Demon Mark

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At the garden banquet.

Cups clinked, and the garden was full of elegant figures and fragrant gowns.

Gu Wan, the second young lady of the Duke of Zhenguo’s household, clutched a bloodstained hairpin. Her face burned as she fled in panic through the vast garden.

If she didn’t escape, she would be nothing but a stepping stone for her legitimate elder sister, offered up to an old prince infamous for his lust.

In her desperate flight, Gu Wan crashed into someone’s arms.

When she looked up, she saw a pair of sparkling, peach-blossom eyes. His jade-like face wore a carefree, roguish expression.

His long, sharply defined fingers gleamed like cool jade, offering just the chill she craved.

It was Prince Su, Xie Jin’an.

Her discomfort grew worse.

Gu Wan hid the bloodstained hairpin behind her back, lowered her eyes, then looked up at Prince Su and pleaded softly for help.

Her voice trembled with tears, like broken jade beads falling, making the listener’s heart quiver.

Xie Jin’an looked up at the dazzling beauty in the night.

A pair of vivid red beauty marks adorned her eyelids, like blood splashed against snow-white skin.

One glance was all it took to leave Xie Jin’an dazed and spellbound.

Just as he had been when he first caught a fleeting glimpse of Gu Wan.

His gaze darkened, and his hand unconsciously tightened around the gold-trimmed bamboo fan.

“As it happens... I’ve run into the same predicament as Miss Gu.”

*

Only after their wedding did Gu Wan realize:

Hmm, it seemed her husband wasn’t just an idle prince who did nothing but ride through the streets.

Xie Jin’an, too, discovered that his wife wasn’t a sweet-tempered, meek woman.

She was... a cunning little fox who never let a slight go unanswered.

Like a rose streaked with blood in the snow.

Fiercely alluring, she stirred his heart.

[Reader’s Guide]

[A bewitching, delicate schemer x an ambitious prince who pretends to be carefree]

1. One-on-one romance, happy ending, and the leads are each other’s only romantic and sexual partners.

2. The plot serves the female and male leads. Neither of them is perfect.

3. Slow-burn pacing, household intrigue, fictional history, very fictional.

4. To be added.

[Please add my ongoing novel to your favorites~]

*Blurb:

A gentle, kind woman who doesn’t fear hardship x a man who thinks he’s cold and heartless but falls for her anyway | A dash of marriage before love

On the night Shen Fuqing was tricked into returning to the capital and meeting the Crown Prince, she had a dream.

In the dream, her biological father, the chancellor, forced her into the Eastern Palace. Then, on her wedding night, the Crown Prince cast her into the arms of the Regent. In the end, she “died by suicide after being dishonored.”

She jolted awake and was about to find a way to save herself when her stepmother came to offer congratulations, saying the palace would arrange her marriage in a month.

Desperate, Shen Fuqing found herself conveniently thrown together with the Regent, thanks to the Crown Prince’s scheme.

She thought of the Regent from her dream, with his handsome face, thin lips, and burning embrace. He would be her future imperial uncle.

She thought: If the Crown Prince is putting the Regent right in front of me, why shouldn’t I take him?

So Shen Fuqing boldly tried to seduce the distant, unfeeling Regent. In the end, she put everything on the line and deliberately fell into the water in front of him.

*

Helou Shen was naturally indifferent. Everyone seemed like a stranger to him, and he had no interest in anyone.

Until one day, Helou Shen dreamed that a soft, delicate young woman had appeared in his arms: his future nephew’s wife, a frail, timid girl with a tender heart and a slender figure.

Helou Shen disliked that sort of temperament most. But in the dream, the red candlelight made her skin look like snow, stirring his pity.

Before he could think it through, the girl poured a cup of cold tea over him and slapped him hard, while he was unable to move in the dream.

After waking, Helou Shen sat for a long while, touching his cheek in thought, then called for cold water.

He assumed it was a strange dream he could ignore. But afterward, his future nephew’s wife kept running into him, and even deliberately fell into the water in front of him.

How interesting. How very interesting.

Helou Shen decided to become the sort of man who stole another’s bride, a man he had always looked down on.

*

At first, Helou Shen only watched to see what she was plotting.

He thought that if a woman so different on the inside from what she showed could behave herself, he wouldn’t mind granting her the title of princess consort.

But as he watched, the cool, formal “Princess Consort” on his lips gradually turned into “A Fu.”

One day, beneath the lotus-patterned bed curtains, Helou Shen gently kissed Shen Fuqing’s misty, spring-water eyes and felt nothing but gratitude.

Fortunately, he alone had seen the real A Fu.

Vibrant and resilient, she moved his heart.

Theme: Strive alongside the one you love.