It was with great effort and suffering that the princess managed to survive until morning.

  And Three, who’d now been up for two nights in a row, felt like she had been trampled by a horse.

  Two days. That was twenty-four shichen without sleep. Thirty-six if she counted the day prior.

  Everything hurts.

  Head swimming with a pain comparable to that of a heaven-bestowed hangover, She roughly wiped the remnants of charcoal powder off the princess’s lips with a wet cloth. Jittery, fingers trembling, her eyelids kept on shutting before fluttering open. It was as though she was suffering from a fucking opium withdrawal. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and shook the princess awake.

  ‘Your Highness. Your Highness!’ Three patted her head, the wet cloth spping onto her face. ‘I need to sleep. Alright?! I already cleaned up your vomit, your bedsheets, and removed the poison. Seriously, woman!’

  The princess rolled over and spped Three’s hands away. Her voice, hazy with sleep, hissed, ‘Shut up!’

  So infuriated that she was about to pop a vein, Three wordlessly smmed the bedside hard enough to leave a dent.

  Where was the consideration for the common people? Where was the compassion for the poor? Where was the benevolence of a master?

  Hissing and spitting like a rabid dog, she shoved the woman aside, pushing her way into the bed. The moment her head hid the silken pillow, a bck darkness took her, falling into the sweetness of sleep.

  *

  Three was very rudely spped awake. Then she almost screamed — waking up to the Third Princess’s gring, rakshasa-like face shaved a good decade off from her lifespan.

  Scrabbling back, Three burst, ‘Seriously? Did you have to sp me?’

  ‘What kind of servant sleeps in their mistress’s bed?’ The princess grabbed her pels, a fury building in her eyes. ‘The sheer audacity —’

  ‘Listen, woman.’ Rising from the bnkets, She snarled, ‘I was awake for days on end. If you don’t want me dropping dead, you’ll need to let me sleep. And guess what? Maybe Five would come to shoot you in your sleep, so it isn’t like I can leave the room. What was I supposed to do? Sleep in the attic? And don’t you dare say the floor unless you want a numb-legged shadow guard fighting assassins —’

  ‘You know the other shadow guards?’ The princess cut her off. Her voice was still raspy from illness. ‘Tell me about them. Now.’

  Oh, she was going to froth at the mouth from pent-up fury one day.

  ‘There are ten shadow guards in total,’ Three said, calming thoughts like dried persimmons and chicken feet pying in her mind, ‘with the first seven assigned to this cursed competition. All of them, except for myself and Five, are men. I am the youngest. Due to Eight, Nine, and Ten’s missions, I cannot tell you about them.’ Cracking an eye open, she added, ‘The emperor and head shadow’s orders precede yours in priority. Don’t even try to crack me open.’

  The princess waved a frail hand, ‘Then tell me about the first seven.’

  ‘One is the strongest shadow guard. He, as does Six, excels in all fields requiring strength. However, his stealth is cklustre. Two is weaker than me; both he and Seven function primarily as spies. Four specialises in rge-scale destruction and sughter with explosives, while Five uses poisons and arrows to discreetly kill.’

  The princess looked down at her. ‘And you? What are your talents?’

  ‘I specialise in torture and undercover missions.’ Three got off the bed, stretching as she yawned. ‘I’m very creative, you see. And a good liar.’

  ‘Are you familiar with the other guards?’ The princess added, ‘As in, could you guess their methods, their ways of thinking?’

  Three froze.

  Memories shot through her mind, vivid but a little slow: Five, gently teaching her how to mix poison; One and Six correcting her stance; Two and Seven bickering with her over go chess; Four lighting up fireworks on the anniversary of her Ripening Day.

  She thought of her fingers in their throats.

  ‘I can,’ she said. Her throat was dry, needles pricking deep inside. ‘I know how they think.’

  ‘Then, who poisoned me?’

  Three breathed, ‘Five, most likely. If not, then Seven. Two might, but it’s unlikely.’

  ‘Xi Baitan, then.’ With the most infuriating look of belittlement on that face, the princess added, ‘The Fifth Prince.’

  ‘I could have figured that out,’ she scowled. ‘The First Prince got One, the Second Prince got Two, so who’s Five’s master? Wow, it must be the Seventh Princess!’

  ‘Shut it.’ The Third Princess handed her a small jade chrysanthemum — the little delicate white flower was shaped entirely from jaded gss, the blossom no rger than a human eye.

  It was light in her fingers.

  ‘Do you remember the other woman you saw st night? The Fourth Princess, Xi Huaxiang.’ Cold, hard red eyes. A thin smile. ‘She is a very, very… zy woman. She’s so nguid she must be hand-fed by her maids. We can’t have that.’

  Three snorted. ‘What, jealous?’

