Shen Yuan was a living pawn trapped in the mire. Pei Yan, the pale-faced chief eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, personally pulled her from the stench of corpses in the Northern Third Institute and the filth of the laundry rooms. He gave her medicine, taught her to listen, and ordered her to watch.
“Your eyes will be my light in the dark.”
She investigated the deadly poison Yuchen Powder and touched the bloodstained remnants of an old riverworks case, struggling to survive in his silent game of chess.
They said the Ninth Thousand Year had no heart. But when he crushed her enemies, the blood slipping between his fingers left a trace of warmth only for her palm.
“Shen Yuan,” he said outside the abandoned palace on a snowy night, his breath brushing the scabbed wound on her face. “If you hate me, then live on as the one nail in my game that no one can pull out.”
It was only when Shen Yuan accidentally stumbled upon Pei Yan’s secret that she learned he had long considered her his own. She was also the only one who discovered Pei Yan’s “secret of being a fake eunuch.”
