Chapter 1: A Conventional Wish

Twelve hours into a sixteen-hour shift, my feet had stopped sending pain signals to my brain.

The convention center was a zoo of bright wigs and foam swords. Kids, (they were all kids to me) paraded past in costumes that must have taken months to build.

June - New York - Angel and Maud

Maud’s condo had a view of Manhattan that was supposed to impress, but Angel paced past it without a glance. She was getting big. Not quite fat, but big; about six months pregnant but her abdominal muscles hid most of the changes.

April - London - Angel

Angel rode her Honda out to the edge of London, where the city turned to flats and then fields, to see the place where Angel had been made—not born but shaped.

The façade of St. Margaret’s Home for Girls was the color of old blood, the paint peeling in strips revealing the bones underneath. The sign out front was warped by sun and rain: “Empowering Girls For a Brighter Tomorrow.”

Late March - New York - Mark Steele’s Penthouse

Mark tried to be helpful. Really.

He knew what posh girls used on their faces though he never really had the money to buy any of it when he was working at the Licorice Elephant. So he bought Angel three types of cleanser, and a Sephora haul large enough to bankrupt a minor country. The first morning, he left a care package on her side of the sink: organic moisturizer, a detangling brush, a perfect lipstick matched to her skin.

Angel found it and said nothing.

January - London - Mark (as Angel)

The weeks blurred into each other like smudged lipstick.

Every morning, Mark got up, put on his gym kit, and ran laps around the canals, lungs burning, legs raw. If you looked past the stares from construction workers and the old women walking their dogs, it almost felt normal. Sweat, pain, the grind. He clung to it—routine was the only thing left that felt like his.

When billionaire financier Mark Steele opens an anonymous Christmas delivery—a rare First Folio containing a strange, shimmering parchment—his meticulously controlled life begins to unravel. Across the city, Angelique “Angel” Valentine, a sharp-tongued dancer with debts, secrets, and a crippled friend to protect, is blackmailed into entertaining a mysterious guest at a corporate Christmas party. Their worlds collide in a night of lust and deception—and by morning, Mark wakes up in Angel’s body, and Angel in his.

Trapped in a life of cheap wine, bruised knees, and rent arrears, Mark must learn to survive as the woman he once dismissed. Across town, Angel revels in her new power—money, muscle, and a Manhattan skyline at her feet. But as each struggles to master the other’s world, the lines between identity, class, and desire blur. Beneath the sex and glamour lies a simple question: when you strip away money, body, and name—what’s left of the self?

Dear Reader,

It has been 20 years since I last wrote in my journal.

*

My old journals and letters are no longer with me but I have some faith they remain preserved in Thamud where my husband and master still reigns.

I now sit in an inn in the land of the Qin where I have paid for a handsome room for a week, awaiting the arrival of my old friend, the Princess Pingyang.

Chapter 17 - The Tale of Crispin, Chancellor of Ajanabha.

[Scribe's Note: A description of Zhou Yu’s household taken from “Letters to the Emperor,” a collection of love letters and erotic tales written to the Zeeshan Emperor by his concubine and published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his reign.]

*

Chapter 15 – Children

Dear Reader,

Are you the same reader who has been with me all these years?

I know that I have been neglectful but writing in a journal hardly seems to be a good use of time though I suppose some form of self-reflection might be beneficial.

The palace is alive with children, and not only my own Safin and my beautiful baby girl, Zeinab.

[Scribe's Note: It is unclear if any other entries were written by Lady Zhou between Chapters 10 and 11 of this transcription. But if there were, they have either been lost or excised. The following section occurs in the third year of the reign of King Idis II of Thamud. It has been four years since the last entry transcribed.]

Chapter 11 Three Years Later . Absent Friends

Dear Reader,

I take up my pen again with some reluctance. But I must write.

Eumelia is dead.

The Story So Far: A story taken from the Journal of Lady Zhou Yu, (known to us as Amber) – a slave girl living in the capital city of Thamud. A war currently rages between Talos and Thamud. Amber is a former Chinese military contractor from Earth (Ki) who has been kidnapped and transported to the planet, An. Now transformed into a slave girl, she has been tasked with infiltrating the Qin (the Chinese-like people of An) in order to regain her male body and return to Earth.

Chapter 2 I Am A Slave Girl

There are legends that a group of travelers from ancient Qin arrived in this land a thousand years ago bringing with them their culture and their language.