My Ex Became My Executioner

Julian Hawk swore in heavy snow that he would marry no one but Evelyn Jones, and then she went into the palace as a consort of the emperor. He spent the years after that climbing over other people to the office of chancellor, and the first order he issued was that the late emperor's consorts who had borne no child follow him into the grave. Evelyn was one of them. A length of white silk went to her and the court read it as a debt being collected. She had been maneuvered into the palace in the first place. At the gate the day they parted she had traded her freedom for his life, and Julian learned this only after the order had gone through. He gave up the office and everything attached to it and went out to the border where the fighting was worst, with no intention of coming back from it, and found her there.