Reborn into a new life, she wants only to settle accounts herself with everyone who wronged her.
The crown prince is a hypocrite, her half-sister is vicious, and the empress dowager is ruthless. She won’t spare a single one of them.
She plans several moves ahead and turns other people’s power against them, rising from a sheltered noble daughter to the very center of power.
But there’s someone else on this path.
He was the ultimate victor in her previous life, and the only person in this life who can see through her. From testing each other to joining forces, from suspicion to trust, they eventually marry and fight side by side.
She thinks that’s what a perfect ending looks like.
Until their differences over governing the country drive them apart, until the people she crushed strike back from the shadows, until she finds herself standing by the window and asking:
“What do I really want out of this life?”
At last, she understands: she is not only an empress, a wife, or a mother.
She is Gu Qingning.
She wants to live for herself, just once.
