The holding cells of Shinju rattle with drift. They are built in such a wretched way that every gust of wind goes to the spine of the structure and freezes everything from within. Each stone turned sharp with a chill that it could cut and burn. An Ah sat in the middle of the cell, keeping a wide berth from the mice infected hey and cursing Shinju winters as her teeth clattered.
Young master Kang could be a vicious man when holding a grudge, she was learning. All this while when she had been under the impression that she moved him, he had been pulling strings of all three of them, until finally Dong Jin had succumbed and spilled what little he had known.
Fear curls itself in the pit of her stomach, where hunger and anger churn together. Dong Jin lost his senses when he was frightened. What was she to do if everything he had revealed had already reached the ears of the emperor? What chance did she have against the word of the emperor's last surviving kin?
