You Win, My Heart Belongs Only to You

Song Qi, the new emperor of Northern Liang, fell in love at first sight with Liu Qingmei, the Prime Minister’s legitimate daughter, as she chased butterflies in the garden. An imperial decree brought her into the palace to be his empress, tearing her away from her “love affair” with Prince An, Song Jin.

He knew he was forcing her, so he repeatedly set aside an emperor’s pride. When she kept him at arm’s length, he stayed by her couch all night. When she smashed the jade hairpin he’d given her, he quietly gathered the pieces and hid them away. When his ministers urged him to hold a selection to fill the harem, he only said, “I have an empress. That is enough.” But in Liu Qingmei’s eyes, his humility was nothing but tyranny. Her heart belonged to Song Jin, and she saw the emperor’s tenderness as a shackle. To force him to let her go, she even threatened to throw herself into a lake, and became a pawn in Prince An’s coup.

It was only when Song Jin stood before her with his childhood sweetheart, Xue Sese, and smiled as he told her, “You were nothing but a stepping stone,” that the truth finally jolted her awake. On a freezing night in the Cold Palace, she finally saw clearly: the emperor she had despised would sit by her bedside all night when she was sick, shield her from the Empress Dowager’s poisoned wine, and turn red-eyed during the rebellion as he held the battle plans she had drawn.

The road to winning him back is long. She puts aside her spoiled ways and learns to grind ink and manage affairs. She warms a pot of tea on his desk and offers solutions whenever he furrows his brow. But the emperor who once gave her everything she wanted now regards her coldly. “The empress’s regret comes a little too cheap.”