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“Listen here, you—”

“Do as she says,” the Moon Alchemist said evenly.

She leaned her chin on one hand, drumming her fingers on her knee. The prince looked frantically between her and the court official, whose face flushed at the command.

“You are not an alchemist, so you could have made a mistake,” the Moon Alchemist said, when the scholar didn’t immediately move. “Go check and be done with it.”

The scholar clenched his jaw, his cheeks so red that I thought he might burst, then stormed off down the path and knelt by my barrel, pawing through my gold.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing to the Moon Alchemist.

She looked me up and down, then waved her hand as if my words were inconsequential. Now the scholar would realize his mistake. They would give me another chance. I wasn’t a failure, hadn’t humiliated myself in front of both the prince and the greatest alchemist to ever—

“Here,” the scholar said, coming back up the path, a piece of gold in hand.

My heart sank. “Show me,” I said, my voice shaking.

Before he could even agree, I’d snatched the piece from his hand. I pinched it between my fingers, but the shape didn’t yield.

“This isn’t real gold,” I said.

The scholar shrugged. “Clearly, you don’t know the difference.”

“I know real gold when I see it!” I said. “I’m a merchant, I check for forged gold every day.”

“Exactly,” he said. “You are a merchant, not a royal alchemist. And that is why you’ve wasted all of our time pretending you had a chance here. Do you think we didn’t notice that you had no clue what you were doing? That you can’t make magnets or acid or do water-displacement tests? You may have fooled the backwater judges of Lingnan, but it takes more than luck and audacity to succeed in the royal court.”

I stood rooted in place, too stunned to speak. He was wrong. He had to be. But I already felt half-dead from the heat, all my senses muddled, my head pounding from exhaustion. Maybe he was right. Maybe there were kinds of gold I’d never worked with before.

“Go home,hùnxie,” the official said, turning to leave.

My fist clenched around the piece of gold, so strong and firm in my hand, like steel or iron. I thought of my wristband at the first exam,hùnxiescrawled across it like a brand.

They didn’t want me to win.

“You’re wrong,” I said, my whole body trembling. “This gold is too hard. Real gold is malleable. Just feel it!”

“It’s malleable enough,” the scholar said, waving his hand to dismiss me as he turned away. The Moon Alchemist was already starting to leave, the prince looking morose as he slowly rose to his feet.

Don’t walk away from me, I thought, my blood burning.Don’t you dare. I am not going home empty-handed.

I jammed the gold into the back of my mouth and bit down hard.

A sharpcrackripped through my skull, a lightning bolt of noise and pain lancing through my jaw. It sounded like the world splitting in half inside my skull, and I didn’t know if anyone else had heard it until all three of them spun around.

My mouth filled with a hot rush of blood. I spit out the shattered pieces of my tooth, holding up the bloody—and undamaged—piece of gold.

“You call thatmalleable?” I said.

“Zilan, your tooth!” the prince whispered.

“I have plenty!”I said, blood running down my chin.

The scholar had gone pale, taking a careful step away from me. It was the same look the judges in Huizhou had given me when I dared to escape my cage, when they realized that I was a merchant’s daughter, and merchants wouldn’t let you cheat them out of what they were owed.

“That’s enough,” said the Moon Alchemist.

She turned toward the scholar, arms crossed, her long shadow eclipsing his stunned face. “Do you think the Empress wants her alchemists losing their teeth because of your incompetence?” she said.