She Buried A Dynasty For A Hunter

A hunter pulls a man out of trouble and is owed for it, and the debt is settled by marrying him to an orphan girl who needs someone to stand between her and the world. He promises to keep her safe and means it as an obligation. They live in the forest, and over the seasons the obligation turns into a marriage in fact. Then he learns who she is. Her family was a noble house, put to the sword on an official order, and she is the only one left alive. The two of them go down to the capital. He enlists, fights, and climbs through the ranks on his own record, while she works quietly at the other half of it, collecting the documents and the witnesses that tie the massacre to men still holding power. Those men come after them, and a woman close to the emperor spends a long time deceiving them and hunting them both. The empress becomes their way in. When the evidence is finally laid out and the case reopened, a title is offered to her, the rank her blood entitles her to, and she has to decide whether she wants the capital at all after what it cost her.