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“No!”I said. “You think that dying for me absolves you of anything? Everyone dies. It doesn’t make you a hero. It just makes you another body in the ground.”

“Better me than you,” he said, smiling even as a line of blood trickled from the sharp edge of the blade.

“You don’t get it,” I said. “I’m already dead, Hong.” I hadn’t meant to tell him this way, but the words rushed out like a well spilling over from too much rain. Anything to change his mind, even if he never looked at me the same way again.

“Zilan, I know,” he said quietly. “I saw your scar, remember?”

“You understood what that meant?” I said, my hands slipping from the bars. “You never asked about it.”

“It doesn’t matter, Zilan,” he said, his eyes as warm as ever. “None of it matters. You’re still you.”

He’s actually going to do it, I thought, wishing I could rend the bars apart, tear the whole world in half. So many people had died for me, for a life that I’d ruined and wasted, and I couldn’t let the prince do the same. But the Empress held a knife to his throat, he had no weapons to defend himself, and I was caged across the room. I still had my rings, but those were only good for small transformations with things I could touch.

I patted my sleeves and pockets for something, anything I could use to break free. But no stones fell out. Just a tiny spool of gold thread that I’d used to fix my dress that afternoon.

I froze, clutching it in my fist to be sure the Empress wouldn’t see it. Maybe the prince didn’t have any weapons on him. But I could be a weapon for him.

I pinched the loose end of the thread and twisted it around my finger.

“Li Hong,” I said, “you promised me one more day.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “I tried.”

I pulled the thread slack under my sleeve.

“Try harder,”I said, reaching through the bars and hurling the spool across the room.

It arced over the room like a comet, a tail of golden thread marking its path. The Empress’s gaze followed it, eyes narrowed as she tried to discern what I’d thrown.

The prince would know. He would understand it sooner than the Empress, and if he was smart, he would use that half second to his advantage.

This is all the time I can give you, I thought, pressed against the bars, clutching the other end of the thread, praying he would understand.

He didn’t even hesitate.

As the Empress arched her neck toward the spool, the prince wrenched her wrist down, forcing the knife from his throat. Her gaze snapped back to him, and she raked the blade across his chest, drawing a line of blood through his clothes, but he had already broken away from her, reaching out, hand closing around the spool.

I never should have doubted him—the prince knew me the way the moon knows its shadowed face. He knew all of my secrets even if I never said them out loud.

He turned back to the Empress and pressed the spool to the bare skin of her sternum.

Gold was a soft metal. Not ideal for stabbing someone, especially not through bone.

But if I could break her skin, I would have access to her bloodstream, filled with the gold and iron that I could warp into any shape. I could force all the blood to pool in her feet, knocking her unconscious. I could sharpen the iron into tiny spikes that tore her veins open, making her bleed out inside herself. I could rip her organs apart, I could drill spikes into her brain, I could destroy the indestructible empress, and the empire would finally belong to Hong.

The Empress raised her blade, aiming for the prince’s throat.

This time, I was faster.

Alchemy shot like lightning across the golden thread, singeing the palm of my hand raw. The tangled threads congealed into a thin point that bit into the Empress’s sternum, splitting her skin and sending a curtain of blood spilling down her chest, soaking her gold dress. Her necklace burst, pearls clattering to the ground as my alchemy raced into her veins, rushing toward her heart.

She struck wide at Hong but missed, and in my moment of relief, I realized too late that she hadn’t been aiming for him at all.

The thread snapped, spool clattering to the floor. The transformation cut off like a wall had slammed down between me and the rushing river of the Empress’s veins. Hong took a surprised step back, then the Empress readjusted her grip on her knife, and in one fluid sweep, slit his throat.

“Hong!”I said, grabbing the bars. The cage lurched with my weight, threatening to spill me onto my face.

The prince remained on his feet for a moment, like a swaying stalk of silver grass, hand clamped around his neck. Then blood rushed past his fingers, weeping down the steps before the throne, racing through the grooves between the tiles. He tried to speak, but the words came out wet and distorted. He coughed, sinking to his knees, and I realized that in a few minutes, I was going to lose everyone who mattered to me.