A Heart Set on Regicide

In the ninth year of Wude, on the eve of the Xuanwu Gate Incident.

When Shen Qingci crawls out of a mass grave, the left side of her face has been ruined and her entire family wiped out. The world believes the eldest Shen daughter has died, never realizing that the timid, humble laundry maid “Anu,” her face covered in scars, is carrying a heart full of poison-laced hatred as she steps into Chang’an’s most dangerous game of power.

The Prince of Qin is suspicious, so she acts foolish. He is cold-hearted, so she pledges her loyalty. While the Crown Prince’s beauties cast sultry glances, she quietly prepares an incense that can counter all poisons. While the noblewomen compete to outshine each other, she secretly lays a deadly trap.

Everyone laughs at her ugliness and vulgarity, seeing her as no more than a plaything the Prince of Qin keeps on a whim.

But little by little, she realizes the game has gone off course.

The hand that taught her to read and write once wiped the grime from her cheek. The eyes that scrutinize her with suspicion show a flicker of concern when she coughs in the dead of night. More terrifying still, deep in his gaze when he looks at her disfigured left cheek, she finds something that makes her heart tremble... tenderness?

“Your Highness,” she asks, trembling in his arms, “what if I had ulterior motives from the very beginning?”

He kisses her scar and chuckles softly, almost with a sigh. “Then see those motives through. Take my life as well, if you must.”

On the fourth day of the sixth month of the ninth year of Wude, blood fills the sky above Xuanwu Gate.

As Shen Qingci, dressed in bloodstained clothes, walks through a mountain of corpses toward the new emperor, soon to ascend the throne, and personally presents him with the tiger tally that commands the armies of the realm

Li Tiance finally sees the fire of revenge that has burned in her eyes for sixteen years.

“So,” he says with a rueful smile, his bloodied fingertips brushing her cheek, “what I held in the palm of my hand was never a pliant beauty.”

“It was a blade meant to slay the emperor.”