal a figure Liên had never met before. It was a girl close in age to herself but was dressed rather masculine in the red military uniform with a golden dragon emblazoned on the back.

And matching with that golden dragon was a pair of bright gold eyes.

"Princess Shuài!" One of the maids gasped, all of them hurrying to bow but the girl raised a hand and waved them off, they all compiling.

Liên turned towards the girl with questioning but guarded eyes. The golden-eyes girl noted this and smiled understandingly before greeting her.

"My apologies for not greeting you sooner, sister-in-law." She bowed respectfully before sitting across from Liên. "I was dealing with some rebel skirmishes in the northlands."

That startled Liên, though before she inquired into the matter the Princess Shuài corrected her quickly. "It was not your people who started the matter. Warfare isn't the nature of the northern peoples of course."

"I see..." The white-haired girl breathed a sigh of relief. "But then...?"

The girl's eyes darkened with a colour of intense hatred. Liên thought it incredible to see so much hatred in anyone's eyes that wasn't directed at a single target. It struck her that the princess held a deep anger in herself.

"That reoccurring thorn in our side, the Kirin Isle." She spat before calming herself. "I ought to have been more clear. I meant the further north-east, but enough of such things. I have come to greet you."

"Honestly, I feel as though I am incapable of talking of pleasant things. Which is to be expected of course since warfare is all I know." The thought seemed to hurt the girl to say so Liên spoke instead.

"Will you be wearing your uniform to the coronation?" She attempted a lighter subject.

The girl turned a dark red at that. "Oh! No, no! Most certainly not!"

Liên blinked at her flustered expression. It changed the image she had already formulated of her of being confident and full of unexpressed anger.

"I mean, I know I'm rather unfeminine but I do wear dresses. I can hardly wear a uniform all the time--" The girl stumbled with her mumbling so Liên tried to calm her by again changing the topic.

"Would you mind me calling you Lady Shuài?"

The girl blinked at that before clasping her hands in a strange admiring look. "You truly are so ladylike and soft-spoken, sister-in-law. Everything I've always wanted to be were I not born into this military obsessed nation." She sighed dreamily at that. "Please, call me Shuài. We are to be sisters."

Liên flinched at the thought of Lóng Qi which made Shuài widened her eyes at the action. "Sister-in-law...do you hate elder brother?"

Biting her lip, Liên's blue eyes flared slightly darker. "I'll pretend that I don't if I must. However, he murdered my family and exiled my brother. What else would I feel for him?"

Shuài's eyes held an older expression in them upon hearing her words. "Sister-in-law. Forgive me for speaking so dismissively, but you do not know what elder brother was thinking upon committing the action. Nor do you know his motives for doing such. I can assure you he isn't quite the simple blood-thirsty conqueror you may be thinking of him as."

Liên blinked at that thought as Shuài embarrassedly rubbed the back of her neck. "My apologies. I seem to have come off as rude. Please don't be too mad at me, I truly wish to become friends with you."

Standing up, the princess smiled kindly at the slightly younger soon Empress. "I had best let the maids back in to help you finish getting ready."

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【 Character Notes 】

Shuài Gōngsūn is the first and only princess of the southern Empire and is a Lieutenant-General in the military. She is the middle child and hence the younger sister of  Lóng Qi and older sister of Yun Lóng, although by a different mother. She holds a mysterious hatred in herself with uncertain targets.