She woke into a man’s body thirty years ago and learned to be lethal before she learned how to love. Dongfang Li is feared as the right-hand of a rising cult—cold, precise, unstoppable. When she rescues a broken courtesan with a ruined body and a buried name—Xue Qianxun—she intends to use the woman as a shield and a story. Instead, she finds someone who keeps stealing the cracks in her armor. This is a reborn story: a woman from another life, trapped in a dangerous father's robe, choosing to rewrite ruin into power. She will trade cruelty for protection, carve bloodlines with her sword, and gamble everything on a blind girl who smiles like a threat. Secrets leak from every banquet and every alley; enemies gather like tides. If Dongfang Li is to survive the next year she must make impossible bargains, burn old myths, and decide whether the one person she cradled is a pawn—or the last thing that can save her. Who will become the monster? Who will become their salvation? The first move has already been made.
13 Chapters
