The doors creaked open and servants carrying golden trays streamed into the hall, cramming the tables full of lidded dishes.
“Eat quickly and then we can go,” the prince whispered, squeezing my hand.
“Hong, where did you say she was from?” the Empress said. It took me a moment to recognize the prince’s name.
“Guangzhou, mother,” he said.
“Ah.” The Empress nodded, taking another sip of tea. The pure gold rim sparkled against her red lips. “That explains the accent.”
I hid a frown against my teacup, drinking even though I felt that I could drain an entire lake and my mouth would still be bone dry. I hadn’t thought my accent was that noticeable. People in Chang’an understood me well enough.
“My guard said he heard you speaking Guǎngdōng huà,” the Empress said, swirling her tea around. “I don’t know if anyone has informed you, but we only speak the language of scholars here.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I said, worrying too late if my sour mood was leaking through to my words. I wondered if the Empress actually thought lesser of my dialect, or if she just didn’t want me keeping secrets. A small part of me prayed that the prince would protest, but he stayed still and silent.
The servants placed bowls of rice on the table, but the Empress and prince ignored them.
“My son tells me you’re a hùnxiě,” the Empress said, tilting her head to the side.
I gripped the edges of my chair, not trusting myself to meet her eyes without saying something that would get me beheaded. Couldn’t we talk about how I was unschooled again? How I was a dirty southerner who had sold my body to her son?
“Yes, Your Highness,” I managed to say.
“Where are your parents from?”
I swallowed. “My mother was from Guangzhou, and my father was from Scotia.”
“What an intriguing mix,” the Empress said. “I’ve met some hùnxiě with Slavic fathers, but Scotia is very far away. I think that’s a better mix, personally. Scotians have such fair skin. Don’t you think so, Hong?”
“Yes, Zilan is very beautiful, mother,” he said evenly.
I blushed. I doubted that was what the Empress had been implying, but hopefully his comment would redirect her from talking about me like a recipe for soup. He doesn’t mean it, I reminded myself. He has to pretend because he chose you as a concubine.
“Hùnxiě girls usually are,” the Empress said. “Either they’re pretty or they look like warthogs. There’s no in between.”
I’m definitely the latter, I thought, staring down at the forbidden rice.
Warm fingers touched my face, and I nearly jumped out of my skin before I realized it was the prince, angling my face toward him and smiling. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, the gesture so simple yet so delicate, like I was the kind of girl that needed to be gently cared for, not someone who shoved pearls down people’s throats. My face burned, and I hoped all the white powder was enough to hide it. The prince pulled back and promptly dumped the rice from his bowl into mine.
“I don’t need this,” he said, before I could protest.
I eyed the rice, remembering the prince talking about all the poison in his food. “Don’t you have taste testers?” I whispered.
“Yes, they sampled everything an hour ago,” the prince said, setting his hand on my leg. “They’re all alive and well, though the food is a bit colder than it would be otherwise.”
The servants swooped in and cleared all the bowls but mine, and I caught a glimpse of the Empress watching us from across the table. I looked away, trying to focus instead on the absurdity of serving decorative dinner courses. I hoped they at least let the servants eat the rice.
Next, bowls of soup were brought out and promptly ignored.
“I’m curious, was your father very tall?” the Empress said, her gold eyes searing from behind the cloud of steam rising from the food. “You’re almost as tall as Hong.”
“I don’t know,” I said, staring at my reflection in the soup. “I don’t remember much of him.”
“He left you?” the Empress said, raising an eyebrow. When I didn’t answer right away, the Empress shook her head. “You can’t rely on foreigners. Though I’m curious, as I’ve never had the opportunity to meet a Scotian. I hear they have eyes the color of amethyst?”
“I don’t—”
“Of course you don’t know,” the Empress said, sighing. “You’re uneducated. I bet you never even left Guangzhou until now, you poor thing. No matter, I can figure things out for myself.”
She gestured to a servant, who pulled a length of string from his pocket. The servant held the string to my shoulder with one hand, then took my wrist and laid it flat across my arm, all the way to my fingertips. I sat still and limp, too confused to protest.
“One quarter chǐ,” the servant said, dropping my arm.
“Mother, is this necessary during dinner?” the prince said.
The Empress waved her hands like the prince’s words were flies to swat away. Another servant appeared, hefting a scroll under one arm and unrolling it before the Empress with a bow. The Empress squinted, gaze dancing across the lines of text.
