Page 83 of The Scarlet Alchemist

She didn’t even watch as I jammed a pearl into the mouth of today’s corpse, didn’t comment when I pulled my hand out too slowly and nearly lost my fingers, and only cast a cursory glance at the freshly born pearl monster ripping a rat to shreds.

“Good enough,” she said, standing and waving for me to follow her out of the dungeons.

She observed as I made a batch of gold and then she disappeared, leaving me alone to stir the qi out of a cauldron of hot peasant blood, the smell so sharp that I didn’t even realize when my own nose started bleeding. Instead of thinking about the bodies it came from, I thought about the pay I’d received at the end of last week, an amount so eye-watering that I’d immediately sent half of it to Auntie and Uncle, certain that everyone would smell the money on me and rob me the second I stepped outside.

The Moon Alchemist burst into the room an hour later, looking like someone had spit in her tea.

“You’re not using enough iron,” she said, barely glancing at my pitiful pile of finished life gold. “You need to draw up more of it from the blood, or the gold doesn’t hold together. It’s not supposed to crumble to pieces once you touch it.”

“Is anyone really that picky about their nuggets of eternal youth?” I said, ladling another glob of blood onto my tray.

“Do you think I’m teaching you this for my own entertainment?” the Moon Alchemist asked, slamming her fist onto the table and rattling all the gold nuggets. “Don’t waste my time with more pointless questions.”

My hand froze before setting the ladle down.“More?”I said. I’d hardly asked her anything today.

The Moon Alchemist sighed and leaned back in her chair, glaring up at the ceiling. “You need to deal with the prince,” she said at last.

I dropped the ladle in surprise, trying to snatch it again, but the handle sank to the bottom of the cauldron. “I... What?”

“He comes here every day asking about you,” she said.

“Hedoes?”

The Moon Alchemist crossed her arms. “He’s constantly inquiring as to how you’re doing, how your training is going, if you need anything. I tell him to talk to you himself, but he refuses. I’m not even supposed to tell you this, but if you want to report me for treason, go ahead. I don’t care anymore.”

I gripped the edges of my chair, mortified. I wanted to apologize on his behalf, but it wasn’t like he was my pet that I could scold for bad behavior. He wasn’tmine.

“He’s an annoyance and a distraction,” the Moon Alchemist said, “but I can’t tell him that because he’s the Crown Prince, so go deal with your problems yourself. Quickly.”

That was how I found myself trudging to the prince’s room in the middle of the afternoon. I figured I might as well use the opportunity to ask him if he could subtly find someone to guard my cousins, despite Wenshu’s wishes. Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered the pearl man in the dungeons sucking rat bones clean. That could be my cousins next. Even if they hated me for it, I needed to try to help.

I’d asked the Moon Alchemist about the monster who came for Wenshu and Yufei, but she’d only scowled and said,I already told you, we don’t know whose blood we’re using. It’s possible that someone got your cousins’ blood, or diluted some of yours, but there’s no way to know and we can’t stop making the Empress’s creatures. Get your family some swords and sturdier windows. This is what you signed up for, Scarlet.In hindsight, her impatience might have had something to do with the prince’s visits.

But the prince was not in his room when I came for him. I so rarely sought him out on my own that I felt strangely foolish just standing in his dim bedchamber, so vast without him.

But something else was there.

In the delicate silence of the palace, slow breaths came from inside the closet. Something was waiting for the prince to return.

I hadn’t spoken, so maybe they thought I was him and were preparing to jump out. I thought of the way the Empress looked at him across the dinner table, and a dark ember of rage began to glow within me. I pictured myself returning to his room at night to find him slashed to pieces, his blood spattered across the silk sheets.

As quietly as possible, I drew three pieces of iron from my satchel and transformed them into a blade. As I drew closer to the closet, the sounds silenced.

I curled my fingers around the lip of the door and shoved it open.

Two girls screamed, cowering against the back wall.

It was the Princesses Yiyang and Gao’an.

The girls who were supposedly safe in an eastern convent, though apparently not anymore. The older one peeked through her fingers at me, then gasped and shook her sister.

“It’s Fan Zilan,” she said. “Hong’s girlfriend.”

I felt my face twitch. “I’m not—” I shook my head. Now wasn’t the time. “What are you two doing here?”

“The convent burned down,” the older one said, hugging one of the prince’s robes to her cheek. “Monsters came and killed all the nuns and knocked over a candle. We ran here through the tunnels. We didn’t know where else to go.”

I sighed, squatting down in front of them. So much for the safe sanctuary until the prince could figure out a better plan.

---