With the throne not yet secure, the new emperor Xiao Jingyan is trapped in a web of political machinations spun by Chief Minister Xie Tingyun. The sleepless ruler gazes out at night from the corner tower, the agarwood beads on his wrist his only source of warmth. He has no idea that the undercurrents have already seeped through the palace walls.
Shen Qingluan, a female official in the Palace Administration, has cool, composed features that reflect the cold gleam of a silver bookmark. She pieces together her family's bloody tragedy from the fragments of ancient books. When she glimpses the cracks beneath the emperor's disguise in the ink smudges on his memorials, two people who have walked alone through the darkness finally meet.
The orchid of crimson dawn blooms in the hair of Gu Qingge, a princess from the Western Regions, its innocence concealing silver-bell parasites that weave a net for Xie Tingyun. Beneath the sword scars of Jinlin Guard Lin Jingyu, a dark secret about military pay tears open the fog obscuring loyalty and treachery. And the vermilion-stained fingertips of Eunuch Zhao Wuyong, keeper of the imperial seal, are sending a secret message from a pigeon cage to the daughter of an old acquaintance...
When the sincerity uncovered by ancient books meets the falsehood tempered in spices, when the lonely lamp in the corner tower clashes with the shadow of silver-bell parasites beneath the palace walls, the truth wrapped around the agarwood beads will finally bare its blood-red fangs in the fire-ravaged archives of the former dynasty.