“That’s above average,” she said, turning to me. “You’re like a crane, Scarlet. You could practically fly away.”
“You measure all the concubines?” I said, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to speak unless the Empress asked me a question first. But she only smirked as the servant wound the string around my head.
“Of course not,” she said. “Just the hùnxiě.”
A hollowness opened up in my stomach. I thought of the bones in her menagerie, the pelts, the discarded remnants of her animal experiments. I barely heard the servant call out my next measurement before he wrapped the string around my waist.
“Mother,” the prince said, slamming his palm against the table, soup sloshing over the rim. “That’s enough.”
The Empress raised an eyebrow. “Your defiance was cute when you were a child, Hong. Now, it’s unwise.”
He moved to stand up, but I grabbed his hand, yanking him back down. He was sweet to be angry, but for me, this wasn’t worth dying over. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt fresh outrage at something like this, rather than stale and bitter acceptance.
I laced my fingers with the prince’s, anchoring him to his seat.
“It’s fine,” I whispered. “One more day, remember?”
He let out a breath, unclenching his jaw, and leaned his forehead against mine. The closeness made me tense, but I didn’t dare pull away with the Empress watching.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I wish I could—”
“This is the least of our problems,” I said.
He nodded, pressing a hand to my cheek, then leaned back. The Empress watched us with narrowed eyes, then whispered something to her servant, who made another note on the scroll before rolling it up once more.
Servants leaned between me and the prince, setting down sparkling trays, and I realized that the time for decorative food was over. The real dinner was about to begin.
Servers placed trays overflowing with gold nuggets and pearl garnish in front of every seat but mine. I couldn’t help leaning closer to the prince’s plate, for I had never seen life gold up close before. It had a ghostly glow around it and strangely perfect symmetry to each piece, like it was a dream of gold rather than actual gold.
I drew back as the servants set a steaming bowl of stew in front of me. I hadn’t eaten enough meat in my life to know for certain what kind it was, but it smelled of scallions and citrus. Another servant set a plate of sausages in front of me, and yet another set down a bowl of soup that smelled of salted pork with bok choy bobbing on the surface. There were so many dishes that a servant had to shuffle them around to make room for more. How could anyone eat this much food in a single meal?
The Empress raised a handful of gold to her mouth and bit down with a sickening crunch, like all of her teeth were shattering. But rather than pain, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy. She surged forward into her palm, her tongue lashing out to lick the stray pieces from between her fingers, beneath her honed nails. Her hands glimmered from gold residue as she snatched another fistful from the table, cramming it into her mouth.
I turned to the prince, but his palms and chin were stained with gold as well, the residue splashing down the table and pooling around his feet. He seemed to have forgotten I was there, his irises suddenly pure, blazing gold.
It felt like the room around me was melting, hot sweat pooling under my clothes as the sound of crunching scraped my eardrums. I didn’t feel hungry anymore, but I couldn’t just stare at the Empress and I knew better than to ignore free food. I raised a spoonful up to my lips with a shaking hand.
The moment it touched my mouth, spices sizzled across my tongue and warmth spread through me, like I’d taken a bite of sunlight. Before I could help it, I’d shoveled down another spoonful. I couldn’t eat fast enough, and soon the bowl was empty, half of it spilled down my neck. Before I could even pause to mourn how quickly it had gone, a servant took my bowl and replaced it with a full one.
“Do you like it, Scarlet?” the Empress said, sucking gold from her finger.
Something about her tone made me hesitate, my spoon hovering over the second bowl. Her words had an odd edge to them that I couldn’t quite decipher. My stomach felt tight, my lips scorched.
“We have all sorts of exotic foods here,” she said, popping another gold nugget in her mouth. “Foods you’ve probably never dreamed of trying.”
I had the sudden urge to vomit across the table. The spoon fell from my lips and I grabbed my teacup, draining it in a single gulp. The haze of smoke had swallowed the ground beneath my ankles, like nothing existed in the whole world except for the three of us and the table piled with gold.
The Empress wiped her lips, then leaned closer. “Did you come to Chang’an alone, Scarlet?” she asked, her voice low, all pretense of politeness stripped from her tone. This wasn’t a question, but an order.
The words spilled from my lips all at once, like the Empress had jammed her hand down my throat and yanked them out.
“I came with my brother and sister,” I said. “They’re still in a western ward.”
