My fingers are like spiders drifting over memories in my webbed brain. The husks of the dead gaze up at me, and my teeth sink in and I speak their ghosts.

Zhan has been sent to find her grandfather, a man accused of killing not only Zhan's family, but every man, woman, and child in their village.

What she finds is a shell of a man, a city of angry secrets, a family dissolved by ambition, and a web of deceit that will test the very foundations of a world she thought she understood.

First was the murder and the murder and the murder and this moment: I cried, and Prince Tsui's bloody, fat hand stroked my hair. He whispered in my ear, Shh. . . .