Page 92 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“Scarletxiaojie,” the girl said when she saw me, bowing again.

“No, no, don’t bow to me,” I said, mortified that even the kitchen servants already knew my name, and worried that she’d fall face-first into the tea tray before we could reach her.

The girl looked perplexed, but the prince only kept drawing closer, flashed his I-am-the-Crown-Prince-of-China smile, and let forth a torrent of nervous babbling.

“Zilan and I were just taking a walk, discussing different kinds of tea leaves, which I know is a suspiciously boring topic of conversation but I assure you I am a thoroughly boring person—Zilan will tell you—and I wanted her to try all the different kinds we have, so we headed for the kitchen rather than call for someone because we were already so close and you know how impatient royalty can be! So could you—”

The girl was saved from more of the prince’s word vomit when she finally, mercifully, reached the puddle on the floor and slipped backward with a startled yelp.

The prince grabbed her arm to steady her. The teacups rattled, but the prince took the tray in his other hand and smoothly passed it to me. “Zilan, it’s spilled a bit,” he said. “Clean it up, would you?”

He turned back to the servant girl, standing closer than he should have. He grasped her arm with sickening gentleness, examining her hand.

“Are you all right?” the prince said, while I slid out a packet of citrine from my sleeve and dumped it into the teapot, then slammed the lid back on quickly. But all my subtlety was utterly unnecessary, because the servant was wholly transfixed by the prince.

“You didn’t get burned, did you?” he said.

“No,” the girl said, the word a stunned whisper. “I mean, no, Your Highness, I’m fine. Please forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said, smiling.

“Here’s your tray,” I said, probably too loudly, shoving it at her. “I cleaned up the spill.”

The prince immediately released the servant and took a step back. The girl bowed to me, fumbling for the tray, her face bright red. She looked at me like she thought I would eat her alive.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but what is it that you wanted?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” I said, grabbing the prince’s arm. “You shouldn’t keep the Empress waiting.”

The girl’s eyes went wide at the reminder, and she bowed once more before hurrying off. The moment she turned the corner, I slapped the prince’s shoulder.

“I said distract her, not seduce her!”

“I only spoke to her!” he said, holding his hands up. “Are my words that seductive?”

I smacked him again, harder. “You can’t just touch servants!”

“I was helping her!”

I raised my hand again, but this time, I halted when the prince started laughing.

“Why are you laughing?”I said, clenching my fist.

He shook his head, trying and failing to hide his smile behind his sleeve. “It’s just that, the last time you hit me, you became my concubine,” he said. “Are you sure you want to do it again? Who knows what will happen this time.”

I turned away so he wouldn’t see my burning face. “This time, there’s no one to stop me from beating you to death,” I said, grabbing his sleeve and dragging him back down the hall.

We waited in the prince’s room because I felt sick with nerves and feared the prince would simply blurt out our plan to the first member of court he ran into. All afternoon, I was certain that someone would burst inside to tell us that someone had tried to poison the Empress and that every servant was going to be executed as penance. But as the hours passed and both the prince and I pretended to read our scrolls, the halls stayed still and quiet.

I passed the packet of jade back and forth in my hands. It was almost time for the Empress’s evening tea, the dose that mattered. The servants would have changed shifts, so a different girl would be serving the Empress and it wouldn’t be hard to pull the same trick twice. Just to be certain, the prince had sent the first servant girl home early.

It was my day off from training, and normally I would have spent it with my cousins. I felt like a guest overstaying my welcome in the prince’s room as the shadows grew longer, the day stretching quietly on. The prince seemed equally uneasy but had given up the pretense of reading, instead focusing on overfeeding Durian.

“He’s already grown so much,” he said, holding the duck up to show me, as if it didn’t follow me around all day long. It used to be half the size of my palm, but now it sat comfortably in the prince’s larger hand.

“You feed him too much,” I said. “He’s going to explode from bread crumbs like all your other pets.”

“Do you think he’s old enough to meet them?” the prince said, clutching Durian to his chest. “Do you think they’d like him?”

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