[Two formidable leads + serious drama + political intrigue + fantasy + mutual unrequited love]
[Quick-witted young woman versus a scheming, devoted man]
In the winter of the first year of Kangjia, Pei Yan pawned three things:
Her loose strands of hair, to buy the mad emperor’s life;
The imperial decree she had altered, to buy back her beloved’s freedom;
And the final tear of rouge, in which she staked every last shred of her goodwill, betting that the history books would change “calamity” to “female phoenix.”
She thought it was a fair bargain.
Until she discovered:
The man who met her in dreams was himself a deception.
Blood and tears had raised the weak, kind little rabbit into a beast with fangs.
Behind the fate her grandfather had gone to such lengths to conceal lay an even filthier scheme.
In the end, the price she set for this rouge was wrong.
That day, she laid out a game of mountains and rivers;
That night, she melted every gold vessel in the palace to forge chains;
And at last, before the historian’s trembling brush, she tossed something down with a soft laugh:
In that charred vine bracelet lay the only counterfeit of her life:
The boyhood promise “I’ll protect you” had, it turned out, never been spoken by anyone.
