"And from his heart grew a red, red rose, and from his heart a briar..."

Laurel can make the flowers bloom—what a useless talent. It's never helped him while he was an orphan confined to toil in the muck and murk of the imperial army, until the emperor's peerless granddaughter snatches him up as a chess piece of her own.

A tool. A scholar. The youngest court official. Under Li Qiuyue's tutelage, Laurel blooms into the coldest flower of His Majesty's court.

There's a way to use his useless talent after all. It's just thoroughly horrible.