This will make me happy.

  Three ran, faster and faster and faster.

  This is how to become happy.

  Faster, faster, faster —

  ‘That was quick.’

  The Third Princess sat under a bare plum tree, her long bck hair unbound and spilling down the length of her back. Perched on her swing, she gently swayed back and forth, a jar of wine in her hand. ‘Well? Did you succeed?’

  Three knelt and said, ‘I could not identify to which wet nurse the Fourth Princess felt closest, so… I killed all three.’

  ‘The flower?’

  ‘In the eldest nurse’s neck, Your Highness. At the woman’s feet.’ She snapped, ‘Good enough for you? Or did I need it wrapped with a bow?’

  The princess then turned to look down at her. Amusement, a rotten expression on the woman’s face, rested there; it made her stomach boil with a strange rage.

  ‘Crude, but it suffices,’ the other said.

  A strange silence fell between them.

  She blew out a tiny breath, her addiction once again rearing its head as her eyes locked onto the jar in the princess’s hand.

  Pride swallowed back, she called, ‘That wine.’ That earthen pot with its red cloth and brown string seemed to sear into her mind. Her voice hoarse, she rasped, ‘Give it to me.’

  The princess lifted it up and away, into the air. The pot swung from its string. ‘Why should I?’ She tilted her head, ‘To let you drink on the job?’

  Three smmed her head into the ground, pain springing up as those gss-like stones stabbed her skin. Her kowtow had shocked the other woman; the surprised rustle of fabric and crunching of shoes on gravelled earth said it all. ‘Your Highness, I completed a mission. Reward — give it to me. I need it, I really need it.’

  A crunch.

  A shadow loomed over her head.

  Half-expecting the jar of wine to be smashed over her head, she flinched — and flinched again when the jar nded snugly into the bck earth.

  ‘Come, then,’ the princess said. ‘And stand, while you’re at it.’

  Three stumbled to her feet, brushing stones and sand from her forehead.

  The princess continued to walk past the gss-like gravel, her steps light and weightless as she stepped up onto the wooden bridge. ‘We shall have to work in the night. Might as well drink now.’

  ‘…I’m drinking with you?’ The guard stilled at the foot of the steps, a disgusted disbelief fermenting in her tone.

  The princess walked to the white pavilion door, her voice floating through the wood as it opened and smmed shut. ‘I suppose you could think of it that way.’

  *

  Cheap baijiu burned down Three’s throat. She couldn’t see the liquid — her eyesight had been blocked by the head-sized earthen jar. The red sealing cloth y discarded on the floor, the cord that had once tied it shut now trampled under her foot.

  ‘You drink that liquor like water,’ the princess said. She sipped from a wine cup, the wide but shallow thing sitting daintily in her hands. She grasped it by the two metal fps on its sides. ‘What are you, an alcoholic?’

  ‘Yeah, I am. So what?’ Three finished off the jar and snapped, ‘Another, Your Highness.’

  The woman scowled; Three just reached forward and took another.

  Finishing half of it in one breath, she nearly choked on the spicy aftertaste, the burn hissing in her nose.

  She coughed a little, lowering the jar. Drunkenness, a hazy gauze over her senses, bolstered her blood. She spat, ‘Why the wet nurse? Why couldn’t I have just killed the Fourth Princess directly?’

  ‘You don’t need to know, Guard.’

  Three snapped to her feet. She tore the cup out of the princess’s hands, a strange liquor of frustration burning in her veins. ‘But I want to know. Just give me a reason. Just one, Your Highness. It’s not much to ask, is it?’

  She loomed over the other woman, their faces pressed so close they were about to touch.

  An invisible string was pulled taunt between them. Through her tipsy fog, she grasped this string, and on the other end the princess froze, tense as though under a bde.

  This threatening move of Three’s, the princess’s inability to speak, the intimate hate that wrapped soundlessly around their tongues — a shadow guard couldn’t hurt her master, a fact that they both knew well, but it didn’t stop the princess’s skin from prickling with goosebumps at her closeness.

  It was buried deep in the princess’s red eyes, in the reflection of Three’s gssy, sapphire-blue eyes; the princess wavered, perhaps wanting to order her to stand down. But those words — the guard pictured them now, leaving the princess’s lips — would taste of delicious victory.

  The princess would taste it too.

  Three was certain of that, for the woman refused to look away.

  A pause.

  ‘I thought I was right.’ Three’s breaths were slow. Shallow. ‘I thought she would like the kindest one most.’

