[A general's daughter x an Imperial City Bureau spy: a true battle of hearts beneath a marriage of convenience]
Gu Yuan, the legitimate daughter of the Marquis of Daning's household, had learned only two things before she turned twelve: riding horses and fighting.
Until one spring day, when she chased a white fox into a valley and came upon a young man playing the zither beside a stream.
He looked up at her and smiled. She lowered her head, filthy and utterly disheveled.
For the first time, she felt ashamed.
From then on, she put away her riding crop and transformed herself from a wild girl of the frontier into the model of a refined young lady in the capital, all so she could be worthy of him.
When the imperial decree of marriage arrived, she joyfully married into the capital.
After their wedding, he was gentle and considerate. She thought herself the luckiest person in the world.
But she didn't know that their chance meeting had been planned, that he had released the white fox, or that the marriage decree was the emperor's move to keep her father in check.
That green bamboo handkerchief had been a hunter's bait from the very beginning.
Then she discovered a secret report in his study:
"Gu Yuan, legitimate daughter of the Marquis of Daning, can be used as a hostage."
She locked the jade hairpin he'd given her in her jewelry box, sealing away five years of pretense along with it.
In public, he was a gentle gentleman; in private, he was the blade of the Imperial City Bureau. In public, she was a proper noble lady; in private, she was the daughter of a military family determined to protect her entire household.
The night their lies were exposed, she asked him:
"Did you ever have even the slightest genuine feeling for me?"
He was silent for a long time. "At first, it was a plan. After that... every day was my own choice."
Later, when the marquis's household was framed, he stood in front of her, covered in blood. She held him, and he whispered, "Don't be afraid. I'm here."
He had seen who she was at the beginning, and stayed by her side to the very end.
He had remembered the girl who chased the white fox from the very start.
