The Gentleman of Chaos is a legendary figure with hundreds of royal deaths credited to his hands. When a king of a foreign land is murdered, his twelve-year-old son takes the throne and swears he will avoid being a victim of the Gentleman of Chaos at all costs. His first measure is to lock his younger sister up, strip her of her identity, and fake her death. From now on, he will call her "She," and she will be trained to be the perfect assassin, isolated from the world outside of her brother. When She is deemed ready, the king locks a permanent, magical collar around his sibling's neck, binding her loyalty and honesty to him alone. She follows him everywhere, when he hunts, eats, has sex, and sleeps, ever-watchful for possible usurpers— or worse, the Gentleman of Chaos. When She turns sixteen, the king orders her to get pregnant since his children have all died at birth. She has a child with a guard, who the king claims as his own. She visits the baby's father, where it is revealed that She has a self-given name, Vessai; that Vessai does not identify as a woman; and that he may be in love with Vyren, the guard. Vyren is the first person Vessai has loved since his father. Over the years, the king displays his merciless cruelty in various ways. He orders Vessai to kill a guard Vessai has intentionally misled him to believe is the father of Vessai's child. He squashes rebellions via genocide without remorse. He also becomes increasingly paranoid and aggressive. Vessai's daughter doesn't believe this brutal king is her father and asks to see Vessai, who tells the child that she would be a good queen. After more fragments of paranoia, it is soon revealed that the Gentleman of Chaos, on the verge of death, gave Vessai his title and the task of killing the king in order to save the kingdom from his cruel authority. Vessai had then killed the Gentleman to put him out of his misery, crying for the first time since his father's death. It is also explained that Vessai's brother, not the Gentleman, had murdered their father after finding out he wasn't the heir to the throne. At last, Vessai decides its time for the Gentleman of Chaos to come and orders the king to go alone to the palace chapel. The king, believing Vessai will protect him, goes, only for it to be revealed that the She the king has cultivated is gone, and in her place is the new Gentleman of Chaos. Vessai kills his brother and spends the rest of his life protecting his daughter, the new Queen of the kingdom, and his lover, Veryn, who guides their child.