Everyone in the capital knows that every beauty who disappears into Minister Luo’s rear courtyard carries him one step higher in office.
Born mute—or so the household believes—his ninth daughter survives by making herself small and useful to the family’s favored eldest daughter.
As sisters are sold, married, and sacrificed for the ambitions of men, Ah Jiu realizes that obedience will never buy her freedom.
To escape the Luo estate alive, she must wager the one thing society says determines a woman’s future: her face.