By the age of eighteen, Yan Shi Ning has become something of a mystery in the capital. She is the prime minister’s eldest daughter, well educated, beautiful, and known for her gentle manners, yet not a single marriage proposal has reached her doorstep. People quietly wonder whether she is simply too difficult to approach or whether something about her has been deliberately kept hidden. Yan Shi Ning never bothers correcting their guesses. Letting others misunderstand her has always been easier than explaining the truth.
She learned that lesson years earlier. After losing her mother, she was brought back to the prime minister’s residence, where every word and every expression seemed capable of causing trouble. Before her death, her mother left her with one piece of advice, keep her temper under control if she wanted to survive among powerful people. Yan Shi Ning listened. The outspoken girl she once was slowly disappeared behind the image of a soft-spoken young lady who rarely argued and almost never complained. The act worked so well that even people who had watched her grow up believed it without question.
That quiet life begins slipping away as her younger half-sister prepares to marry into the imperial family. Suddenly, Yan Shi Ning’s unmarried status becomes everyone’s concern. Relatives who barely paid attention to her start discussing suitable husbands, invitations to banquets become impossible to avoid, and every gathering feels less like a celebration than another round of careful negotiations disguised as polite conversation.
Those banquets also place her in front of people she would rather avoid, especially Prince Pei Jin. To most of the capital, he is courteous, refined, and impossible to dislike. Yan Shi Ning knows better. She remembers enough about him to realize that the warm smile he shows everyone else hides a calculating mind. The problem is that Pei Jin seems to recognize something similar in her. Before long, every conversation between them turns into a quiet contest, each testing the other while pretending nothing unusual is happening.
