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The ground seemed porridge soft, my ankles rolling as I tried to walk. I needed to go tell Wenshu and Yufei, if I could manage to make it home without falling flat on my face.

When I turned the same corner for the third time, I realized that I might be lost, or maybe too dizzy to find my way out of the labyrinth of the palace. I groaned, spinning around and heading back down the hallway again. In my pocket, the duck chirped and snapped at the fabric.

“I’m doing my best,” I said, my words loose and slurred. “You think you can do better?”

The duck fell silent, then hopped to the floor and started waddling in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?” I said, bending down to scoop it up. But the ground rushed up too fast and my forehead hit the tiles before my hands. I groaned and sat up as the duck scurried around a corner.

The duck seemed innocent enough, but I doubted that an alchemical animal was safe to set loose in a palace. There was no way I had created a creature of such pure good without even a touch of evil, and my position here was already precarious enough without being responsible for a dozen servants dead by duck attack. The only reason I hadn’t gotten rid of it already was that Wenshu would probably be devastated if I deprived him of the chance to study it.

“You were literally just born—how are you so damn fast?” I said, following sludgy duck footprints deeper into the palace as a headache hammered behind my eyes, threatening to pop them out of my skull. I had the distinct sense that this wasn’t a place where I was meant to wander—the paper doors rather than majestic wooden ones suggested these were residences and not offices. Perhaps this was where the members of the royal court lived.

The footprints disappeared between sliding paper doors left ajar at the end of the hallway, darkness spilling out from within. At least that meant the space was unoccupied, and I wouldn’t be bursting into someone’s room to collect my feral duck while they were in the middle of dinner.

I slammed the doors open, my gaze snapping to the duck sitting inside a shoe by the doorway.

“There you are, you little monster,” I said, grabbing the shoe and shaking him out into my palm. “I’ve eaten duck before, you know. I’m not above doing it again.”

But as I set the shoe down, the floor rippled beneath it, and I realized that dark liquid coated the ground. The sharp scent of blood knifed up my nose. I probably would have noticed it sooner if I wasn’t drenched in my own blood and scorched alchemical sludge.

I peered into the room, but the shades were drawn, and dense shadows blanketed everything aside from the tiny circle of light in front of the door. I could make out the shapes of futons and low tables and scattered shoes, but not much else.

Then the darkness began to shift.

I grabbed hold of the door frame as the whole floor shivered, a river of blood spilling into the hallway. A creaking echoed through the dark, like dry branches splintering in winter, and a shuddering breath reached my ears.Someone is in here, I thought, even though I should have known because the blood rushing past my feet was sickeningly warm.

With trembling hands, I fished a few firestones from my bag and ignited them in my palm, stripping the darkness from the walls.

First, there was a woman’s face, upside down.

Blood rushed from her mouth and nose into her eyes, hair tangled in the swampy darkness of the floor. White spikes jutted out of her at jagged angles, like the porcupines of the southern forests, her arms crooked and pale on the floor beside her. She shifted, writhing from her center, and a second face turned to me, rising from the base of her throat.

The man’s eyes were two polished white spheres like faraway moons. His skin gleamed, my flames shivering in ribbons of light across his cheeks. The lower half of his face dripped like a melting candle, his lips lost in the dark mess of blood weeping down his jaw.

He grabbed the spikes on either side of the woman and used them as leverage, raising himself up with a sharpcrack, jostling the woman’s limp frame as he emerged from within her.

I realized, with a dawning sense of horror, that the spikes were the woman’s ribs wrenched apart, her chest opened like a book.

I stumbled back, tripping over the shoes in the doorway, and hurled my glowing firestones at the man’s face. It should have scorched his skin, but the stones only bounced off his cheek with a sound like they’d struck hollow metal, clattering to the floor with a few errant sparks.

I clamped the duck in one hand as I scrambled to my feet. If I were going to fight a monster with indestructible skin, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be right after losing half my blood.

A surge of pearls filled the monster’s mouth, stretching his lips and pouring to the floor with the sound of heavy rain. I thought of the monsters lurking through the western wards—the beheaded pig, the blood-soaked pearls I’d found there, how my cousinshadn’t believed me.

I took off running, careening around corners and slamming into banisters, trying not to crush the duck in my hand. My heartbeat sounded like a gong in my ears, my breath coming too fast but not reaching my lungs. I didn’t know where I was running, but in the distance, I could still hear the clattering of pearls and lumbering footsteps.

I dared to glance over my shoulder and crashed straight into a body, sending us both to the ground.

My face slammed into the porcelain tiles. For a moment, shapes danced across my vision until the duck came into focus hopping around my face.

“Zilan?”

Hands gripped my arms and peeled me from the floor. I looked up at the prince, his hair askew, lip split open. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Are you all right?”

“It’s not safe,” I said, gasping for breath, pocketing the duck with numb fingers. “We have to...have to get out of here.”

The prince glanced around, but thankfully didn’t ask any more questions before gently taking my arm and pulling me into a study, locking the door behind us.