In the winter of the twenty-third year of Taiping, the first snow fell, and the bluestone bricks of the cold palace were bitingly cold. Tang Nuoqing knelt in the snow and accepted the imperial edict that would change her fate - the emperor would marry her, the daughter of a criminal minister, to Gao Yaoran, the prince of the Marquis of Jing'an who had no legs and had a sinister temperament. Three years ago, her father, Tang Xiang, was overthrown and the whole family was exiled, leaving her alone in the cold palace. She grew from a bright young girl to a silent and forbearing orphan; while Gao Yaoran, who was once a young and knighted border warrior, was disabled in a bloody battle and his three fiancées all died mysteriously. He became the "wife-killing" prince who was shunned by everyone in the capital.
Is this marriage contract a gift from the emperor, or another more severe execution? Is it to beat the Jingan Hou Mansion, or is it to use her life to fill Gao Yaoran's "fate"? When they first met on a snowy night, Gao Yaoran's words, "In the Marquis Mansion, you can try to let others die" awakened Tang Nuoqing who had been dormant for three years. She put away all her vulnerabilities, and as the daughter of a guilty minister, she stepped into the undercurrent of the Jingan Hou Mansion. While dealing with the open and secret attacks in the palace, she also wanted to trace the truth behind her father's downfall. She also had to work with the unfathomable crippled prince to find hope in a desperate situation while testing and balancing each other. A game of power, with marriage as the game and life as the chess, quietly kicked off at the foot of the imperial city on a snowy night.
