When I woke, I was lying on a carved wooden bed in the Summer Palace. Memories flooded my mind, telling me I had become Empress Dowager Cixi’s niece, Yehenara Wanzhen.
Outside the window, it was late autumn of 1884. The Sino-French War raged, while my aunt diverted naval funds to rebuild Qingyi Garden.
“Wanzhen, what do you think of this peacock screen?” Cixi stroked her jade nail guards, utterly unaware that soldiers on the Vietnamese front were bleeding and dying.
I gazed at her well-preserved profile and remembered that this woman would go on to sign countless treaties that stripped China of its rights. Suddenly, my hand reached for the golden hairpin in my hair.
At midnight, I carried ginseng tea into the bedchamber. As Li Lianying watched with a cold stare, the moment the hairpin pierced the empress dowager’s throat, the eunuch started to scream. I spun around and slit his throat with a dagger I’d hidden earlier.
The palace lanterns shone in the pool of blood. Beneath Cixi’s pillow, I found the jade seal used to rule from behind the curtain.
