Page 55 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“I am the Crown Prince because of what she did,” he said. “I thought that was what she wanted—a son to secure her position as Empress. I thought that meant I was safe.” He shook his head. “But the servants say that she’s begged my father to change the line of succession, to write me out of it so that if he dies, the empire belongs to her alone.”

“And has he?”

“No, he’s always refused. But...”

A breeze rushed through the tunnel and the prince looked up sharply, as if expecting someone to appear. I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder, but saw nothing other than endless dark.

The prince sighed, gripping the ends of his sleeves. “Two months ago, something changed. I don’t know why, but my mother seemed...uneasy. Death notices started coming in from my cousins, all over China. Everyone in the House of Li was turning up dead. Every day, my meals were poisoned. I lost twenty taste testers before I fled to Guangzhou to find you. Even now, I’m scared to eat. I hardly sleep. I’ve been attacked...” He trailed off, and in the dim light, I could make out the glossy scar tissue of the scratches near his throat. “I told Mother, but she wasn’t concerned at all. I think... I think now that she’s survived a century on life gold, she’s realized that she doesn’t need me to stay in power. She can be the Empress forever if there’s no one left but her when my father dies.”

I swallowed, though my throat felt full of rocks. When I’d lived in Guangzhou, the royal family had always seemed so untouchable. I had thought the rich had no problems, no worries, no fears.

“Have you told the Emperor?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m not even allowed to see him anymore. The healers say he’s too ill, and since I’m the only legitimate heir, they can’t risk me catching it. Do you understand what I’m saying, Zilan?”

His eyes blazed, begging me to say the treasonous words he had so long avoided. In the tunnels, where wet stones carried our voices into a secret darkness, the thought seemed almost too dangerous to speak. But I had to be certain. “You came to me because the Empress wants you dead,” I whispered.

He nodded, his lips pressed into a tight line. “Yiyang and Gao’an are very far down in the line of succession. If she’s trying to kill them now, that means that there’s almost no one left but me.”

Something splashed in the puddles behind us.

The prince moved in front of me, pressing me into the wet stone walls. I held my breath, but before I could speak, a rabbit hopped in front of us, darting down another tunnel. The prince let out a shaky breath.

“Please don’t tell anyone what’s happened here tonight,” he said, huddling closer to me. “I suppose your siblings already know part of it, but no one else can. It puts all of you in danger.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not interested in angering the Empress,” I said. He stood so close, the gold flecks in his eyes the only light in the darkness. The secret that had begun our relationship had somehow kept growing. Ever since the day I met him in Guangzhou, I’d felt my life starting to unspool, flying fast and far away from me. So much more was at stake now, and a wiser person would have fled.

But I thought about the prince walking through the labyrinth of the central palace in the dark, surrounded by guards who wouldn’t listen to him and a mother who wished him dead. Did he even know how to fight?

“Are you really safe in the palace?” I said.

He shrugged. “I wander a lot at night, so I’m not easy to find. I have guards and taste testers and many locks on my doors. But I think that once I’m the last one on her list, the Empress will come for me, and I won’t be able to stop her.” He looked back at the tunnel where his sisters had disappeared into the shadows, then back at me, a gentle lie of a smile creasing his tired face.

“It’s late,” he said. “I should take you home so I can return before sunrise. I can’t have anyone knowing I rescued my sisters. They’ll likely suspect it anyway, but I don’t want to give them any evidence.”

With that, he turned and walked past me. I followed after him, beginning to feel the lack of sleep catching up to me. I hugged myself as a cold wind wafted through the tunnels, fingers catching at the torn sleeve where the prisoner had grabbed me.

“There was an alchemist in the dungeon,” I said.

The prince didn’t even slow down. “I’m not surprised.”

“I thought you said the Empress didn’t want to waste alchemists?”

“There are noblemen, and servants, and—as you saw—princesses down there too,” the prince said. “If the Empress doesn’t like you, it doesn’t matter who you are. She’ll make sure you never see sunlight again.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

For days, I avoided the royal court, sure that if anyone saw me, they would drag me away in chains, gut me with a spike, and prop me outside the testing grounds as a warning to everyone else.

“If that happened, you would deserve it,” Wenshu said, but he and Yufei humored me all the same, staying in our room to study. Yufei was clearly growing restless and went on long walks after every meal. She told us that more animals had turned up dead in the ward, but no more humans. Yet.

Wenshu still seemed put off by my midnight trip to the palace, hardly looking at me for days, leaving his coat that the prince had borrowed on the hook untouched as if soiled. Both he and Yufei had been so busy quizzing each other, talking over their texts, that at times it seemed they’d forgotten I was there at all. They barely acknowledged when I offered to get food, and Wenshu snapped at me if I interrupted for “pointless” reasons. I stormed out one night after he scolded me, shivering and staring up at the moon from the yard for an hour, and neither of them had looked for me, too busy practicing their recitations. Part of me wished I’d studied the classics like them, rather than trying to be an alchemist. What good were all my transformations if they put me a world away from my family?

It would be easy for them to live without me if I failed my exam. For me, being without them felt like clutching at driftwood in a nauseous sea, but they would always have each other, even if I was gone.

When three days passed without anyone breaking into our room and dragging me off to be executed, I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I was safe.

Then a man came from the royal palace.

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