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When I cried, Siwang would hold my hand. He would tell me stories and bad jokes until I giggled.

Whatever I wanted, if Siwang had it, he would give it to me without question. If he didn’t have it, he would move mountains to get it for me.

If I wanted to see a play, he would either sneak me out of the palace or have the entire performance set up in the palace for me to watch.

If I liked a song, he would learn to sing it for me whenever I wanted.

If I liked a book, he would recite every word to match me in verse.

Rong Siwang.

My only friend inside the palace.

The only thing that had made these seventeen years worth living.

My safe harbor.

The one person who would do anything for me.

The only good thing that had come out of this prophecy.

He loved me. I knew he loved me. I would be stupid not to see it.

But did he love Lifeng Fei the girl, or Lifeng Fei the empress of all empresses? And could this love withstand the test of time?

“How can you leave him, Fei? Do you not love him?” my sister asked, weeks ago.

Some days, I wondered if Father was right, that it would be futile trying to fight what was written in the stars.

But while I could love Rong Siwang the boy, I refused to love Rong Siwang the prince who wanted to rule the world.

The man whose greed might one day bring calamity to Yong’An and cause the deaths of everyone we had ever met.

9

I woke to flickering firelight illuminating darkened cave walls, where twisted shadows were etched high on all sides.

“You are awake.” A soft voice spoke.

I blinked. My body hummed in a dull ache, heavy and numb, as if anchored by phantom chains. If it weren’t for the steadythud-thud-thudinside my chest, the clear sound of blood pumping in my ears, and the winter air filling and emptying my lungs with every breath, I would have thought this the afterlife.

“Where am I?” I tried to move, tried to sit up, but even this small movement was too much.

“Stay still,” Yexue warned, helping me into a sitting position. He propped my back against the ice-cold stone wall, and tucked his fur coat tighter against me. I noticed that the outer layer of his embroidered white robe was now wrapped over my shredded clothes, the sole confirmation that the bloody encounter with the tiger wasn’t just a nightmare.

“I should be dead,” I murmured, watching for his reaction.

While my clothes were ruined, my body was not. I touched my chest, and instead of deep gashes that should have killed me, I found soft flesh that was tender to the touch.

No mangling scars. Nothing.

“I saved you,” Yexue replied, not quite looking at me as he moved toward the crackling fire at the center of the cave and fed it a handful of brambles.

“How?”My voice was harsher than it should have been. I bit my lip, immediately guilty. I should feel gratitude, not anger. Without him, I’d be a corpse abandoned by the creek waiting for wild animals to claim me.

But I had heard rumors about the Lan dynasty. How Lan Yexue’s father practiced the forbidden kind of magic and worshipped gods who answered only after midnight. Some said his mother was a demon; some said she was a goddess who was beguiled by his father’s beauty and fell in love despite heaven’s laws against such feelings between gods and mortals. Rumors swirled like smoke, and often, smoke did not come without fire.

Nothing in life was free. Especially something as precious and sacred as the sort of magic that could bring someone back from certain death.