  ‘I prefer vengeful.’ The princess’s smile spread into a ferocious grin. ‘Three. Kill her closest wet nurse, the one whose presence she’d miss the most. If you must, kill only the maids or servants. No eunuchs or youth-in-waiting. And drop that flower by her feet. It’s a gift.’

  The shadow guard knelt, her fists clenching at her side. A breath of turbid air slid from her lungs. ‘Understood, Your Highness.’

  *

  The Third Princess had understated the true extent of her cousin’s fish-like nature.

  Squatting in the rafters of jasmine vines, Three stared down at the daydreaming princess through the window.

  The Fourth Princess was the sort of person where if she could sit, she wouldn’t stand, and if she could lie down, she certainly wouldn’t sit.

  Munching on lotus seeds, the princess y down in the shade of the jasmine’s dark green, three wet nurses and four maids by her side. The eldest wet nurse, a woman well into her sixties, chided the princess, crow’s feet and severity in her eyes; the youngest, in her te thirties, read aloud from a poetry scroll, ughing with amusement; then, the st wet nurse demurely peeled lotus seeds despite the younger maids’ nervous fidgeting.

  ‘Take a break,’ she told them. Her face had a strange softness about it, in the tanned lines of her face, in her loosely bound hair. ‘Children should py, even if only for a shichen. Don’t worry, you four won’t be punished.’

  The eldest sighed, reproachful. Her bun was so tight it wouldn’t be surprising if the woman’s scalp peeled right off.

  The other wet nurse ughed, ‘Sister, loosen up a little. Let them py, just for a while. The older ones can do the work for a bit.’

  Heavens above.

  How was Three going to tell which one was the target? Would it have killed the Third Princess to have been a little more considerate? Really.

  The maids — three boys, one girl — ran off to kick a strange, feathered thing between them. It was a stubby wooden cylinder with a thick tuft of chicken feathers sticking out the top, bound tightly. The maids’ ages were a bit harder to pinpoint due to their emerging puberty, but they wouldn’t pose much of a threat.

  But apart from the dilemma of picking a victim, Three couldn’t help but tense her muscles.

  Four was definitely around here, somewhere. And with the right orders, he would kill her on sight.

  She was hoping for the young maids to walk away before acting. But before she could cause any commotion for a distraction, the eldest wet nurse tapped the dozing princess awake.

  ‘Don’t sleep out here,’ the woman chided. Her wrinkled, callused hands rapped hard against the other’s head. ‘Inside. Now.’

  The princess grumbled, cursing. But she didn’t argue as she was led into the pace, half-asleep. Following her were the wet nurses; the maids stayed outside.

  Three pried open a window and slipped into the building. The women had moved to the princess’s leisure room, a pce with no windows and only one door.

  A heavy wooden door.

  She slid a long nail from her robes. Holding the doors’ edges together, she pressed the nail in — and bolted the doors shut with a poof of dust.

  Then she climbed into the rafters, wriggling over the wall.

  The princess was now lying on her daybed, absently listening to one of the wet nurses reading. She opened her lips; the other, seed-peeling woman gently pced one into her mouth.

  The old nurse hissed, ‘Sit up! You’ll choke!’

  Three readied her knives, poised to throw —

  And a bde sliced through the kind woman’s neck.

  The princess’s mouth opened to scream — but a knife lodged into the wall beside her.

  Then, a true silence.

  The women froze. They were certainly fast thinkers; though horrified, none moved or made a sound.

  The Fourth Princess blinked her eyes open, zy. When they settled on the corpse, she merely yawned and chewed on another lotus seed, plucking one from the dead woman’s grasp. Her lips curled; she gently blew away a strand of her curly hair.

  Hm? She doesn’t seem to care.

  Then, a strange prickling in Three’s chest.

  I killed the wrong one.

  She eyed the remaining two women: the coolly composed eldest and the silently crying youngest, poetry book crumpled in hand.

  The Fourth Princess mused, ‘Don’t cry, Aunty.’ She reached over the bed and plucked the book from the other’s hands, gently tapping her over the head. ‘It’s useless. I sent Four away. He won’t be back in time.’

  Is this comfort?

  Is this care?

  She again lifted her knife, the edge hidden in the shadows of her hand.

  It flung out. And the sobbing woman fell down dead.

  The princess finally moved from her daze. ‘Stop now,’ she aimlessly drawled to the air, ‘or my father will kill you, even if I die here today.’

  How could this be?

  Three trembled, eyes wide.

  She was wrong again.

  But she would be right. She had to be right.

  The muscles in her arm tightened. Tensed. Threw.

  With the sharp whistle of a bde cutting the wind, the st, elderly woman fell to the ground. Her head smmed down, toppling into the pool of blood by the Fourth Princess ‘s feet.

  A white jade flower pierced deep into her throat.

  And Three fled to the sunlit, wilting jasmine blossoms, before she could quite catch the Fourth Princess’s scream.