The year the entire Pei family was executed, the eldest legitimate son, Pei Yan, was castrated at nineteen and sent to the palace as a servant. Five years later, he is in charge of the Directorate of Ceremonial, known as the Nine-Thousand-Year-Old. Every official in court lowers their head before him. Only his fiancée, Shen Mingtang, comes to break off their engagement, offering three times the original betrothal gifts. In front of her, he burns half the marriage contract and stuffs the other half back into her hand. "I won't divorce you." She thinks he wants the register of blades held by the Pei family's former subordinates, never realizing that the ledger tucked against her chest is the very one he's after. Three ironclad rules of propriety stand between them: eunuchs may not marry, enter the ancestral hall, or call themselves "I." Yet he inches closer, one step at a time, from three paces to two, until he whispers against her ear, "I want you so badly, I'm going mad." A register of blades reopens an old case; a palace coup gives him a new body. She wants to give him a place in her life that will let him live openly and with dignity.
