The Delicate Phoenix

[The author's other book, The New Empress, is complete and available in the author's column. Read the official Jinjiang edition for complete chapters and plot.] On her wedding day, the emperor's youngest daughter, Princess Rouzhen, the obedient child he loved most, refused to marry her intended, fled in front of everyone, and vanished within the palace. The commotion reached the Eastern Palace. The Crown Prince, Jiang Yao, who had been absent from public life while recovering from illness, sat by the window and ran a finger down a page of his book. That night, fine rain fell like silk and the cicadas chirped mournfully. Someone knocked at the palace doors. Jiang Yao opened them to find a young woman standing in the rain, dressed in her phoenix-crown wedding robes. He and she were not close. More than a decade of knowing each other had amounted to little more than a casual acquaintance. The young woman's eyes rippled like water and her lips were red as flame. She leaned toward him. “Elder Brother, please let me in and hide for a while.” In the distance, firelight lit up the night. “By imperial order, anyone who finds the princess will receive ten thousand taels of gold!” ** At first, it was her words, “I don't want to get married,” that persuaded the Crown Prince to let her in out of the rain. After that night, she begged sweetly day after day for him to shelter her for just one more day. Hidden in the Eastern Palace, Jiang Yinyu thought: Crown Prince Brother is noble and virtuous, like a bright moon and a fresh breeze, worthy of the highest admiration. The emperor favors him, and the ministers respect him. If I play along with his temperament and keep him happy, perhaps after he takes the throne, he'll remember our old affection and look after me a little as his younger sister. But word of the Crown Prince hiding a beauty in the Eastern Palace eventually got out. To outsiders, it became a scandal: the Crown Prince had behaved immorally and harbored his younger sister. Abuse came pouring in from every direction, and the emperor was furious. Jiang Yinyu knew she was not the emperor's biological daughter. To quiet the rumors, she volunteered to marry into a foreign country. That night, beneath the wedding candles, Jiang Yinyu sat in her room. Her groom never arrived. Instead, the Crown Prince appeared in black armor. His jade-like hand, usually so immaculate that it never picked up a speck of dust, was now covered in blood. He pulled his sword from the groom's chest and slowly walked toward her. He stroked her snowy cheek, his eyes an abyss. “Why won't you listen to your elder brother? Why insist on marrying someone else?” “Didn't I tell you? Whichever country you marry into, I'll go to war against. You should stay in the Eastern Palace and wait obediently for me to marry you. Why did you run away?” Setting: 1. The leads are not blood-related. The heroine is adopted, and their romance begins after they learn the truth about their backgrounds. 2. Includes coercive romance. The hero becomes an obsessive, unstable yandere later on. He is gentle and mild early in the story, then increasingly unwell; only the heroine can soothe him. Both leads are each other's first and only love. 3. The groom dies for a reason. He is not a good person. 4. The setting is a fictional Han-Tang-inspired world where a woman's reputation for chastity is not held to an extremely high standard. 5. This is a pseudo-sibling story. Please don't insist if pseudo-sibling romance isn't for you. (To address comments saying the leads are too intimate: this is a brother-and-sister romance, and neither of them has much sense of boundaries. The younger sister relies heavily on her elder brother. So, in response to comments like “Doesn't the heroine see the hero as her brother early on? Why is she so intimate with him?” Yes, she does. That is one of the story's guilty pleasures and part of what makes this kind of romance unique.) 6. The plot serves the story. The heroine will face rumors, volunteer to marry abroad, and initially reject the hero. Her motives are clearly stated in the blurb and the theme, so please make sure you're comfortable with them before reading. 7. The author's column has a pseudo-sibling story coming soon, The Cold Immortal Venerable's Brother. If you're interested, please add it to your favorites! Thanks to the cover artist: @--Nanzhizi-- Blurb written in September 2020 Theme: Keep your heart set on freedom and break your chains.