Mu Zhao is the most doted-on princess in Great Yin, the Princess Zhaoyang. Her father cherishes her, and her three elder brothers compete to spoil her. When she smiles, the emperor can forgive three taxes.
When she was fifteen, Great Yan defeated Great Yin and demanded that its “most noble princess” be sent as a hostage. Her father signed the treaty with red-rimmed eyes. For seven years in Great Yan, she was passed around among princes and nobles like a plaything. By the time she returned, she was nothing but skin and bones. The palace servants mocked her as filthy behind her back. Her father turned away from her, and her eldest brother merely said, “See that she’s settled.”
Three years later, she died of illness on a winter night beneath a thin quilt. The only person at her bedside was a hostage from Great Yan, lower in status than she was. He clasped her hand and said, “If there’s another life, let me stand in front of you and shield you.”
When she opened her eyes again, she was fourteen. The magnolias were in bloom, her father had come in person to feed her soup, and all three of her brothers stood before her, safe and sound.
The treaty that would send her to her death was still ten months away.
This time, she would not be anyone’s pawn. The envoys from Great Yan, her enemies from her previous life, and Yelv He, the man who had humiliated her so cruelly: she would bring them all to their knees with her own hands. But she also remembered the young hostage who had protected her in the mud for seven years, whose name she never learned before she died.
His name was Xiao Yan.
This time, she would rescue him. She would protect him. She would make sure he could stand proudly in the sunlight and tell everyone: This hostage from Great Yan, whom Princess Zhaoyang raised, is the one person Mu Zhao will hold on to for the rest of her life.
