Summary
Everyone warns the empress that the newly arrived Concubine Rou is a seductive rival who must be watched. Determined to protect her position and her family, she keeps the beauty away from the emperor: interrupting moonlit dances, rushing over in her nightclothes, and tending her through a fever. The emperor remains safely unenchanted. The empress, however, is beginning to feel rather strange. As palace jealousies give way to a threatened invasion and an emperor willing to abandon his people, the women of the inner palace must decide whom to follow—and what they are prepared to defend.