Chapter 1

I came to the capital to seek out my fiancé. Instead, a masked guard bound me and carried me into a prince's residence, where I was forced into the bed of the poisoned prince.

Afterward, I meant to bury our betrothal jade and sever my ties with my fiancé for good.

But when the guard saw the pendant, he went deathly pale.

The stranger whose life he had ruined with his own hands was the fiancée he had been waiting for these past ten years.

1.

I came to the capital to find my fiancé and seek his protection. Instead, I was bound and taken to a prince's residence.

Prince Jing had been given an aphrodisiac poison. Unconscious, he was said to need a woman to counteract it. When the masked guard pushed me into his room, I clung desperately to the doorframe, telling him I was betrothed and had come to the capital to marry.

He pried my fingers loose one by one, amusement in his voice.

“Once you've caught Prince Jing, what do you need a fiancé for? Behave yourself. Know a blessing when you see one.”

His voice sounded vaguely familiar.

But Song Yanchu and I had been apart for ten years, communicating only by letter. I had been eight when I left Qingshi Town. I did not even know what he looked like now. I could hardly connect him with the coldhearted man before me.

The door closed.

The man on the bed burned with fever. Rope had cut bloody marks into his wrists. He was delirious, and I had nowhere to run.

When I woke the next morning, he was still unconscious. I gathered my torn clothes and wrapped them around myself. While the guards changed shifts, I climbed through the rear window and slipped into the garden.

I could not escape the residence.

The guard who had brought me there stopped me behind a rockery. A black iron half-mask covered his face, leaving only thin lips and indifferent eyes visible.

“His Highness hasn't woken. You cannot leave.”

I slapped him.

He must not have expected me to have any strength left. His face turned with the blow. It was a long moment before he turned back.

“You tied me up. Did you expect gratitude?”

“Without someone last night, His Highness would have died.” He caught my wrist. “When he wakes, he'll give you a position. For a woman from out of town, this is a blessing beyond anything you could hope for.”

Unable to pull free, I bent and bit the flesh between his thumb and forefinger.

He released me in pain. I turned and ran.

In the end, they confined me to a small western courtyard. The maids outside called me miss, but beyond the windows stood guards with swords.

I sat until dark, then took a pale blue-green jade pendant from a concealed pocket in my bundle.

Song Yanchu had pressed it into my hand when I left the capital at eight.

He said the jade had been divided in two. Once we were grown, he would bring the other half and marry me. Later, the Song family was convicted of a crime and exiled. Only he escaped, rescued by an old family servant. Three years ago, he wrote that he had cleared his family's name and found a post in the capital. I was to come after reaching marriageable age.

My parents had died of illness the previous year. With no relatives left in Qingshi, I finished mourning, took everything I owned, and hurried to the capital on a journey of two months.

Now I could no longer keep the pendant.

Whether or not I had consented to last night, Song Yanchu should not have to marry a woman who had lost her chastity. Nor did I want to deceive him.

There was no spade in the courtyard. I used a broken roof tile to dig beneath a crabapple tree. I had barely covered my fingernails in earth when footsteps sounded behind me.

The masked guard stood beneath the moon gate.

“Digging your way out again?”

I ignored him and placed the jade in the hole.

His eyes fell on it. Suddenly, he went rigid.

Then he rushed over, shoved me aside, and picked it out of the mud with his bare hands. Muddy water ran between his fingers. He turned it over. At the tiny character Tang carved on the back, every trace of color left his face.

“Why do you have this?”

I stared into his eyes. An absurd thought took shape.

“My fiancé gave it to me.”

His hand began to shake.

“Song Yanchu,” I asked, “do you still recognize me?”

2.

He suddenly stepped back.

That reaction answered for him.

I had imagined our reunion countless times. Perhaps I would not recognize him, and he would produce his half of the jade and laugh at me. Perhaps he would already be married and apologize politely. Never had I imagined him masking his face, binding me, and pushing me into another man's room with his own hands.

He removed the mask.

I could still glimpse the boy he had been in his features. But his face was thinner now, and a faint scar marked the outer end of his left eyebrow. The portrait sent from the capital had made him look far too gentle. It had not captured his habit of weighing profit and loss before he looked at a person.

“A Tang, let me explain.”

I lunged for the pendant.

He closed it in his fist and asked urgently, “Why did you arrive early? Didn't your letter say the seventh of next month?”