The Empress hummed, drumming her fingers on the table. “Why did you really come here?” she said.
“To make money,” I replied, my tongue heavy in my mouth. It was hard to shape words, but they surged forward anyway.
“Is that your god, Scarlet?”
I shook my head, incense stinging my eyes, clouding my vision. “What?”
“Everyone worships something, whether they know it or not,” the Empress said. “The old gods are dying. I’m asking which new one you’ll choose.”
My throat clenched, the pain like being sick on an empty stomach, trying to force words up even though I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say.
Something crashed against the door, straining against the wood with a gnarled scream—another one of the palace monsters? But the Empress didn’t even flinch, licking gold from the crevices of her hand as a sound like jagged claws raked across the door. The whole room rattled from the force, teacups trembling, my reflection shivering in my soup. Something hot and wet pooled under my feet, though I couldn’t see it through the mist of incense. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, nausea choking my throat. I closed my eyes and gripped the edge of the table, feeling like I was going to faint face-first into my food.
“Zilan?”
A hand rested on my leg, making me jolt. The prince had slid his chair closer to mine. His face and hands had been wiped clean of gold, but his skin still sparkled with its remnants.
“I want to leave,” I said. I really shouldn’t have been making demands to the prince in front of the Empress, but he nodded anyway.
“I’m finished,” he said to the guards.
“Already?” the Empress said, frowning.
“I ate earlier today, since your invitation came late,” the prince said, pulling out my chair before a servant could. He took my hand and all but yanked me to my feet, as if he didn’t want to give his mother the chance to object.
“Scarlet,” the Empress said.
The prince seemed inclined to keep dragging me out of the room, but I looked over my shoulder.
“I know it’s all a bit...overwhelming at first. I was not born into this court either. I understand.”
My iron grip on the prince’s hand loosened.
“But you don’t need to worry,” she said, picking up another gold nugget and holding it up to the light. “You won’t be here for long.”
The prince pulled me away through another set of doors that the servants held open for us. I greedily inhaled a breath of clean air as the incense floated away, stumbling over to a banister and holding tight.
He took one of my arms, fingers sliding down to the base of my wrist, feeling my racing pulse.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Mother sometimes asks for too many herbs in the soup.”
“Herbs?” I said, cuffing drool from my mouth. “Are you joking? She drugged me!”
The prince shook his head quickly, releasing my wrist. “It’s a mild sedative,” he said. “She’s done it to me before. Let’s get you some more water and you’ll be fine.”
“Fine,” I echoed, staying rooted even when he tugged at my sleeve. Did he truly not see how horrific that meal had been? I could suffer through being treated like a pet by the Empress, but when I looked at the prince’s face, all I could see was the lingering stain of gold on his lips.
“You’ve known all your life that the Empress was like this,” I said. “You watched her kill your entire family. But you only came to Guangzhou for my help when you realized your own life was in danger. No one else mattered enough.”
“I won’t let her hurt you,” the prince said. He reached for my face, but I slapped his hand away.
“I’m not talking about myself!” I said. “Why did you ask me to resurrect you in the first place? Did you want to come back and stop her, or just play dead while she destroyed the rest of China?”
He looked away, jaw tense as he stared out across the garden. Both of us knew the answer.
“What am I supposed to do?” he said at last. “You really think I can stop my mother?”
“Have you ever even tried?” I said.
He flinched, still refusing to meet my gaze. “I never asked to be who I am,” he said. “I can’t—”
“Stop talking about what you ‘can’t’ do!” I said, shoving him back against the banister. I was too loud for such a quiet night, but I didn’t care. “You are the Crown Prince of China! Don’t you dare tell me that you’re powerless.”
I turned to leave, but he grabbed my wrist. “Zilan, please,” he said. “You can hate me if you want, but please don’t run off alone. The monsters—”
“As if you could ever protect me from any monster!” I said, twisting my wrist out of his grip. “You can’t even protect yourself.”
I took a step back, waiting to see if he would argue. Tell me that you would try to save me, I thought. But he only dropped his shoulders and stared at his feet—the same way he looked away from everything that mattered. Like always, he would let me leave, knowing exactly what he could say to make me stay.
My eyes watered. I took another step back, only starting to realize how badly I’d wished I was wrong, how much I didn’t want him to be like the other rich men who only cared for themselves. But I should have known from the first day we met, when he’d tried to buy my dreams from me. He would never fight for me because the rich never fought. They turned and ran away.