Aylin, a warrior’s daughter from the northern border, accidentally saved the emperor and was granted the haunted, desolate Black Cypress Court. Deprived of food by the jealous palace steward Livia, she tilled wasteland with her superhuman strength, whose homegrown veggies eased the Empress Dowager’s pain. She met Emperor Kael, who hid his identity as a farmhand. They grew close amid assassinations and court plots. Aylin defended the frontier with farming tactics, crushed the prime minister’s treason. As empress, she broke aristocratic monopolies, revitalized the famine-stricken empire with farmland and fine seeds.