“A landslide blocked the relay road. I took a boat instead and arrived twelve days early.”

“Then why didn't you go to the house in the south of the city first?”

“It was sold long ago.”

On arriving, I had followed the address in his letter, only to find an official seal across the door. The neighbors said the old Song residence had been sold to a cloth merchant two years earlier. My traveling money had been stolen at the docks. All I could do was carry his old letters through the streets, asking after him.

Before dark, I encountered two drunks. Song Yanchu happened to ride past with his men and drove them off. I called to him for help across the crowd. He glanced down from his horse and asked a subordinate, “A woman from out of town?”

Thinking I had found a good man, I nodded repeatedly.

He ordered them to gag me, pull a sack over me, and take me to the prince's residence.

“You saw my face then,” I said.

“It's been ten years. You've changed.”

“My name is still Su Tang.”

“You didn't say.”

“You had my mouth covered.”

His lips parted. He found nothing more to say.

I held out my hand.

“Give me the jade.”

“You cannot bury it.” He hid it in his sleeve. “Our elders arranged this marriage. No one will know about last night. Once His Highness wakes, I'll take you out. We'll marry as planned.”

I almost laughed.

“I will not marry you.”

His expression darkened.

“Su Tang, I had no choice. If His Highness died, the entire household would be implicated. They've sheltered me for ten years. I couldn't stand by and watch the poison kill him.”

“So I had to be the one to save him?”

“I didn't know it was you.”

“Would another woman have deserved to be dragged here?”

He avoided my eyes and said only that he would compensate me.

Even after recognizing the pendant, he did not regret taking a woman by force.

He regretted that the woman happened to be his fiancée, leaving him to clean up the consequences.

I rushed forward and grabbed his sleeve. He pushed me away. My lower back struck a tree root so hard that for a long time I could not straighten.

He crouched, reached to help me, then stopped with his hand in midair.

“A Tang, I endured ten years in the capital to become deputy commander of the prince's personal guard. If this gets out, I'll lose my life. Bear with it for now. Once the trouble passes, I'll marry you openly and honorably.”

“Give me the jade.”

“You're still angry.”

He rose and left. At the gate, he turned to warn me.

“When His Highness wakes, if he asks about last night, say you came here willingly. Don't mention me, or our betrothal.”

The door was locked.

I braced myself against the tree and slowly stood. Beside the muddy hole lay a black token.

It had fallen when Song Yanchu rushed forward.

The front bore the words PRINCE JING'S RESIDENCE. On the back was a single character: MEDICINE.

3.

Before dawn, I sewed the token into the sole of my shoe.

Xiao Chengke, Prince Jing, did not wake until afternoon.

He neither summoned me to his bed nor hurried to give me a title. Instead, he had the senior household attendant bring clean clothes and sent a woman physician to examine me.

Physician Lu was about forty. As she took my pulse, she saw the rope marks on my wrists. Her expression turned grim.

“Who brought you into that room?”

Song Yanchu's men were outside.

Remembering his warning, I said, “I don't know.”

She left me a jar of medicine. As she packed her case, she frowned and picked a dark-red grain of powder from my sleeve.

“Where did this come from?”

I said perhaps from the bed curtains the night before.

She wrapped it in paper and warned me quietly.

“Don't wash these clothes. His Highness was given a poison called Hehuan Yin. It has been banned in the palace for more than ten years. It turns dark red on contact with an ordinary antidote. Only the poisoner and the person who compounded it would know that.”

Something stirred in my mind.

The token Song Yanchu had dropped belonged to the dispensary.

At dusk, I was taken to see Prince Jing.

Xiao Chengke reclined on a couch, still a little pale. He was about twenty-five or twenty-six, with prominent brows and a bandaged left hand. Several subordinate officials spoke to him, all with their heads bowed.

Song Yanchu stood directly behind him.

He had changed into his personal guard's uniform. Sure enough, a token was missing from his belt.

Xiao Chengke dismissed everyone except Physician Lu and Song Yanchu.

“I remember little of last night,” he said, looking at me. “If you wish to remain here, I will make you my secondary consort. If not, I'll provide money and a house, and have you escorted home.”

Song Yanchu spoke at once.

“Your Highness, since she entered the residence, she naturally wishes to stay.”

“Does Your Highness also believe that after a woman has been dragged here bound, agreeing to stay is the best ending she can hope for?”

