The General's Substitute Groom

In Chen, where women rule and men are held beneath them, the Duan family of Nanzhao raised two brothers unequally. Duan Yanfeng was the one they kept whole. His twin, Duan Yanzhan, was made into a Shadow Blood, bound by a blood contract to absorb the injuries and the pain meant for his brother, and he had taken them since he was small. The Third Princess Yuan Qing was humiliated on the battlefield by Nanzhao's God of War. To settle it she had him brought to her as her consort. The man delivered to her looked delicate and pleasant and she did not know she had been given the wrong brother. Duan Yanzhan went in his brother's place, wanting to break the contract and get his own life back, and staying close to Yuan Qing because she had the Ice Continuation Herb that could keep him alive long enough to do it. They tested each other and used each other, and something else grew alongside that. The intrigues of the court and the truth about where the brothers came from turned out to run into each other, and the two of them ended up on the same side against the Fourth Princess Yuan Li, who wanted the throne, and against Duan Yanfeng, who had been directing things from behind his brother.