Meihua, Princess of Nindo and only heir to 57th Emperor of Xi, learns the marriage she was looking forward to is meant to be a cage to keep her bound and locked away in the Inner Palace. In a moment of defiance, she runs, escaping the Palace and Capitol in an attempt to find freedom. But a Princess with no experience beyond the walls of her palace has no place in the starving, bandit ridden corners of the empire. Determined to survive on her own, Meihua sets out to the learn the truth about her long-bound magic and the reason the empire is so determined to seal her away.
After nearly starving to death, Meihua is taken in by poor, but kind rice farmers and learns the state of the empire is not at all what she has been taught. Realizing she needs to learn to master her magic and abnormally powerful Qi, she joins rogue demonic cultivator Xuan Xiu on his travels. They’re soon joined by a powerful woman from West of the Spine of the World, an ordinary man who keeps getting stuck in extraordinary circumstances, and a fae with a serpent’s tongue as they make their way across the Land of Song and Snow in an effort to discover the great secrets of the empire and themselves.
A Caged Phoenix is the first of a fantasy adventure romance trilogy chronicling Meihua’s fall from nobility to her years as a wandering cultivator and her eventual rise to Empress and the love and loss she suffers along the way.
