Ngô Tuấn, the Imperial Guard Commandant, had followed His Majesty in the campaign to conquer the South, leading the vanguard, crushing the Champa army, and personally capturing King Chế Củ—the sworn enemy of the Đại Việt court for many years. Now, that prisoner, his shackles removed, was being personally received by the Emperor in front of the Thái Hòa Grand Hall with an almost unbelievable degree of leniency. From a distance, Ngô Tuấn watched, his heart heavy with a quiet ache.
Under the dry sunlight of an early March morning, he wished his feet could sprout wings to carry him instantly to the Grand Hall, where light reflected off the glazed roof tiles onto the laterite stone floor, casting a radiant glow on the silhouettes of the most powerful figures in the imperial court.
Yet, his steps, obedient to the Emperor's command, did not lead him there. Instead, they took him down a narrow path, winding through a labyrinthine corridor like a river of stone within the palace, up the bell tower of Báo Thiên Temple, to stand before her—Princess Chiêu Hoàng.
She stood alone under the shade of a red roof of the Báo Thiên bell tower, her robe gently brushing the edge of tender grass. No one spoke, but he had a dreamed feeling—she was waiting for him for a long time.
Ngô Tuấn, his hands calloused from battle, reached out toward her hesitantly, as if a single touch might unleash all the emotions he had buried deep in his heart for years, like a flood breaching its banks.
"Your Highness, Princess Chiêu Hoàng… please follow me, quickly…"
His voice was strained, at times breaking as if carried away by the wind.
Her slender hand, adorned with a golden bracelet inlaid with shimmering green jade, gleamed like the surface of Lục Thủy Lake at dusk. The moment her hand brushed his, he quickly let go and dropped to his knees as if he had committed a grave offense.
"Please forgive me, Your Highness. I have been presumptuous."
But that fleeting touch—that gentle graze like an early morning breeze stirring the surface of a lake—awakened a dormant realm within the young general's heart. That feeling, which he had guarded, buried, and forced himself to forget over the years, was now returning, like the tide surging after a great rain. No one knew when that love had begun. Not even he himself. Perhaps it was one autumn morning when the sky was still dim, mist lingered over Lục Thủy Lake, and the first leaves fell onto the jade-tiled corridor. Back then, he was only seventeen, a lanky but spirited youth, following his father to court, standing in a corner of the Thái Hòa Hall awaiting the Emperor's orders.
He had hoped for nothing more than to catch a glimpse of His Majesty, to hear the voice of the Son of God—a voice he imagined as deep and commanding as summer thunder, resonating like a bronze bell in the dead of night. But the first person he saw was not the Emperor.
She emerged from the shadows of the corridor, her white silk robes flowing like drifting clouds, so light that her footsteps made no sound. The green light reflected from the tiled roof shimmered in her eyes, rendering them ethereal, like Lục Thủy Lake before the mist cleared. Her gaze was not for him, nor for anyone. It was the gaze of someone born to stand above all, her regal bearing evident in every movement, though she was only sixteen.
At that moment, Ngô Tuấn's heart skipped a beat. Not because she was a princess, but because there was something achingly familiar in her eyes. As if he had seen her in a distant dream, had lived a lifetime just to arrive at this moment of recognition. A silent bond, so profound it made his very soul tremble. From that day, his heart no longer belonged to him alone. He dared not look at her for long. Yet every time she appeared in the court, in the Imperial Garden, or by Lục Thủy Lake, he knew. When he trained at the Giảng Võ Grounds, every thrust of his spear, every swing of his sword, felt as though her eyes were watching. When she praised another officer on the training field, his heart stung with silence, hopelessness, and jealousy. They had never held hands. Never spoken words of love. But every glance in the corridor, every moment he stood shielding her from the wind as she passed through the garden, every casual inquiry she made about the Emperor, every fleeting look exchanged during an early winter court session—these were the fragments of love locked away, nameless, without promises, without a future.
Once, during a spring festival, when the water puppet show near the citadel's harbor, as the setting sun pierced through the leaves about to fall, Chiêu Hoàng turned and looked at him longer than usual. No words. Just a look. And for once, Ngô Tuấn looked back. Amid hundreds of officials and soldiers, amid rituals and music, amid the clamor of drums and gongs, their eyes met like two rivers that had forgotten each other in the vast ocean. The world seemed to vanish. Only the two of them remained.
He knew well that their love could bear no fruit. She was a princess, a symbol of the royal bloodline, of the throne and its legitimacy. And he—even after being appointed as Imperial Guard Commandant, even after capturing an enemy king, even with his renowned victories—was still just a vassal. A shadow at the edge of the throne.
If her heart was not permitted to love, he could not love anyone but her. Knowing it was impossible, he loved her in silence. His love was not in kisses or vows but in the flustered glances in the grand hall, the subtle pause by the corridor, and the vague words of concern when she was unwell. It was in the times he escorted her on patrols, always riding to the left of her carriage, at a distance so small it was almost negligible, yet it was the closest he could ever be to her.
Years later, as the vanguard general leading a hundred troops, he remained solitary. No wife, no children, no concubines. When asked, he would only give a faint smile:
"A general goes to fight, alive today, a ghost on the battlefield tomorrow. Why take a wife?"
But only he knew that his heart had been left forever in the Thái Hòa Hall, where she had once passed through his life like a spring breeze over a meadow, leaving no trace—but taking with it the soul of a man. A love that needed no reciprocation. No fulfillment. No proof. Perhaps, for his entire life, that was enough.
Chiêu Hoàng looked down at the officer kneeling before her. She was stunned. Her eyes suddenly brightened as she realized: it had been so long since she had seen him this close.
So long…
Since last year, when he led the triumphant army through the Đoan Môn Gate, bringing carts of gold, fabric, and spoils from the South. Beside him was an unfamiliar deputy escorting the Champa prisoners, including Chế Củ, the king of a nation once the court's greatest rival. Her gaze fell to the golden bracelet on her wrist—a gift he had offered to the royal family but placed on a separate tray covered with red cloth, delivered to her hands by a eunuch. A bracelet engraved with hidden dragon patterns, adorned with green jade as vivid as Lục Thủy Lake, like his eyes when they first met.
So long…
Yet his gaze remained the same. His old devotion was unchanged. But why was he not in the Thái Hòa Hall today?
Suddenly, Chiêu Hoàng's voice broke the silence, urgent, almost accusatory:
"Imperial Guard Commandant Thường Kiệt…" she called him by his courtesy name, "Why are you not attending, His Majesty? Why was it not you who escorted Chế Củ into the hall, but some nameless deputy of yours? Is that not your duty? Are you not the commander of the Imperial Guard? Why are you here? How can you move so freely within the forbidden palace?"