Summary
At the palace banquet, thirty-seven people were poisoned. Only my wine cup remained perfectly clean.
Across the hall, over the sound of weeping, the emperor looked at me and said, “Empress, explain yourself.”
Kneeling amid the bloodstains, I finally understood: this poisoning had never been meant to kill him. It was meant to force me to reopen that old case from ten years ago, the one that had been sealed shut forever.