A Substitute Bride's Beautiful Fate

A slave of a conquered nation has no home to speak of; a subject of a conquered nation has no voice to speak of. She once took her elder sister’s place in the palace, serving as a maid for three years. Now she is taking the princess’s place in a political marriage. She no longer knows who she is, always standing in for someone else. On the way to her wedding, the Second Prince of the Khitan seized her bridal sedan and kept her for one night before sending it on. When she reached the Central Plains, before the sedan had even entered the palace, an imperial edict demoted her from the consort she was meant to become and married her off to General Pei, the man who had destroyed her country. How ridiculous. This was another case of her being someone’s substitute. And now she had to face General Pei, the man who had ruined her homeland. How could she do that when he had left without even looking at her once? She thought she was a tuberose, able to grow anywhere and survive. But when love and hatred became tangled, even the most beautiful tuberose shed silent tears in the dark. The Crown Prince of the Celestial Dynasty, the Second Prince of Khitan, and the husband who was hers in name: none of them smelled of peonies, yet butterflies still circled them. In whose garden would this tuberose bloom?