Commander Liao Shan gets back to the Imperial capital with his cavalry troop after a month in the badlands, to find he has a new mission: escorting a convoy of treasure to the Kingdom of Qiu, an ally of the Empire in the far north-west. To complicate matters, the treasure includes the beautiful young Sixth Prince Yan Jinhai, forced against his will to enter the harem of the vicious King. As the journey progresses, Liao Shan finds his conscience and his heart increasingly in conflict with his orders. And it doesn’t help that the young Prince, kept a virtual prisoner in the Imperial Palace, is hell-bent on escape.

As the journey continues and the relationship between them deepens, events are building which will rock the Empire and turn both their lives upside down.