#maoma

You didn’t know if you wanted to scream, vomit, or throw yourself into the moat, maybe all three. Bile rose in your throat like acid. If you were forced to marry another geriatric, feeble excuse for a man, you’d cry. No...no, you'd take your belt and strangle the old pervert with it instead. Why end your own life at the prospect of another miserable marriage, when you could end his?

A strange, terrible calm settled over you. Yes. That was all it would take, should your father try to sell you off again like grain at market. A well-placed knot. A moment alone. Simple. Clean. Satisfying.

Your father had a talent for choosing husbands as abysmal as his business decisions. Which was a tragedy. Under your grandfather, the estate had thrived, a man of honor, steady judgment, generous hands. Then came your father: greedy, shortsighted, and cursed with sons even worse than himself. Spoiled. Loud. Idiotic. Which left you a little pawn in their grand game.

If not for the vivid, delicious fantasy of disemboweling a faceless suitor in his own wedding robes, you might have collapsed into despair entirely. That lone image it made being at court bearable at least.

The capital was beautiful, at least. Teeming with life. The Inner Court bustled beneath the summer sun, thick with perfume and politics. Nobles, merchants, courtesans, and cutthroats, all scheming for favor or fortune. And of course, for your father, it was the perfect season to auction you off again.

Your last arrangement had been with Clan Hun. The old man, more bark than flesh had outlived his sons and, tragically, lived just long enough to take you as his bride. Your father had practically shoved you into his brittle arms, eager for alliance and heirs.

Luckily, age has spared you. He could barely walk, let alone rut with a rotting body into yours. Instead, he made you strip while he thumbed through his obscene collection of painted erotica, wheezing filth through papery lips. You had learned, to your shame, that pleasure could still bloom under such circumstances. Strange, needy pleasure. Addictive, even. As disgusting as it was to let him watch you find your pleasure, it was your own and you didn't need his warty hand to get it. And as a married woman you were free from your father's idiocy. But all good things come to an end . 

Your husband died quickly at least. Before he mustered the strength to taint you with his touch. Heart attack, most likely. Slumped at the edge of the bed, eyes glassy, lips parted. You watched him until dawn, just to be sure, before calling the servants.

And then, fate threw you back home. How deeply, deeply unfortunate. With no heirs meant you were back as your father pawn

“Hmm… what about Master Shu? His merchant business is.."

“Bah! A merchant? We need a clan head, not a ledger-keeper. Someone who can...”

You tuned them out. The courtyard was warm with morning light and the stink of incense. You could already feel it, they were preparing to throw you to the wolves again. Another deal. Another walking corpse with a title and trembling hands.

There were handsome men, sure but none powerful enough for your father’s greed, nor promising enough for your brothers’ obsession with their own worthless futures. That left the old ones. The greybeards. The lechers. The men who’d trade land for a young womb and a quiet girl.

Your fingers curled into the silk of your sleeve. Another year, another round of prospects with liver spots and coughs that rattled like death. You weren’t a maiden anymore but god's help you, you would not spend the rest of your fertile years beneath men who reeked of mothballs and tobacco.

You turned your head as your father’s voice faded into another name-drop, just as dull as the last. But then, a flicker of interest. A name.

“What about Clan La?”

“That freak Lakan?” your brother sneered. “Just got married. Doubt he’s bored of her yet. I heard he actually took two whole weeks off. Probably mapping battles even in bed.”

Idiots. If they thought they could manipulate the Emperor’s tactician, they were delusional.

But a different name caught in your ear, like a fishhook.

“What about his heir?” your brother whispered.

“Lahan…” your father scoffed. “That little whelp? I doubt he could muster much...if you catch my drift. Probably finds his account books more titillating than women.”

Your head turned slightly, just enough for your eye to catch a shape at the far end of the courtyard, a figure. Lean, composed. A handsome face, sharp and foxlike. Lenses gleamed in the sun. A ledger under one arm.

“Lahan, huh?” you murmured.

Not your first pick...but brains, you knew, were worth more than brawn

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In your time as a wife, you’d learned many things.

How to keep a house running. How to survive court dinners without speaking a word. How to fake pleasure well enough to make a man think he invented it. Especially with a husband who could barely walk let alone anything else. 

