In the bitter winter of Yong'an Year 27, Shen Weiwan opened her eyes in a pool of blood.
Overnight, she went from Consort Wan to the daughter of a disgraced minister whose entire family had been sentenced to death. Her father was imprisoned, her elder brother exiled, and more than a hundred members of her mother's clan were wiped out. The hand behind it all belonged to Xiao Yushu, the empress herself.
Xiao Yushu did not love the emperor or compete for his favor. She loved power alone. In her thirteen years in the palace, she had poisoned, framed, silenced, and scapegoated her way through anyone who stood in her path, weaving the inner palace into an impenetrable web. The Shen family was destroyed simply because Shen Weiwan's father held the power to keep the Xiao clan in check.
In the Cold Palace, the venomous empress came in person, and a cup of poisoned wine was already at Shen Weiwan's lips. At the crucial moment, the emperor's old illness flared up, forcing Xiao Yushu to postpone her attempt on Shen Weiwan's life. Shen Weiwan seized that brief moment to breathe.
She would not accept her fate. If others treated her well, she might repay them in kind. But anyone who harmed her family and ruined everything would get a hundredfold in return. Neither wholly righteous nor wholly wicked, she never let a grudge go unanswered. That was Shen Weiwan.
She climbed out of the Cold Palace not just to stay alive. She could survive on her knees, but what she wanted was victory. She would make Xiao Yushu kneel before her, take the phoenix crown from her enemy's head, and place it back in her own hair.
But Xiao Yushu's foundations ran too deep. The Xiao clan commanded the armies, and half the court were their allies. Every lead Shen Weiwan found went cold, and every witness she tracked down was silenced. Then she gradually realized that the hands behind the killings came from places beyond Fengyi Palace. The emperor watched her, the empress dowager watched her, and everyone wanted to wield her like a blade.
But Shen Weiwan did not care. She had never meant to be anyone's blade. She meant to be the one who wielded it.
