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I sank down to the ground and pressed my ear to the door, listening for the sound of clattering pearls. But as the minutes went by and my heartbeat began to slow, I heard nothing but the distant chirp of cicadas. I put my hands over my face and sagged against the door, letting out a shaky sigh.

A warm hand rested on my knee.

“What happened?” the prince asked quietly.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear his sincerity, his worry. “You have monsters eating people in your palace,” I said.

His hand tensed on my knee. “Did they hurt you?”

My next breath caught in my throat, my heart rate picking up again. He didn’t seem surprised at all. “You know about those things?” I said.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he said, even though that wasn’t what I’d asked. “I would have told you not to wander the halls at this hour. I’m sorry, Zilan, I—”

“Is this normal to you?” I said, my voice rising. “Court ladies being dismembered in their rooms?”

The prince grimaced. “They don’t often hurt other people, I swear,” he said. “Usually they’re only interested in me.”

“They come after you?” I said. My gaze dropped to the healing scratches on the prince’s collarbone, his robes tugged loose from our fall. Was this why he always looked like he’d been mauled by a cat?

But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The prince was alive, but because of these monsters, other people were dead. “You know that they’re loose in other wards too?” I said.

He sat back, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Zilan,” he said, “do you remember how I told you that my relatives across China have been turning up dead?”

I nodded stiffly.

“The official reports say they were all killed by wild animals,” he said. “But, after the things I’ve seen in this court, you can imagine why I find that hard to believe.”

“They were sent after your family?” I said, pressing my palms to my eyes. “That means the Empress is behind this, right?”

“I think at first, they were only meant to kill my family,” he said, “but now they kill anyone she dislikes, and innocent people tend to get caught in the crossfire. Her experiments are not the most precise.”

“What are they?” I said, shuddering at the thought of the creature’s hardened skin.

Something flashed in the prince’s eyes, and he looked away. “I’m not sure,” he said, his voice wavering.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“No, honestly, I’m not sure. All I know is that...” He shook his head. “I didn’t... Zilan, you’re so good at alchemy, and you worked so hard for this. I wanted to warn you, but I didn’t want to take this away from you.”

“What does me being good at alchemy have to do with this?”

The prince leveled his gaze with mine, taking a deep breath.

“Zilan, the royal alchemists create the monsters.”

I shook my head slowly. The duck chirped in my pocket, struggling to break free.They wanted to see if I could create life, I realized, feeling like I was being dragged to the bottom of the ocean, chest crushed in.

“I won’t,” I whispered. I thought of the girl burning in the western ward, the smell of charred flesh that I still couldn’t scrub from my mind.

“You won’t have a choice,” the prince said.

I rose to my feet and backed against the door. Making gold was bad enough, but creating monsters? This was what I’d dreamed about my whole life? The privilege of helping the rich live forever and crafting an infallible army for the Empress? My stomach clenched and my hand fumbled for the doorknob. I couldn’t stay here.

“Wait.”

The door wouldn’t open. I turned around as the prince pressed his hand to the door to hold it shut, gold bracelets rattling on his wrist, caging me in. My gaze traced from his golden eyes down to his bleeding lip.

“Please, Zilanxiaojie,” he whispered, his words ghosting across my face, “you look pale. Let me at least walk you home.”