The room was pitch black. Not a sliver of light, not even the shape of a door. The silence was heavy—thick, oppressive, like a second skin clinging to her breath.
"Gege… Jiejie… please…"
Her voice was small, almost inaudible, choked by fear and phlegm from crying too long. Her fists pounded against the heavy wooden door. No answer. Only laughter fading down the hall. They'd left her here again.
Meilin crouched in the corner of the storage room, hugging her knees to her chest, her small frame trembling violently. She didn't know how many hours had passed. Maybe it was night. Maybe another day had gone by. Her stomach hurt, her lips were cracked, and her cheeks stained with old tears.
She hadn't done anything wrong. Only spoken out of turn at the table.
Her eldest brother had grabbed her arm first. Then her sister held the door open. Their faces weren't twisted in cruelty—only boredom. Routine.
She remembered calling for her father. Xu Shancheng, head of the noble Xu family of Qinglong, a man whose very name made others bow. He had looked up from his tea, gaze cutting through her like she was made of smoke.
"She must learn obedience," he'd said. Then went back to his scroll.
No magic. No worth. No voice.
That was Xu Meilin.
The room smelled of mildew and old cloth. She could still hear her own crying echoing in the dark, a younger version of herself—helpless, unwanted.
But then, something shifted.
The air around her lightened, warmth blooming gently against her skin. Her tears slowed. Her chest loosened.
And she opened her eyes.
A canopy of pale gold silk rippled above her. The bedding beneath her was soft, scented faintly of lavender and something older—ancient, almost like parchment and ash. Sunlight poured in from the tall window panes, broken by sheer white curtains that fluttered in the late morning breeze.
Xu Meilin blinked slowly, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. The nightmare always clung to her longer than it should.
But this room wasn't the Xu estate.
This was Blackwood Manor.
And she was no longer a girl locked in the dark.
She was a wife.
Barely.
Months had passed since the carriage wheels had stopped outside the crumbling stone gates of the Blackwood estate. Since she had stood in a strange wedding gown before a priest who mumbled in a language she barely understood. Since she had bowed her head to a man whose face she never saw.
Elias von Blackwood, her husband.
He had not looked at her once that day. Had not taken her hand. Had not spoken a single word.
And after the ceremony, he was simply gone.
Not dead—just...absent. As if he had wed her in passing, then vanished into mist.
The staff didn't speak to her unless necessary. Most wouldn't meet her gaze. They were polite, cold, and distant—so different from the chaos of her homeland, and yet eerily familiar in their disdain.
No beatings. No locked doors. No cruel whispers right to her face.
But also, no warmth. No laughter. No name spoken with affection.
Only silence.
And she preferred silence to screams.
Her room was always bright—deliberately so. She had asked it to be. No shadows, no corners left unlit. There were four oil lamps, one in each corner, that stayed lit from dusk until dawn. It was the only thing she'd requested. No one questioned it.
She sat up, pressing a hand to her chest. Her long black hair slipped over her shoulder like ink over silk, and her eyes—dark and slanted with quiet depth—swept across the ornate room. Gold-veined wallpaper. A wardrobe carved with dragons and roses. A vanity she'd never used.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the water glass.
A soft knock disrupted the silence.
Before she could answer, the door opened.
A woman entered—tall, rigid, and dressed in the stark gray of Blackwood service. Her hair was pinned into a flawless twist, her face devoid of emotion, her posture stiff as iron.
"Good morning, Lady Blackwood."
Meilin flinched at the title. It still didn't feel like hers.
The maid didn't seem to notice—or care. She placed a folded gown on the bed and spoke again, voice clipped and cool.
"The master will see you tomorrow."
Meilin froze.
"...What?"
"The young master, Lord Elias, has requested your presence for tea at noon. In the west drawing room."
A thousand thoughts tangled in Meilin's mind. Why now? After all this time? What had changed?
She struggled to form words. "Has… has something happened?"
The maid blinked slowly. "No. He simply asked to see his wife."
Her.
The word sat like a foreign object in her mouth.
The maid gave a short nod and turned to leave.
But at the doorway, she paused.
"Wear something proper," she said without turning back. "The Lord dislikes untidiness."
Then the door shut again.
Meilin sat in stunned silence.
Her husband—the man whose face she hadn't seen, whose voice she'd never heard, whose name felt more like a title carved in ice—was going to see her.
Tomorrow.
She curled her arms around herself, staring out the window as the sun poured through the glass like liquid gold.
A wife without a husband. A girl without magic. A phoenix without fire.
And yet—something inside her stirred.
A spark.
She didn't know if she would be ready for him.
But he certainly wasn't ready for her.
Not the Xu Meilin they had thrown away.
Not the woman she was becoming.
Not the one who had survived the dark.