Xi Qian’e’s mouth dropped open. ‘Seriously? That’s how you met the Head Shadow?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Three reached out to swipe a cup off the table, drinking down the tea in one gulp. The mellow, earthy warmth of it filled her chest. ‘I sold myself to her, but unlike the brothel’s debt-based contract, I only sold my time. It was three hundred gold taels for five years of svery and high risk of death.’

  ‘All for your mother?’ Xi Yu leaned forward, eyes glinting. ‘You’re too soft.’

  ‘She still raised me.’ Three smiled, letting the cold spill from her lips like smoke. ‘She protected me, cared for me and fed me, even if she regretted it ter.’ Laughing, she said, ‘My mother left her vilge so that her life could bloom, like a lotus flower leaving the mud. Except she didn’t realise that being plucked meant withering, and that the leaf she’d brought along would leech off her water.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Xi Yu said. She paused. ‘Then, that earring I broke…’

  ‘It’s the one she gave me.’

  Xi Yu flinched. ‘I —’

  ‘When the young miss saw it, heard its meaning,’ Three whispered, ‘she demanded to wear it. She had me pierce my right ear, whilst she pierced her left, and took one half. And when she died… I let her take it to the grave. The only one I have now…’ she tapped at her chest, at the pouch that y snuggled deep inside. ‘I don’t bme you, though.’

  Xi Yu pulled Hu Yingliu into a hug. ‘I’m sorry, Ah-Liu.’

  Warmth ripped across her skin.

  Every single crease of Xi Yu’s clothes, every quiet breath, and the crisp scent of snow — it wrapped around her, in a hold both softer than down feathers yet harder than an iron sword.

  She lifted her arms, draping them around Xi Yu’s neck to pull her closer, standing on her toes to press a gentle kiss right at the top of the princess’s neck.

  Relief, a bubbling, almost hazy wave over her voice, lifted her lips into the faintest of smiles. ‘Anyway, after paying off my mother’s debt, I’d thought to leave after the contract expired, but —’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I ended up Ripening, and after being retrained…’ She hugged the other harder, forcing Xi Yu to bend over as she rocked back on her heels. ‘I gave up on that idea. I had no purpose in this world — since there was now one before me, why would I give it up?’

  ‘You don’t need a purpose to exist,’ Xi Yu said. ‘It’s not as though mosquitoes were created solely for making you suffer —’

  ‘Your Highness!’ A eunuch came running over to their side, the bun on the top of his head coming undone. ‘Your Highness the Third Princess — the emperor summons you, now!’

  She immediately ripped herself out of Xi Yu’s arms.

  Oh, how her face burned.

  Xi Qian’e stumbled from the sheer force. She yelled to the eunuch, ‘Wait!’ Then, her head whipping to Hu Yingliu, she stammered, ‘The summoning, we should —’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Three cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders before grabbing a pte of fried dumplings. ‘I’m coming.’

  Picking them off one by one, she jogged after her princess as they followed the flustered eunuch.

  But then the man stumbled to a stop and yelped, ‘I’ve got to go, you two know the way!’

  He vanished into the dark.

  ‘Well,’ Hu Yingliu sneered, ‘he’s got the heart of a chicken.’ Strolling up behind Xi Yu, she said, ‘I bet he’ll die of shock if I just —’

  She cpped her hands together, hard.

  Xi Yu ughed. ‘He’s one of the empress’s men. Those under his power tend to be heavily watched by the emperor, their power always being reduced.’

  ‘The emperor and empress don’t seem to have a very good retionship,’ she said, ‘if she won’t even trust the empress to manage a few eunuchs.’

  ‘They used to be a famous couple though,’ Xi Yu said. ‘They were a couple that was once praised as a bond of true love. Though it declined after the emperor married her imperial noble consort and concubines.’

  …Of course it was like that.

  ‘Xi Yu,’ she asked, ‘why must emperors have harems?’

  The princess fell quiet, seriously pondering it. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s primarily to ensure the continuation of the bloodline.’

  ‘Just for that?’

