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I gripped the prince’s hand even harder, not sure that it would help at all with the transformation, but unwilling to let go. Alchemy rushed from my hand into his. I could sense it flashing across the thread under his clothes, rushing from his ring into the bowl, across the plate of bok choy and dumplings and bowls of rice and gold-painted chopsticks, charging like invisible lightning toward the Empress’s golden teacup. It skimmed up and down the golden leaves painted across her soup bowl and—

The bowl burst, spraying all of us with a hot mist of soup.

The Empress flinched back, teacup in one hand, whirling around to glare accusingly at the servants.

“What kind of porcelain is this?” she said.

My hand went limp in the prince’s palm. Our timing had been off. The Empress had moved her cup too soon, and the alchemy had cracked the wrong dish. One glance at the prince’s golden ring on his right hand told me the transformation had already burned it away, and I could feel the thread in his palm that was now slack. He could no longer be a conduit for me.

The servants were all bowing and apologizing, hurrying to clear the table. I sank into my seat, thinking about my cousins rotting away in a cellar while I sat here and failed at alchemy. The prince threaded his fingers with mine, even though it was pointless now, his pulse hammering through his palm.

The lion let out a low rumble from where it lay beneath the table, and I suspected the warm liquid pooling under my shoes was duck blood.

After the servants had finished cleaning up the mess, they brought out trays of gold for the Empress and the prince, leaving me to stare at the roasted duck that I couldn’t bear to eat.

“This is dinner, not a funeral, Hong,” the Empress said, popping a gold nugget into her mouth. “Try not to look so glum. This is why no one wants you at events. You couldn’t put on a face if your life depended on it.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” the prince said, staring at his plate.

“That’s all you ever say,” she said, licking gold juices from one of her long, thin fingers. “It’s laughable that you think you can be the Emperor one day.”

The prince looked up sharply. “I don’t—”

“We’d be better off crowning the corpses of your brothers and sisters,” the Empress said, sorting through her gold with one hand. “You think the fact that you live while they’re dead makes you some sort of victor? All it means is that you’ve been saved for last because no one sees you as a threat. You’re as inconsequential as a fly buzzing around meat on a summer day. Not even worth the effort to kill. Just an annoyance.”

The prince slammed his fists into the table.

The dishes rattled against each other, his pile of gold spilling over the lip of his plate onto the ground. His face was red, jaw clenched as he rose to his feet.

“I am the Crown Prince of Dai, the last living son of the Emperor, and youwill not speak to me like this,” he said. “You forget that you’re only the Empress consort. My father lets you play your games while he’s ill, but China does not belong to you. It belongs to him and me.”

For a long moment, the Empress said nothing at all. She stared at the prince like he’d spoken another language, pinching a single piece of gold between her fingers until it crumbled to bits. I grabbed the prince’s sleeve, but he refused to sit down, glaring back at his mother. I’d wanted him to stand up to her, but not now, when we already had a plan to end her.

At last, her expression spread into a vicious smile, and she popped another piece of gold into her mouth. “Careful, Hong,” she said. “You’ll live much longer as a fly.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but I yanked hard on his arm. His gaze snapped to me, and his expression softened.

Don’t ruin everything now, I thought, praying he could read it in my eyes.She’ll get what she deserves soon enough.

“Yes, obey your concubine, Hong,” the Empress said. “That’s what your father did and look what happened to him.”

“Zilan is not like you,” the prince said.

“You don’t think so?” the Empress said, raising an eyebrow. Her sharp gaze turned to me, and I felt like a million arrows on taut bowstrings were aimed at my face.

Then, to my horror, she spoke her next words in perfect Guangzhou dialect.

“I think we’re quite alike, actually.”

The Empress has understood everything I’ve said, I realized. My words weren’t safe just because they weren’t in the dialect of Chang’an. How foolish I had been.

“I also wanted a lot of things I couldn’t have when I was your age,” she said, “but the difference is that I got them, and you never will. So let me be clear about a few things, Scarlet. Whatever power you think you have is an illusion. Whatever your dreams are, they belong to me. And wherever you run, I am already there waiting for you.”

Then she leaned back in her chair, stroked her lion, and picked up a fistful of gold.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to eat my dinner.”

The two of us stared at the Empress in silence as she ate with the kind of unbothered ease of someone who had absolutely no fear of losing. For the first time, I wondered if it was impossible to beat the Empress. Maybe it would be better to go back to the Moon Alchemist with my tail between my legs and say we needed a different plan, one that didn’t depend on me outsmarting her.