Slaughter in the Deep Palace: Schemes of the Phoenix Tower

[Clear-headed, dangerously unhinged beauty + high-IQ psychological warfare + everyone plots, only to be outplayed + an emperor willingly wrapped around her finger]

On the eve of entering the palace, Yun Yao burns the copy of Lessons for Women her father sent her. As the flames leap over the words “support the family,” a fierce light kindles in her eyes. “The Yun family wants a pawn. I want the phoenix throne.” The ashes scatter into the night breeze. She strokes her court dress and smiles. “If I’ve entered the game, why shouldn’t I be the one moving the pieces?”

When she first earns the emperor’s favor, Xiao Zhuo grips her wrist. “Are you afraid?” She lowers her neck, revealing its delicate curve, but her voice is astonishingly steady. “I’m afraid that after Your Majesty has me, you’ll never be able to look at another woman.” The candle crackles as a dark flame kindles in the emperor’s eyes.

When the Noble Consort accuses her of practicing witchcraft, she rips open her sleeve in public to reveal her virginity mark. When the Empress Dowager gives her poisoned wine, she drinks it with a smile, then slips the antidote into the mouth of the empress dowager’s own grandson. Ministers rage that “the Yun girl is mad,” but Xiao Zhuo sweeps her onto the imperial desk before everyone. “Mad? I spoiled her.”

On the night the hidden guards attempt to assassinate the emperor, a shard of porcelain presses against her neck. The emperor, his dragon robe soaked with blood, demands hoarsely, “Do you want the empire to be buried with me?” She laughs and sighs. “This concubine failed to discipline her servants. I can only atone with my death.”

On the night she is crowned empress, he bites her ear and presses her about her true feelings. She strokes the old wound over his heart and smiles. “When Your Majesty said you didn’t believe me, I fed my true feelings to the dogs.” Outside the hall, dark storm clouds gather. The ink on the secret report hidden in her sleeve is still wet: [The Yun family is plotting rebellion. They must be executed.]

“Wicked empress!” The curses pierce the palace walls. Yet the new emperor will always remember the night she burned three blood-written letters: the empress dowager’s crimes, the princes’ secrets, and the prescription for a sterilizing drug all turned to butterflies in the flames. Black dragon embroidery winds around crimson phoenix feathers, like a green mountain willingly hemming in a wildfire across the plains.

“Everyone says I let her deceive me all my life.”

“What they don’t know is that I was the one who first tore the empire into a prison, begging her to enter the game.”