  The princess watched her.

  ‘But she didn’t care. And so, I killed the youngest one. Perhaps her close friend.’ Three’s hands curled into fists. The princess’s eyes narrowed, then fluttered wide. ‘Your Highness, why did she grieve only for the woman who scolded her?’

  ‘And why, exactly, should I know?’ The princess stood up, forcing her back a few steps. A shadow rippled over her, sinister with a tainted irritability. ‘It was your own idiocy that led to those two women’s deaths. Not mine.’

  ‘Then expin,’ she roared, ‘expin so I know why! Your Highness, this is no jest, I truly —’

  Bang!

  Three flinched.

  Pottery shards littered the floor, a water-like liquid pooling. The strong scent of alcohol and blood burned in the air.

  She lifted her hand. Across her right palm were stinging red lines — she’d clenched the jar so hard it had burst.

  She fell silent.

  That silence turned stifling. Suffocating. Strangling.

  It was her master that tore the noose away from her neck.

  ‘I cannot kill my cousin outright,’ the princess said. ‘I don’t dare to.’

  Three looked up at her.

  ‘My father is the emperor’s eldest brother. The only reason she let him live was due to the fact he was born blind, without sight.’ The princess plucked away the wine cup. ‘The Fourth and Fifth heirs are the emperor’s children, though with different fathering consorts. Killing them — and with my hand, no less — is a sp in the face against the emperor, who just seized back military command from my mother. Do you understand now, Three? Does reason that satisfy you?’

  The guard stumbled back. The princess seemed so much bigger, even though her coarse linen mourning robes outlined the same slender body as before. She roared, ‘Then why —’

  ‘Because I can have the First Prince kill her.’ The princess lifted her hand; between her fingers was a folded letter. ‘Unfortunately, my dear cousin will probably attempt to kill me in retaliation during my scheduled, private meeting with the First Prince. Except I’ll be running te.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You want to trick Four into killing the First Prince? But, how can you be certain —’

  Oh.

  She blinked.

  Four uses explosives. He pnts them ahead to time to detonate on a timer.

  ‘Either the First Prince gets killed, or he kills the Fourth Princess in retaliation. Regardless, one of my cousins will end up dead and the other suppressed by the loser’s family.’ The princess twirled the slip of paper. ‘It’s a win-win situation for me.’

  Three stilled. ‘You’re overly confident.’ The drunken haze cleared a little from her mind. ‘Besides, won’t the First Prince be furious that you set him up —’

  ‘He won’t. Because I’ll prostrate myself at his feet in fear, begging for pardon and offering to throw myself in with his lot. I’ll swear to the Heavens and the earth that I had nothing to do with the trap.’

  ‘You can’t be certain.’

  ‘I studied my cousins. I know them well. Fourth is zy in all matters and keeps a clear distinction between personal and political affairs; she won’t involve the emperor or her paternal family. The First Prince is arrogant and narcissistic; he would demand tenfold for a slight, and hide the errors borne of his hands. His ego is that of eggshells.’

  Three snapped, ‘Oh, like yours?’

  The princess shot her a foul look and lifted the wine cup to her lips, finishing it in one go. ‘Tell me. Between a shadow guard’s experience and a master’s order, who do they follow? If their master orders them to do something foolish?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘We just do it, Your Highness.’

  The princess blinked. ‘You do not advise them?’

  ‘Nope.’ She gave a twisted smile. The skin of her cheeks pulled at her ears. ‘Shadow guards don’t have opinions.’

  The princess gave her a scathing look. ‘Oh, really? Then what was that ball of blood in my face? That seems rather paradoxical, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, really,’ she hissed, ‘then when I killed your mother, why did you close the door instead of stopping me? Rather paradoxical, isn’t it?’

  A cng.

  The metal wine cap had fallen to the floor, a rge dent in its bottom.

  Fury, a toxic monster on the princess’s face, twisted and shed. She had to fight it back under her skin, a fact that Three registered with a strange mix of glee and apprehension.

  It was now that she realised: the only reason that her head hadn’t left her neck was as the princess didn’t wish to damage her only knife.

  ‘Get out,’ her master snapped. ‘Leave me, before I bury your head in the earth. You are to follow me to the imperial academy tomorrow — and pray I hold my patience while I stand up a prince.’

  The shadow guard knelt, irritation and an itching discomfort wheedling into her bones.

  ‘Fine,’ she whispered. ‘Whatever you say, Your Highness.’