The Powerful Minister’s Moon in His Palm

At fifteen, Shen Qingci, the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Zhenguo’s household, returned home and learned that she had an immensely powerful “older brother”: Regent Xie Jingxing.

He was the late emperor’s adopted son, with no blood relation to her, yet he took her under his wing in the name of an elder brother. He did her makeup, taught her to read, and made the young ladies of the capital pay for it with a mere wave of his hand whenever they bullied her. Shen Qingci respected him as family and relied on him wholeheartedly, believing theirs was the safest kind of sibling bond in the world.

After her coming-of-age ceremony, that tender veil of warmth quietly shattered.

She caught him sneaking into her bedroom late at night, running his fingers over her hair with a look of obsession. She saw the darkness churning in his eyes when she exchanged even a few words with a young nobleman. And when she was framed and imprisoned, she watched him unleash a merciless purge across the capital just to keep her safe. His ruthlessness chilled her to the bone.

Then one day, she found her childhood swaddling clothes in his study and heard him murmur to his closest aide, “She is the one I have held dear in my heart and raised for fifteen years.”

Only then did Shen Qingci realize that the tenderness he called “raising her” was actually a prison he had spent half his life preparing.

She struggled to escape, but he held her against his chest, his scorching breath brushing her ear. “Qingqing, from the day you returned home, you were always meant to be mine.”

The all-powerful regent had spent fifteen years laying his plans, all to keep the moon in his palm locked by his side forever.