He glanced at my injured wrists. After a long pause, he said, “No.”

“Then please let me leave.”

He did not grow angry. He ordered my travel permit brought and asked Physician Lu to check it herself. He seemed genuinely prepared to release me.

Song Yanchu stepped forward.

“We know nothing of her background. Your Highness has just been poisoned. We cannot simply let her go.”

“I'm from Qingshi Town. My father, Su Yuanshan, ran an apothecary there. My travel permit and betrothal document are in the bundle that was stolen from me.” I turned to him. “Deputy Commander Song should know.”

“Do you know each other?” Xiao Chengke asked.

“No.”

Song Yanchu answered too quickly.

I shook my head too.

“Before today, we didn't.”

He stared at me, his right hand on his sword hilt.

In the end, Xiao Chengke did not release me. The household was investigating the poisoning, he said. Once my identity was confirmed, he would have me taken out. Three days at most.

When I rose, my legs gave way. I had to brace a hand on the table.

He instinctively reached out, then stopped before touching me. Instead, he pushed a soft cushion within my reach.

“What happened last night was a wrong I did you.”

I said coldly that he had been poisoned too. He could hardly have intended it.

“Whether I intended it is something I must answer to you for. Your suffering is no less because I was not in my right mind.”

Beside him, Song Yanchu looked furious.

Xiao Chengke asked whether I needed anything in my courtyard.

“A lock I can fasten from inside.”

After a silence, he immediately ordered the guards moved ten zhang away from the courtyard and had the lock changed. Only I was to receive a key.

“For these three days, my people will guard the outside. No one may enter without your permission.”

He looked at Song Yanchu.

“Including you.”

As I left the main courtyard, Song Yanchu blocked me at the end of the corridor.

“What were you trying to do?”

“What you told me. Not mention you, or the betrothal.”

He caught my sleeve and pulled me behind a pillar.

“Do you have the token?”

“What token?”

“Don't play the fool.”

Looking into his anxious, reddening eyes, I deliberately asked, “Why does a personal guard have a dispensary token?”

His grip tightened suddenly.

The fabric tore. Dark-red powder fell from my sleeve onto his shoes.

He looked down. His expression changed at once.

I watched him.

“You know what that is, don't you?”

He tried to pull me toward a deserted spot. I clung to the pillar and refused to move. Only when a patrol approached in the distance did he let go.

“Don't sleep tonight,” he said quietly. “I'll come to take you out.”

“Where?”

“Didn't we agree to marry?”

He spoke too quickly, as though reminding me—or trying to convince himself.

“A Tang, just come with me. We can pretend nothing in the capital ever happened.”

I looked at the powder on his shoes.

“All right. I'll wait.”

As soon as he left, I went to knock on Physician Lu's door.

When I returned to my courtyard, the lock had been changed.

The two male guards inside were gone. In their place was a woman guard named Cen. She gave me the key and brought fresh bedding. His Highness had ordered everything used in the room replaced, she said, so it would not distress me to see it.

Dinner was four dishes and a soup. Nothing rare or costly, only ordinary home cooking.

I asked Guard Cen, “How did His Highness know I couldn't stomach bird's nest and shark fin?”

“Physician Lu said you haven't eaten properly for two days. Your stomach couldn't bear it. His Highness had the kitchen make the porridge three times. He thought the first two batches too thick.”

I did not believe Xiao Chengke would trouble himself over a bowl of porridge.

Guard Cen pointed to the soup bowl's rim.

“There's a small chip here. He dropped it by accident while testing the temperature. The kitchen wanted to replace it, but he said not to waste it.”

I raised the porridge and took a sip. It was just the right temperature.

Before closing the door, Guard Cen specifically asked whether I wanted a lamp left burning. She did not ask why. She simply moved the candlestick beside the bed and checked that I could reach the door bolt.

I knew Song Yanchu would come tonight. Yet I was no longer as panicked as I had been.

At least, in a residence full of his own people, Xiao Chengke was willing to give me a door I could lock from inside.

4.

Physician Lu had not believed me at once.

I opened my shoe sole and gave her the token. She studied it by lamplight and recognized a duplicate dispensary token, used to obtain medicinal supplies at night.

“Deputy Commander Song said he lost this half a month ago.”

“It only fell off him last night.”

She asked why I had not told the prince directly.