The night in the Cold Palace was as bitterly cold as a frozen, bottomless pool.
The bitter taste of poisoned wine still lingered at the root of her tongue, burning through her insides until they seemed to knot together. Shen Wu curled up in a corner strewn with rotting straw. Her throat felt as if it were filled with molten iron, and every breath brought a stinging, bloody rasp.
She knew that scent all too well. It was blood. Betrayal. The blood of all 103 members of her Shen family, smeared across the dragon robe of the man she had loved for ten years, the man who had ultimately pushed her into hell with his own hands: Xiao Jue.
Fragments of memory were sharper than knives, again and again flaying what remained of her consciousness.
