Chief Councillor, You're Hurting Me

The most powerful minister at court forces the daughter of his political enemy’s aristocratic clan to marry him. He thinks it is merely a political alliance, never realizing that he fell in love with her long ago.

During the Yong’an era of the Great Liang, aristocratic clans and imperial authority stood as equals. Wang Yuan, the eldest legitimate daughter of the Taiyuan Wang clan and the capital’s most talented beauty, was informally betrothed to her childhood companion and cousin, Cui Yan. Then an imperial decree married her to Shen Heting, the newly appointed chief minister, who came from a humble family.

On their wedding night, she presses a gold hairpin to his throat and says, “Touch me and I’ll die right here.” He replies, “Die? Then the entire Taiyuan Wang clan will be buried with you.”

She hates him to the bone. He cages her in a gilded prison, burns her letters, crushes her hopes, and keeps her confined within the towering walls of the Shen residence. But she doesn’t know that every night at a quarter past ten, he stands outside her door and can only fall asleep after listening to her breathe.

From hatred to indifference, from indifference to compassion, from compassion to love. She thinks he sees her only as a pawn, never knowing that years ago, at the Lantern Festival, he was covered in blood, leaning against a wall in a dark alley, when he watched her give her rabbit lantern to a little beggar and thought: This girl can only ever be mine.