“Why will you not marry me?” he asked directly, a question he had been asking more often of late. “We’ve lived together these past years, scandalizing the city.” A smile formed on his lips, though his pupils glinted like iron. “They think you under my protection.” I shrugged aside these narrow thoughts, wedged between curiosity and spite. “They think worse of me than that.” A woman of ill-repute. A temptress. An opportunist. Without even the title of “concubine” to clad my presence in a frail shroud of decency. Not that Wenzhi kept any here, for if he did—
