Thrones Before Thorns

There was a prophecy at court that an ill star had come down to take the throne. Ten years before, a marshal's household was cut down in one night. His daughter Shen Jinshu came out of it, and she remembered the blood coming off his armour. She spent those ten years out of sight. She came back into the palace as a consort under the name Lin Wanqing and wore that face as if it had been hers from birth. On a cold night in Changming Palace she stood over the imperial desk and ran a finger along the blood on it. What the emperor said to her at night she took out of the room with her. King Mu kept the tally that moved troops, and she got close enough to it to stand on. Xiao Yan, one of the guards, had wounded her once; she brought him round, and after that he cut where she pointed. The consorts working against her had old families behind them, and she went through them a house at a time. Red plum came down outside Jinluan Hall while she did it.