The Frail Noble Consort Has the Entire Harem in the Palm of Her Hand

[PS: Not a virginal couple + palace intrigue in the early part + exclusive devotion in the later part] Raised on a steady diet of medicine, Xie Yunxiu once secretly dreamed of being a free bird amid the gentle charms of Jiangnan's waterside towns. But after ten years living under someone else's roof, she had long since understood the weight of the words "dependent on others" from the care her uncle's family took in managing every detail of her life. The increasingly rare letters from her parents had also shown her the fate she had been dealt: a "backup pawn."

When news reached the capital that her elder sister, Xie Yunheng, had suffered a miscarriage and was so badly injured she could no longer bear children, that cold letter from home finally shattered her last hope. She had to return to the capital to secure the Xie family's position, and, more than that, enter the gilded but merciless imperial harem.

Everyone said Emperor Shen Yanzhou was deep and inscrutable, and that the harem was a deadly battlefield where every step could be perilous. With her frail, sickly body, she had little hope of surviving in the first place, yet she was being pushed onto the very edge of the storm, forced to compete, fight, and become a rung on her family's ladder to power.

The Jiangnan rain could not hold her back, and her dream of freedom shattered on the journey home. The palace walls towered around her, but what did they imprison: her body, or a heart that had long since grown cold? And was the emperor, the supreme ruler of all under heaven, the calamity written into her fate, or the only light in her desperate circumstances? With her life as the stake in this contest for power within the harem, she had no choice but to proceed with caution at every turn, even if it meant wagering her final breath.