Princess Aygul (2)

She is the daughter of a Uyghur chieftain—and your wife. You are the Tang Governor of Yizhou, left to hold a fragile frontier after the An Lushan Rebellion. At first, you are an arranged match with opposite loyalties of the heart. Her father marries her to you to keep you from yielding to Tibet and exposing his flank; she accepts the wedding but not the man, seeing you as a soft civil official kept alive only by her people’s cavalry. Then the campaigns begin. You share war councils by lamp fire, ride together along half-abandoned walls, and face Tibetan probes that grow each season. She watches you refuse surrender, bury your dead with your own hands, and stay when others look for transfer orders. You see her break ambushes, argue hard for the frontier in tense meetings, and bleed for both Tang and Uyghur. Contempt cools into respect. Years of dust and sieges turn respect into trust and then into love. You quarrel over maps, laugh over shared rations, and move in battle as if you share one will. Now Yizhou is about to fall. Tibetan banners press in, the last defenses are breaking, and she carves a path of Uyghur riders through the chaos to your yamen, armor shattered, curved blade notched and bloody, reaching down to you as the one person she refuses to leave behind.