But above all, you learned this: men had the strangest desires, and with those desires, you could bend even the proudest noble like a reed in storm winds.

Your first husband had been a husk of a man, wrinkled, wheezing, and clinging to life with hands that trembled from both age and want. Clan Hun’s last hope. He would pander to your every whim, so long as you played out his fantasy. Like riding a carved phallus in front of him, larger than his own, and moaning softly, cruelly, that he’d never fill you like it did. He’d beg for the humiliation, worship it.

It was perverse. Pitiful. And incredibly useful. You learn everything you needed in your brief stint as a lady wife.

You studied men’s appetites the way a hunter studies tracks in the snow, closely, patiently, ruthlessly. You learned their patterns. What made them flinch. What made them kneel? What made them hand over power like it was a favor you were doing them.

But Lahan... Lahan was different.

Shrewd. Wiry. As tightly wound as the abacus he carried. A man whose affections seemed to belong not to flesh, but to ink. There were whispers in the capital, cold, amused whispers, that he hadn’t so much as looked at a courtesan. That his passion burned only for columns and coin.

One story stuck with you: a nobleman, thinking to soften Lahan’s temperament, had sent a courtesan to his study late one night, perfumed, flushed, and full of rice wine. Lahan hadn’t even let her speak. He simply deducted the minutes of his wasted time from the nobleman’s account and sent back a bill with interest. All arranged in neat columns. Itemized for Interruption of thought, visual discomfort, emotional inconvenience.

The poor fool paid it. Your respected that. But how, then, do you seduce a man like that?

You had no dowry. No personal fortune. Nothing to tempt him. Whatever coin your family once owned had long since been poured into your brothers’ indulgences and your father’s unending brothel escapades. You were a widow, landlocked, and officially desperate. 

But you were not defeated.

You didn’t need gold. You had the next best thing.

You had the books.

Your family's ledgers, painstakingly copied in your own hand, were worth more than a dowry. They were a map. A set of keys. For the right man who knew how to read them they would be an opportunity 

And Lahan? Oh, he would know. He would see the numbers far beyond what your saw. He would feel the shape of your offer.

You weren’t offering your body. Not yet. Maybe never.

You were offering something far more seductive. Numbers

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He didn’t even glance up when you entered.

His quill scratched steadily across parchment, the only sound in the quiet room. Candlelight played across the brass-rimmed lenses of his spectacles, casting flickering shadows over sharp cheekbones and a mouth set in perpetual disapproval. The air smelled of ink, wax, and firr

You drew your shawl tighter around your shoulders, though it did little to chase away the chill. Whether from the night air or the man before you, you weren’t sure.

“My lady,” Lahan said without looking up, his tone flat as pressed paper. “You are new to the capital. But I suspect you’ve been misinformed...if you think you can seduce me.”

You took a measured step forward. Then another.

“I haven’t come to seduce you,” you replied, voice smooth. “I’ve come with a proposal. A business arrangement.”

He didn’t react, but the pen paused, just for a second above the parchment.

“One that would place the Hua lands under your influence before first snow.”

That did it. A flicker of interest. Small, but there. He lifted his head, pale eyes cutting toward you with the precision of a scalpel.

In that moment, you felt them, not eyes, but scales, weighing every word, every gesture. Calculating not just your worth, but your leverage.

He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands beneath his chin, his eyes sparking with mischief.

“I’m listening.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You laid the makeshift ledger on his desk, worn leather soft with age, tied in red cord like a sealed promise. Inside lay your family's inner workings: crop yields, tax reports, livestock tallies. Pages filled with neat, unforgiving script compiled by your hand, line by line. A record of failure, yes, but also of potential. Proof. Leverage. A ledger of opportunities.

“My father is a fool,” you said flatly. “He bleeds our estate dry from one brothel to the next, trading coin for empty praise and softer thighs. My brothers are worse, drunkards, brawlers. It’s only a matter of time before one of them dies in a duel or a back alley either fucking or fighting. Possibly both.”

He made no sound, save for the soft rasp of parchment as he turned a page with deliberate fingers.

“This is hardly a solid proposal,” he said, his tone clinical, dispassionate, like a physician assessing a wound.

