Slowburrn Stories

Shen Meiling has seventeen performance strategies and she has used all of them successfully for six years. The merchant's beautiful daughter - charming, gracious, perfectly calibrated for every social occasion. No one sees through the performance. That has always been the point. Wen Shuonan sees through it in three seconds. Twice-widowed, quiet in the way of men who have been through grief and stopped wasting words, the magistrate official dismisses her carefully arranged smile before dinner is served. He is not unkind about it. He simply does not need it. He is more interested in the woman underneath. Meiling does not know what to do with this. She has been performing herself for so long she has begun to forget which parts are performance and which parts are real. Then there is Wen Xia. His daughter. Six years old, who has already lost two mothers and who cannot be charmed and who looks at Meiling on the first day with the direct assessment of a child who knows exactly what she is looking for and will know immediately if she doesn't get it. And somewhere in the background: Shen Daxiong, her impossible brother, about to cost everyone something.