Shen Zhaoning is the least noticeable concubine-born daughter in the household of the Vice Minister of Revenue.
Everyone thinks she’s gentle and obedient, but no one knows she was secretly raised from childhood to impersonate a princess of the previous dynasty. She excels at music, chess, calligraphy, painting, statecraft, and the art of manipulating people.
At a palace banquet, she dazzles everyone and is forcibly taken as a secondary consort by the Crown Prince. Only on her first night in the Eastern Palace does she learn the truth: she’s just a pawn, one that can be discarded at any time.
But she has never accepted her fate.
When she’s caught in a deadly trap, with her life hanging by a thread, Prince Jing’an, Xiao Yanzhi, offers her an alliance.
On the surface, he’s frail; in truth, he’s dark-hearted and calculating. He has kept a low profile for years, and his hands are stained with more blood than anyone’s. He doesn’t want an obedient pawn. He wants a woman who can stand beside him and rule the realm.
He says, “Be my ally, and I’ll grant you freedom.”
She replies, “I don’t want freedom. I want a world where no one can control a woman’s fate.”
From a pawn standing in for someone else to an empress, from the prison of the inner palace to the pinnacle of the Nine Provinces.
It takes her ten years to tell the world:
Even a pawn can become the one who moves the pieces.
>, Your Majesty, your empress has turned evil.
No. She has finally become herself.
