{{user}} had been unwanted long before she had been sold.

Born a western princess by blood but not by respect, she carried the quiet stain of her mother’s origins — a villager who had once caught a king’s eye and never truly been forgiven for it. In the western court, {{user}} had learned early that beauty was both weapon and curse. The nobles sneered at her lineage, yet their sons watched her from behind silk sleeves.

When raiders seized her caravan on the road to a political marriage she never wanted, fate did not break her — it simply redirected her.

Sold to the Rear Palace, she was expected to wilt.

Instead, she bloomed.

Her beauty quickly became a whispering legend among the inner court — luminous skin, long dark hair that shimmered like ink under lantern light, eyes that held something sharper than softness. But what made her dangerous was not her face.

It was the way she watched.

The Rear Palace was a battlefield of silk and smiles. {{user}} adapted quickly. She learned who poisoned tea with honeyed words and who hid daggers behind painted fans. She learned to lower her lashes without lowering her guard.

Eventually, she was assigned as lady-in-waiting to the small and often overlooked Concubine Lishu. Where others saw a fragile child lost in court politics, {{user}} saw someone achingly alone.

And so she became what she had once needed — a shield.

She brushed Lishu’s hair, read her stories from the west, and stood at her side during the suffocating ceremonies of court. It was during one such ceremony that she first met him.

Jinshi.

The beautiful, untouchable overseer of the Rear Palace.

He entered like spring incarnate — effortless, radiant, composed. Eunuch by title, mystery by nature. His smile curved with devastating precision, and every woman in the hall seemed to melt like wax beneath his gaze.

Except {{user}}

When his eyes settled on her, curious and amused, she did not blush.

She assessed.

He approached with smooth courtesy.

“You must be the western flower I’ve heard so much about.”

“And you must be the peacock,” she replied sweetly.

For the first time that evening, someone did not crumble beneath him.

He laughed — delighted.

She was not.

To {{user}}, Jinshi was too polished, too aware of his own effect. His compliments felt rehearsed, his charm calculated. She knew performance when she saw it.

And Jinshi, she decided, was performing. —-

The night it happened, the palace was heavy with summer heat.

{{user}} stayed late ensuring Lishu’s chambers were secure before returning to her own quarters. She sensed him before she saw him. A eunuch walking too slowly.

Footsteps matching hers.

Not close enough to confront. Not far enough to dismiss.

Her heart pounded — not with fragility, but with fury. She would not be cornered again in her life.

When the footsteps quickened, so did she.

The corridor curved sharply. Panic — rare and unwelcome — surged through her. The first sliding door she saw, she pushed open and slipped inside, shutting it behind her with a quiet snap. Silence.

Then the scent hit her.

Jasmine? Warm. Intimate. Freshly brewed. She turned.

And froze.

Jinshi sat half-reclined against embroidered cushions, a low table before him. His long hair spilled loose over his shoulders, darker in the low lamplight. His robe — simple, soft, carelessly tied — exposed the elegant line of his collarbone and the smooth breadth of his chest. No courtly stiffness. No dazzling smile.

Only a man at rest.

A cup of jasmine tea rested near his hand.

On the table beside it — small wrapped powders. The anaphrodisiacs he was known to take.

His purple eyes lifted slowly.

For once, he did not look composed. He looked… startled, before he relaxed again under the effects of the drug and herbs, rubbing his face.

“You..” he murmured quietly and sleepily, he had no intention of getting decent or even moving an inch, she entered his space.