After Her Entire Family Is Wiped Out, the Princess Consort Demands a Divorce

[Historical romance with angst | abandoned consort | both leads devoted only to each other | the hero's long road to winning her back | fated political intrigue]

Shen Qingci once saved a young man in the southern borderlands.

That year, snowstorms besieged the city. Holding her hand, the young man promised that if they met again, he would marry her with a grand procession and ten miles of wedding finery.

Later, the Shen family was condemned overnight. Her father and brothers died in battle, her mother took her own life, and an imperial decree made her the consort of the Third Prince, Xiao Jingheng.

On their wedding night, before the red candles had burned down, she learned that the man who had promised to protect her for life was the very Third Prince who had personally dragged the Shen family into the abyss.

He married her, confined her, and treated her coldly. He even sent her to a deserted courtyard, turning her from the envy of all as the Third Prince's consort into an abandoned wife, a laughingstock throughout the capital.

Everyone said Xiao Jingheng doted on his concubines and discarded her like trash.

But no one knew that he had never touched another woman, nor had he ever truly let Shen Qingci go.

Imperial power was a blade, and the old case a web. He made one mistake after another, until he had wounded with his own hands the person he should never have hurt.

Later, the Shen family's name was cleared, the truth of the old case came to light, and Xiao Jingheng finally rose to the highest position.

But when he knelt in the snow and begged her to turn back, Shen Qingci simply returned the old jade pendant to him.

“Your Highness, in my life, the purest thing was my first love, and the most resolute was my farewell.”