Path of the Paper Queen

Fu Lanyin woke up with muddy sleeves, a bad headache, and a death date she had seen before in a book. She had once been the youngest child in an ordinary family in modern China, the kind of child who learned early how to save money, read people, and keep trouble small. That habit kept her alive when she opened her eyes inside the body of a stepmother villainess who was meant to die for someone else’s happy ending. Lanyin remembers every ugly turn of the plot, so she refuses to play the cruel woman the world expects. Instead, she uses her quiet skills to protect her paper mill, outthink court fools, and stay one step away from the knife. The trouble is that kindness makes people notice her, a...