Throughout the Great Yan court, everyone knows that Prince An Yan Su has been bedridden with a chronic illness for ten years.
Frailer than a reed, coughing up blood every day and never free of medicine, he seems ready to die at the slightest breeze. In the capital, everyone assumes he is a useless prince who won't live much longer, the most insignificant pawn in court, someone anyone can look down on with impunity.
But no one knows...
His ten years of illness are all an act.
The blood he coughs up is theater, his frailty a disguise, and his long, critical illness an enormous deception staged for the imperial family, the empress's faction, and the powerful ministers.
The prince's manor is full of hidden guards, but only Dark Five is the blade he raised with his own hands: the most loyal and most efficient of them all.
He obeys without complaint, suffers in silence, and never resents his lot. He endures beatings and lets blades pierce his bones, asking only to keep his prince safe and at peace for a lifetime.
For ten years, the prince has plotted from his sickbed, setting the board for the whole realm and calculating every twist of the human heart.
He had meant to topple the court and clear every injustice. In the end, the only one he managed to protect was the young man in this world bound to him by blood.
