The whole capital was betting on how many days the legitimate daughter of the Shen family would survive after marrying into Prince Jing's household.
An imperial decree announced that I was to marry Xie Shaochen, the Seventh Prince, a madman plagued by coughing fits and notorious for slaughtering without mercy.
People pitied me, saying I'd walked straight into the Prince Jing household, a den of death.
They didn't know this wasn't a den of death at all. It was a trap, laid by the man on the throne himself, designed to wipe out my entire Shen family.
And my future husband wasn't truly mad, either.
On our wedding night, I pulled off my veil and asked him outright:
"Do you have a childhood sweetheart?"
"No."
"Are you secretly in love with your cousin?"
"No."
"Is there a beloved woman you can never have?"
"..."
He silently wiped the blood from his fingertips. When he looked up, the madness had vanished from his eyes, leaving only a deep, clear gaze. "Your Highness, it's all an act. Why take it seriously?"
That's when I understood: he was the most deeply hidden of schemers.
Later, the struggle for the throne erupted.
I operated in the open, wielding strategy like a blade and reading the hearts of the court. Little by little, I turned a game in which we had once been discarded pawns to our advantage.
He worked in the shadows, using the guise of madness to commit his killings, eliminate his rivals, and personally pave a bloodstained path to the throne.
We were the most perfectly matched allies in the world, trusting each other with our backs as we plotted to claim the realm.
We were also the most dangerous of rivals, testing each other in secret and harboring suspicions, neither willing to surrender their heart first.
Until the night of the palace coup, when he cornered me against a wall, covered in blood, his voice hoarse and broken:
"Shen Liwu, I offer you this realm as my bride price... Do you dare bet on spending a lifetime with me?"
It turned out that in this game of intrigue, begun as a conspiracy, it had long since become impossible to tell who had fallen in love first.
