Amid the deep palace, the blooms have passed— the…

Su Tangwan was a new palace maid in the flower chamber, born with face blindness. She couldn’t read expressions to save her life, but she had a gift for tending plants. The ninth prince, Jun Yichen, was notoriously called the cold-faced demon. His mother had died young, and his older brothers kept him so oppressed he could barely breathe, so he wrapped himself tightly in thorns to survive. One day, Su Tangwan was planting bluebell flowers in the imperial garden. Instead of fawning over him, she simply handed him a flower hoe. To everyone else, this was an unforgivable slight, but to Jun Yichen, it was ironically the only genuine gesture in the entire deep palace. For the first time, a crack formed in his proud solitude—right there in the soil.