Summary
Guan Jiang Li is the only sturdy child in a sickly family. When a monk promises her parents that she can nurture her siblings’ bones beside her heart, the price seems strange but bearable: at eighteen, she will become a beast. Her childhood friend Qi Yao promises to recognize her whatever form she takes. But her eighteenth birthday brings neither his return nor the future she imagined. As famine and war ravage the realm, Jiang Li follows the Dipper north, searching for him and confronting the terrible cost of the fortunes promised to her family.