The Winter Within Her

Hayami Homura is the presumptive Empress of Galar, but to the court, she is defined by three tragic truths: she is the eldest daughter of Emperor Junichiro, the product of his illicit love affair, and the only drop of ice to be found in her family of fire.

A beautiful, breathing sin-and the constant, living reminder of the Emperor's heart-throb lust-Hayami is ostracized in both the media and the palace. To the public, she is a stoic statue. To her step-mother, the Empress Consort, she is a target for venomous rage and immature ridicule. All while her step-sisters, the "legitimate" children of the Emperor, capture the region's heart. Her step-mother believes they deserve the throne.
Not Hayami.
Not the half-breed.

For twenty-three years, she has endured the searing heat of her step-mother's hatred, and the abuse has hardened her into something chilly; a fortress of frost to survive the neglect. But where daylight brings scorn, darkness brings liberation.

Soon, "Jasmine" was born.

In the vast, breathless freedom of the night, Jasmine is everything Hayami cannot be: bold, reckless, alive. But her title is growing closer, and a forbidden romance is starting to thaw her too-guarded heart. The lines between a perfect princess and a nocturnal leader are beginning to blur.
Leading two lives is a dangerous game, and when the ice finally shatters, when the mask slips, it threatens to ruin not just her-

-but the very empire she is destined to rule.