Zilan dreams of becoming a royal alchemist, of providing for her family by making alchemical gold and gems for the wealthy to eat in order to stay young forever. But for now, she's kept food on the table by practicing an illegal form of alchemy: resurrecting the dead. When Zilan travels to the capital to complete her imperial exams, she finds a city teeming with death and gold. As she works to outmatch the best alchemists in the country, she becomes tangled in the dangerous political games of the royal family-from which there might be no escape.