The scalpel is still suspended beneath the operating-room lights when Su Yao opens her eyes again. She has become the discarded daughter of the Chu prime minister’s household, jilted by the crown prince and made a laughingstock.
The mourning hall is cold and silent. Clutching half of the jade pendant left behind by the original owner, she hears her stepmother wailing hypocritically outside. A chill rises at her fingertips: this body has clearly been slowly poisoned.
While gathering herbs outside the city, she comes across a man covered in blood. His dark robes are soaked through with crimson, and when he opens his eyes, his gaze is colder than an ice-forged blade. She acts out of a healer’s compassion, never realizing that saving him will ensnare her with the one man in the capital she should never have crossed.
He says, “My life is yours. And so, naturally, are you.”
He clears every obstacle from her path, yet also knocks on her window in the dead of night, fingers stroking the pulse at her wrist as he says obsessively, “Stay away from those imperial physicians. Your medical skills are for my use alone.”
When an epidemic runs rampant, she uses modern medicine to turn the tide, only to be accused of treason. As the court seethes with intrigue, he defies every official to protect her. The possessiveness surging in his eyes leaves her shaken.
Only when she finds a secret letter beneath his pillow, bearing the words “The Death of the Liu Family,” does she realize that the tenderness of this sickly, obsessive prince conceals the truth behind her transmigration.
As he watches her hands tremble while she opens the letter, he suddenly smiles, his eyes filled with an obsession so intense it cannot be dispelled. “Now, you can’t leave.”
Did she save a life, or become entangled in a bond that will ruin them both?
Is what he offers love, or a cage from which she cannot escape?
The half-jade pendant grows hot, reflecting the ever more violent power struggles stained red with blood behind them.
