Mingyue and Xingyao

A matchmaker came to arrange our marriages.

My parents meant to give my elder sister the son of the principal wife of the Cui clan of Qinghe, and send me to the Yun household as a widower’s second wife.

“Mingyue is beautiful and accomplished. She is just the match for Young Master Cui.”

“Xingyao is plain and unassuming, quiet by nature. She would do very well as a second wife.”

What they did not know was that in poetry, scholarship, music, and painting, I was no less accomplished than my sister.

Unwilling to let her choose first, I slipped a drug into her tea so she could not receive our visitors.

I got my wish and married Cui Jing. My sister became General Yun’s second wife.

I managed my new household well, and my husband and I often shared poetry and painting.

“With you beside me,” Cui Jing would say, “I have no regrets in this life.”

General Yun indulged my sister in everything and distinguished himself in battle again and again.

Though his achievements earned her an imperial title, she despised his coarse manners and lack of learning. They grew steadily apart.

On a visit to our parents, she looked at the peony hairpin in my hair and smiled.

“If I hadn’t drunk that cup of tea you gave me and missed the meeting with a stomachache, you might not be the one married to Young Master Cui today. Still, chance led each of us where we belong.”

After we went home, Cui Jing fell silent.

At last he looked at my face, unable to reconcile himself to it.

“So I could have had the best, once. You were the one who made me miss my chance.”

Given another life, I heard Mother tell me to wait until my sister had chosen. Whoever was left would be mine.

I shook my head.

“I want neither of them.”