Lin Suxue first met Li Shiying on his way to attend a palace banquet and pay his respects to the Empress Dowager of Great Qi, having been sent there as a hostage.
In a waterside pavilion, she wore plain clothes and beckoned him over. Her voice was cool and languid as she propped her cheek in one hand and looked at him. She asked only, "What's your name, and where are you from?"
It was only when the banquet began that Lin Suxue learned this woman was the Empress Dowager.
She was the one who had arranged for him to be sent here.
Li Shiying was made Empress Dowager at fifteen. The emperor was barely a year old, still babbling as he learned to speak. In the years that followed, court officials repeatedly denounced her as a calamity, accusing her of wielding power through the young emperor.
Li Shiying liked the way Lin Suxue looked.
Beneath the magnolia tree, the breeze stirred his fluttering sleeves. He was every bit as striking as people said: the only son of Prince Xingning, a rare beauty as flawless as jade.
Naturally, Li Shiying knew that Lin Suxue loathed her: he despised her reputation as a frivolous, vicious woman, spread by the rumors in the streets. He hated that she was always wary of Prince Xingning and would never leave him alone.
*
Lin Suxue hated her.
He loved her, too.
He hated her so much he couldn't sleep at night, and loved her so much it terrified him.
Surrounded by enemies, with the long night stretching on and the solemn palace walls glowing with an almost desperate light beneath the faint dawn, the person he wanted to escape was also the one he wanted to hold on to. Both were Li Shiying.
Years later, Prince Xingning held great power, his achievements so immense they threatened the throne. After putting down a rebellion, his heir, Lin Suxue, returned victorious at the head of his army and entered the capital to report on his mission.
Everyone at court knew this was no mere report. He had come for revenge.
He would avenge the humiliation he'd suffered all those years ago, and he certainly wouldn't spare the Empress Dowager who had once treated him with such contempt.
Yet when palace attendants passed the Empress Dowager's bedchamber, they seemed to glimpse Lin Suxue's silhouette through the layers of gauzy curtains.
The powerful minister who ruled the court with an iron fist was now bending slightly to remove the Empress Dowager's shoes. His fingers brushed her ankle as he smiled, his voice as cold as a ghost in the night.
"I said I would return to see Your Majesty. I kept my vow. Your Majesty... why are you trembling?"
Only then did Li Shiying realize what kind of demon she'd provoked on a whim all those years ago.
Reading guide:
1. A story of hate turning to love, with a love as deep as the sea and a romance full of anguish.
2. The young emperor is neither the previous emperor's child nor the female lead's child.
3. An alternate-history setting with many original worldbuilding details.
4. The old blurb had been up for so long that I still had no ideas for it, so I've replaced it with a new one for now. Feel free to follow or collect it, no pressure, qwq.
Theme: Row against the current
