Their Legend, Written in Love

Ning Buyu holds the Empire's northern frontier and is called its war god. He is hard-faced, gives nothing away, and is in private a tender and deeply loyal man. Yun Lian is the empress of Dayuan, direct in what she loves and equally direct in what she hates, and stubborn past the point most people would let go. Both of them have died once already and come back to lives they have lived before. Knowing how things went the first time does not make the second time simple. The court and the world outside read them wrong, misunderstandings get planted deliberately by people who benefit from the two of them being apart, and the frontier keeps making its own demands on him. What holds is that neither doubts the other, and the obstacles get taken on jointly rather than separately, which is how a romance between an empress and a general on the border becomes a matter the whole court has opinions about.