After a Proxy Marriage, the Cold Palace's Legitimate Daughter Became His Most Cherished One

Forced to marry in place of someone else to a “frail” prince? Fine! I’ll take the title of princess consort, and I’ll take my enemies’ lives too.

She is Shen Zhiwei, the most insignificant legitimate daughter in the prime minister’s household. Her birth mother died young, her stepmother is cruel, her father ignores her, and even her name lies under a layer of dust. When an imperial edict arrives betrothing her to the Seventh Prince, Chu Huan, rumored to be “near death” and “violent-tempered,” her beloved younger half-sister, Shen Jiao, unhesitatingly pushes her into the fire.

Beneath the red bridal veil is Shen Jiao’s name, but Shen Zhiwei’s heart is honed like a poisoned blade. In the grim, strange prince’s manor, she faces not only her husband Chu Huan, bedridden yet sharp-eyed as a hawk, but also scheming concubines, the tests of vicious servants, and the manor’s unfathomable undercurrents.

Everyone is waiting to see how this “impostor” meets a miserable end. They don’t know that adversity is the whetstone that sharpens Shen Zhiwei. She bides her time and plans each step carefully: she suppresses the servants’ arrogance, foils deadly plots, and quietly weaves her own web with her keen understanding of human nature. She wants more than survival. She intends to use the power of the prince’s manor to expose the shocking injustice behind her birth mother’s wrongful death and crush her enemies into the dust!

When Chu Huan sees through her resilience and the secrets in her eyes, suspicion turns to admiration and exploitation to protection. Two souls wearing masks gradually draw closer amid the treacherous turmoil. He helps her turn the tide, while she secretly advances his cause.

A scheming, saintly younger sister? A hypocritical stepmother? An indifferent father? She’ll make them pay! And the supposedly “frail” prince draws her into his arms and cherishes her as the most precious person in his heart.

How will a lowly legitimate daughter, forced into a substitute marriage, take control of the prince’s manor, stir up the imperial court, expose a blood feud, and rise from the ashes to become a queen? And how will she join hands with that unfathomable prince to look down upon