Page 94 of The Scarlet Alchemist

I took out my packet of jade and grabbed the prince’s hand, pouring half of it into his palm. “Just in case.”

He nodded, then took off running very unsubtly down the hall. I sighed but turned toward the kitchens, which were oddly silent for a time when they were supposedly preparing dinner. I slid a hand into my satchel just in case and shoved the door open with my shoulder.

The kitchen had shattered into a thousand pieces. Every dish and cup laid broken on the floor, a sharp carpet of porcelain crunching under my feet. The shelves had been ripped from the walls, lying in splinters on the counters, the tables cleaved in half, pots and pans warped on the floor. Blood trickled slowly toward the drain at the center of the room.

At the far end of the kitchen, a starburst of blood painted the wall, dripping down to a pile of corpses beneath it, spines snapped at odd angles, still clutching kitchen knives and iron pans that hadn’t helped them at all. No human could have done this.

I grimaced and kicked a pot out of the way so the blood rushed faster toward the drain, then tightened my satchel and approached the servants.

I lifted one of the cook’s wrists, the limb still pliant, skin bloodless but not yet cold. He hadn’t been dead long, so whatever monster had razed through here couldn’t be far. I jammed the cook’s eyes closed with my thumb but couldn’t quite bring myself to climb the pile of corpses to do the same for the rest. Had the Empress noticed something wrong with her tea and sent her monsters after the kitchen staff? Guilt closed off my throat, the wide eyes of the corpses pinning me in place.

I shook my head. The prince had said that the last time someone tried to poison her, the executions had been a public spectacle to deter future attempts. Besides, none of these bodies even had bite marks. I knew too well that the monsters always went for the throat and drained bodies dry before tearing them apart to lick out the juices. These people looked more like they’d been snapped in half when they got in the way. Judging by the weapons in their hands, they’d definitely tried to confront the monster.

They only hunt what they’re told to, unless you try to stop them, the Moon Alchemist had said. If these people had just cowered or run away, they’d still be alive.

But if the monster had only passed through the kitchens, who was it hunting?

My thoughts flashed to the prince, who I’d just left alone in the halls with nothing but half a packet of jade.

I spun around, slipping and crashing onto all fours, porcelain shards knifing into my hands and knees. I pulled myself up on a counter and took off running toward the Empress’s quarters.

I sprinted across the courtyard, then shoved through the heavy doors to the inner palace, ignoring the sloped decorative bridge in the garden and charging straight through the shallow water to the other side. A suddenbangin the nearest building vibrated under my feet, rippling the water. I charged toward it, following the sound of splintering wood and tearing wallpaper.

The door to one of the inner libraries had collapsed inward, the archway gaping open to the chaos inside. Every shelf had toppled over, covering the floor in wood and paper carnage. It reminded me of the windstorms that raged through the wooden houses of Guangzhou, like a great beast had chewed them up and spit them out. The air smelled of blood.

“Li Hong!” I called, shoving a shelf out of my way so I could see farther into the room.

“Zilan!” a voice called.

I pulled apart the barrier of broken wood and stepped fully into the room.

At first, I thought I was looking at a man made of pure sunlight, only a silhouette of thorny sparkles and violent brightness. Then it stepped forward, out of the light streaming through the painted window at the far end of the library.

Unlike the smooth, river-softened surface of the pearl monsters, this monster’s skin had knife-sharp facets the color of sapphire, each one reflecting a dark image of the room, like a thousand portals into a world of night. Its eyes were an endless blue, the whispers of light in the translucent gemstone like bright tears. Through the rough silhouette, I could barely make out the shape of a man within, the soul tag burned into the back of his neck. I had never seen a sapphire monster before, but I knew from my tedious studies that sapphire was much, much harder than pearl.

The prince had crammed himself into a corner of the library, wielding a jagged piece of wood, the front of his robes painted in blood that I hoped wasn’t his. Our eyes met and he smiled with relief before the monster took a thundering step closer.

I could never cross the chaos of overturned bookshelves to reach him in time. Instead, I fished three firestones from my satchel and slammed my palms onto the floor.

The broken shelves covering the room exploded upward in a flurry of wood chips and clattered down over the monster like heavy rain. With his path now cleared, the prince hurried out of the corner and toward me.

But the monster was faster.

It swiped a jeweled claw in the prince’s path, barely missing his face as its fingers sank into the floor. The prince swung at it with his piece of broken shelf, which instantly burst in his hands.

“You’re not going to break sapphire with wood!” I said, scanning the room for a solution while the monster tried to dislodge its arm from the floor.

“Well, sorry, butmy choice of weapons at the moment is a bit limited!” the prince said, dodging a swipe of the monster’s other hand.

I grabbed a wooden plank and one of the metal backs of the overturned chairs, burning up the ring on my left hand to transform them into a mallet and handle. While the monster was preoccupied with its claw, I managed to heft the hammer and strike at its leg. It hit with a hollowclink, knocking the mallet out of my hands and sending it spinning across the floor. The monster turned and swung at me, thewhooshof its claws tearing through the air far too close to my face.

Clearly, I wasn’t going to stop this monster by breaking it.

As the monster struggled, the light reflected off the soul tag burned into its neck. The Moon Alchemist had said that removing the soul tags was how she killed the monsters after they served their purpose. So maybe I didn’t need to completely disarm the monster. Maybe I could just crack its soul tag until it was unreadable.

I plunged my hand into my satchel and felt around, realizing I only had two firestones left. I’d put off restocking in favor of planning the Empress’s demise, not really expecting to fight for my life tonight.

Without stones of destruction, I would have to break off the soul tag some other way. But I knew for a fact none of the stones on my fingers or in my satchel were strong enough to crack sapphire.

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