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The River Alchemist untied me, and I offered my hands to the Paper Alchemist, who pricked my finger and collected the blood in a shallow bowl. She passed it to another alchemist, who put it in a vial and started writing my name across the label.

I saw them starting to writeFanand my stomach clenched, remembering the look on Wenshu’s face when he’d told me I wasn’t a Fan anymore. I’d thought him so cruel at the time, but all of his fears had come true. He and Yufei had been taken because of me. I’d spent so much time worrying that they didn’t think of me as a true sibling, but I was the one who hadn’t listened to them, hadn’t trusted them. I thought of Auntie and Uncle chastising me when they found out what I’d done to their real children.

“My surname is Su,” I said quietly.

“You said your name was Fan Zilan,” the Paper Alchemist said, frowning.

“I lied,” I said, looking down. “Since we’re being truthful now. The Moon Alchemist knows.”

The Moon Alchemist peered at me strangely but nodded to the other alchemist, who sighed and scratched out my name.

“Which Su?” she said impatiently.

“Su as in Jiangsu province,” I said.

“Su as infùsu,” the Moon Alchemist said, staring at me. “To come back to life.How appropriate for an errant resurrection alchemist.” Then she turned and drew a small chest from the shelf behind her, unlocking it. The inside glimmered like pure snow, and in the dim light it took me a moment to realize the chest was packed full of diamonds.

“We don’t make quite enough money to buy many of these,” she said, “so we’ve been saving up for a few years. There’s enough here to make small blades that can cut through any jewel. If we can destroy every monster’s soul tag, they’ll be gone in a matter of minutes.”

“How many monsters are there?” I asked.

“Right now, fifty-four,” the Paper Alchemist said.

I glanced around the room. “But we’re outnumbered,” I said. “Nearly four times.”

“We are not the only alchemists in the palace, Zilan,” the Moon Alchemist said.

I was about to ask who, but my mind drifted back to the dungeons, the hand around my coat, the gaunt face of the man who’d warned me. “You want to release the prisoners,” I said.

The Moon Alchemist nodded. “We’ll have more than enough on our side.”

“That’s why you needed me?” I said. “For greater numbers?”

“No.” The Moon Alchemist drew closer. “We need you because no one else has access to the Empress like you do.”

A lump lodged in my throat. “I have to kill her?”

One of the other alchemists barked out a laugh. “As if we’d entrust something that important to a child,” he said. “We need you to get us her blood.”

“Why do you—”

“The Empress has over a hundred guards, and more that she can call if needed,” the Moon Alchemist said. “If we can feed the Empress’s blood to a dozen or so monsters, they’ll fight off any guard trying to protect her. Even if they don’t make it to her, they’ll reduce the number of obstacles in our way.”

“Besides,” the Paper Alchemist said, grinning wickedly, “it feels appropriate for the Empress to be ripped limb from limb by her own pet projects.”

“She means that it’s safer for us if we’re not fighting off five guards each,” the Moon Alchemist said, glaring at the Paper Alchemist. “This is more efficient than getting the blood of every single guard. We don’t have enough monsters for that, anyway.”

“And you need me to get her blood for you,” I said. “I can find a way.” I thought of the Empress sitting across from me at dinner, passing me in the halls, so close that I could reach out and touch her.

“Then there’s the matter of what happens after,” the Moon Alchemist said.

After?I hadn’t thought much beyond the Empress keeling over dead, and rescuing my cousins.

“We’re not going to depose the Empress just to hand China over to someone who will continue the same policies. The Emperor has been kept ill for over a century. There’s probably not much of him left, if he can even be saved. The prince would have to rule as regent at first, if not permanently.”

That’s what I’d been counting on, I thought. But I didn’t think now was the best time to mention that I’d already tried to kill the Empress without them.

“We’ve been watching him for years,” the Moon Alchemist said. “He’s soft. He let his sisters out of jail, and cries reading about death and war. He’s openly defied his mother more than once. We think he could be agreeable to our counsel, or if that fails, afraid of our power.”