  ‘You see… the dynasty is the state.’ Xi Qian’e took her hand, counting each of her fingers with a tap. ‘Every time a dynasty falls, the next tends to repce the political and ruling systems. Not to mention that a throne without heirs almost always leads to civil war.’

  She couldn’t help but say, ‘Some emperors didn’t have children though.’

  ‘They had siblings alive who did.’

  ‘Then why —’

  ‘Politics.’ Xi Qian’e kissed the tips of her fingers. Her skin tingled with the touch of those soft lips. ‘Every marriage is an opportunity to create a family connection with foreign rulers and the domestic nobility. Just like our emperor today — to keep the Northern Kingdoms from starting a war, she married their king’s eldest son and held him hostage in the imperial harem. Now, if that king brings war to our borders, his beloved son will almost certainly die.’

  She fell silent.

  ‘Of course, it also limited the emperor’s desire to py around with children from the court or brothel prostitutes. In those cases, all the beauties were already in their own backyards; what need was there to look elsewhere?’

  Bitterness surged in her.

  It boiled, a foul vat of jealousy, possessiveness, and a terrible, horrible urge to keep her princess to taking the throne.

  ‘You know a lot,’ she snapped, ripping her hand away. ‘When you’re emperor, would you take on your own harem?’

  ‘Ah-Liu —’

  They came to a stop.

  She almost wanted to ugh at the ridiculousness of it all. They hadn’t run — they had hardly done anything other than get away from that mess of a party — yet the both of them were panting, an inexplicable anger bursting between their feet, their hands.

  ‘…I’m a very repceable knife, Xi Yu,’ she said, ‘and that makes me a very jealous lover.’

  ‘…I’m a woman who’s suffered betrayal, Ah-Liu,’ Xi Qian’e said, ‘and that means I won’t make promises I can’t keep.’

  Her face —

  She felt it twist, contort from the hurt, shrivelling like a handful of discarded orange peels thrown into a fire. ‘You’re going to marry other empresses, other concubines.’

  ‘I may have to. Just like my aunt, just like her father, and her father’s father and that man’s mother.’ Xi Yu stepped forward, but she stumbled back, even as her hands were seized and held up to the other’s chest. ‘Ah-Liu, you don’t understand the world of the powerful. We don’t marry for love — my mother didn’t, my aunt didn’t, my grandfather didn’t, and I certainly can’t!’

  ‘Then what can I understand?’ She ripped her hands away, shoving the other back. ‘Xi Yu, tell me this! What will you do then? There’s never been an empress in this empire who wasn’t of noble descent. What will I be in the eyes of this world? A noble consort? A concubine? Tell me,’ she roared, ‘will I be recorded in the annals of history as a vixen who charmed the emperor?’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you!’ Xi Qian’e yelled right back, ‘I cannot promise to only take your hand, but I can promise you my heart, my efforts, my blood, and my tears! Hu Yingliu, the throne is my only way of survival! It will chain me to life, and once my kinsmen are all dead —’

  ‘You’re going to have an heir.’ Everything — the anger, the emotion, the hurt — it was stripped away from her voice. She said ftly, ‘You want to marry me as a concubine and have children with another man.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ the Third Princess breathed. ‘But I will have to, if I want to survive.’

  Silence fell again.

  It was with a daze that she processed the other’s words. She couldn’t understand.

  It was just moments ago that they had been hugging, ughing, and confiding in each other.

  How did this bitterness spring up so quickly, so hurriedly?

  ‘I can’t accept that,’ she said.

  She watched the hurt blossom across Xi Qian’e’s face.

  ‘I really, really can’t accept that.’ She stepped away, head shaking, hair swinging. The end of her ponytail whipped her shoulders. She scrubbed her face with her hands and ughed, ‘Your Highness, you shouldn’t have kissed me that day. You can’t give me what I need.’

  ‘…An emperor isn’t enough for you?’ The princess’s face was number than the frost on midnight grass. ‘My heart isn’t enough?’

  ‘An emperor can’t be a good lover,’ she said. ‘This mess between us — a guard and a princess — we’d best end it now.’