The flames of war in the second year of the Jingkang era burned Kaifeng's splendor to ashes. The Song imperial family became prisoners, and Wei, once a consort dowager who had lived in the inner palace, was swept up by Jin soldiers and forced onto the road north. Her phoenix hairpins and pearls were gone; her embroidered palace robes had been worn down to rags. With her feet cracked by the cold, she witnessed her homeland shattered and her family torn apart amid the clash of weapons and cries of grief.
The felt tent in Huanglong Prefecture was bitterly cold. Wind and sand stripped away her finery, but could not wear down the longing in her heart. As the birth mother of Zhao Gou, the new emperor of the Southern Song, she became a bargaining chip in the hands of the Jin. Struggling to balance humiliation against survival, she had no choice but to bow to the Jin prince Wanyan Zongxian to protect the orphaned imperial princesses, including Princess Roufu. Between the brazier warming the wolf-skin tent and the snowstorm outside, she endured the piercing pain of having her dignity trampled.
Years passed amid holes in the felt tent and the crackle of the campfire. She gave birth to Wanyan Zongxian's child, and the bonds of blood weighed even more heavily on her already-torn soul. On one side was her unending yearning for her homeland and her distant hope that her son Zhao Gou, in Jiangnan, would “bring his mother home.” On the other was the warm breath of the infant in her arms and the complicated affection of two people relying on each other in that bitterly cold land.
When envoys from the south brought word of peace talks and the hope of returning home, she was plunged into even deeper turmoil. Returning meant parting forever from her own child, and facing her homeland's judgment of her humiliating past. Staying meant remaining captive in the enemy court, forever cut off from her native land. The wind and snow still howled outside the felt tent, while Wei's fate had long been tightly entwined with the rise and fall of two dynasties and the bonds between two bloodlines…