“I’m not offering sentiment,” you replied. “Only mutual respect. A husband in title, an ally in practice. I bring land. Strategic access. Fertile harvests and breeding stock with verified weights.” You leaned in slightly, your voice dipping like a blade beneath silk. “And I am more than willing to provide an heir. Or not. Depending on your needs.”

His eyes stayed on the page, but you saw it, the way they stilled over the column you’d marked in black ink. His lips didn’t move, but something behind his glasses shifted. Quiet interest. Perhaps even admiration.

“And what,” he asked, his voice as unreadable as ever, “do you gain?”

You smiled. A slow, knowing thing.

“A man who, I hope, knows what to do with a woman. Or at the very least,” you added, your gaze meeting his without flinching, “has the capacity to learn.”

A pause stretched between you, charged and unbroken.

“I’m a widow,” you said, letting the weight of it settle. “Older than the painted dolls in the count. But I know what I want. I don’t need poetry or moonlight. I want a man who isn't gullible or weak minded and sees me as valuable.”

You circled the desk slowly, fingers trailing the carved edge with a smooth finger

“And I assure you,” you whispered, stopping beside him, your breath brushing the air between you, “I can be very valuable.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He remained still. Not the stillness of hesitation, but of calculation like a hawk perched in perfect balance, every muscle taut, every blink measured. His eyes tracked you, not with lust or judgment, but cold precision, as though you were a figure in a ledger and he was working out your value down to the decimal.

“These documents are clean,” he said at last, his voice low and toneless but not disinterested. “Detailed. Useful.”

His gaze flicked to a particular page, one with your hand-drawn yield comparisons over a five-year period, annotated in black. There, for the briefest moment, something shifted. A faint flush touched the tops of his cheeks, almost imperceptible behind the thin-rimmed spectacles. He touched the page as if the ink itself whispered to him.

“The numbers,” he murmured, almost reverently, “are beautiful.”

You tilted your head, lips curling with satisfaction.

“I know,” you said. “I made them myself. I learned early, if you can’t own the estate, you’d damn well better know how to run it.”

Lahan set the folder down with care, like it was a relic or a precious volume in a private archive. His fingers lingered on the edge of the parchment, just a second too long. Not sentiment. Not desire. Admiration. Like a scholar finishing a theorem and finding the conclusion perfect.

His next words were slow, deliberate. A statement with weight.

“I think… a deal can be struck.”

He leaned forward then, folding his long arms onto the polished hardwood of the desk. The dim light caught the fine lines at the corners of his mouth, the burnished glint of his spectacles. He studied you now not as a stranger, but as a partner, a risk worth analyzing.

“But tell me truthfully…” His tone didn’t change. “Did you kill your husband? It won’t change my mind either way, but it allows me to predict any… complications.”

You met his eyes without flinching. There was no tremble in your voice, no flutter of lashes.

“No,” you said simply. “Despite everything, I didn’t. But I won’t deny I helped him along.”

Your mouth curved, slow and unapologetic.

“He was old. Married to someone far too young… and far too healthy. His heart couldn’t keep up with the demands I made.”

A long pause stretched between you. He hadn’t expected that. Not the calm. Not the candor. He had prepared for denial, deflection, perhaps even fury. But you stayed still. Cool. Measured. As if describing the demise of a business partner, not a husband.

And then Lahan smiled.

Not a polite flicker. Not the tight, closed-lip grimace nobles gave at court. A full, wide smile broad and foxlike, slow to bloom and rich with wicked amusement. As though you’d just revealed the solution to a particularly delicious riddle.

“I’ll draw up the contracts,” he said, rising in one fluid motion, elegant and purposeful. “Meet with my father. I’ll see to the necessary arrangements.”

He slid the ledger beneath one arm with the ease of someone holstering a favorite weapon. It suited him his sharp frame, his quiet intensity, the faint scent of old paper and ink that clung to his robes.

At the threshold, he paused. The candlelight framed him in golden shadows. He glanced over his shoulder, the glint behind his glasses catching like a flicked coin.

“But, my lady…” His voice was lower now, smooth. “Don’t think to do away with me in the same manner. You’ll find I’m rather…” He smiled wider. “Sturdy.”

You let your own smile widen, slow and deliberate, a thing with teeth. “I look forward to testing that claim.’’

Part two is the marriage and Lahan showing us exactly why he likes older women.