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Wenshu’s anger melted away instantly. He smiled, reaching out and ruffling my hair like when we were kids. “Of course you did,” he said. “You’re the best. You always were.”

At his words, my throat closed up and my vision blurred with tears. I’d never thought I needed Wenshu’s praise, so I wasn’t prepared for the wave of relief it brought, like I could breathe for the first time since we’d dreamed of coming to Chang’an. I wasn’t a failure who had to be sent home alone. I wasn’t deadweight for my perfect cousins to drag around. They weren’t going to leave me behind.

“Why are you crying?” Wenshu said, horrified. “Stop that!”

“Shut up, she’s happy,” Yufei said, crushing me in a hug so forceful that my ribs squeaked in protest.

“Be happy some other way!” Wenshu said, grabbing a rag and passing it to Yufei, who scrubbed at my face until I took the hint and blew my nose.

“What about you?” I said. “Which office will you work in?”

They looked at each other, then down at the floor. Their silence stretched longer until it became its own answer. I crushed the rag in my fist. “You didn’t pass?” I whispered.

“It’s not about passing or failing, Zilan. There are ranks,” Wenshu said. “We’re in the third tier. That means we’ll train for another year, then they’ll send us somewhere else.”

They have to leave Chang’an?I shook my head, pressed up against the wall like I could back away from their words. I’d worked as hard as I did so we could stay together. I didn’t want any of this if it meant saying goodbye.

“But you did so well on the second round,” I said, my voice small.

“Yes, the written round, not the oral one,” Wenshu said, expression pinched, unwilling to meet my eyes. “I swear they talked faster just to confuse us. And I think they try to force Southern candidates back to the South, since Northerners can’t speak our dialect as well.”

“For now, we can stay,” Yufei said, reading the devastation on my face.

I opened my mouth to tell them to just stay with me at the palace before remembering that I hadn’t exactly mentioned that part yet. I glanced at the guard behind me before switching to Guangzhou dialect to explain what had happened last night, watching as Wenshu’s and Yufei’s faces slowly darkened.

Maybe the palace monsters hadn’t killed me, but Wenshu would.

“You’re hiswhat?” he said.

I winced, turning to Yufei for help, but she flopped back into bed like she couldn’t stand to be conscious for this discussion.

“I’m also a royal alchemist,” I said quietly. “Can we go back to talking about that part?”

Wenshu let out a strangled sound. “Is that why the guard is here?”

“I think it’s a royal court thing.”

Wenshu seethed, shaking his head. “Zilan, it’s not a royal court thing, it’s a concubine thing. He’s making sure you don’t get pregnant.”

I whirled around to face the guard. “Is that true?” I said in his dialect. “You’re not here to protect me from monsters but from men?”

The guard shrugged. “You can only have the Crown Prince’s children.”

“He’s my brother!”I said, jerking a hand at Wenshu.

“I’m just following orders,” the guard said.

I silently vowed to murder the prince when I returned to the palace.

“Zilan,” Yufei said, sitting up again, “this is a terrible idea.”

“Well, it wasn’t my idea, and it’s too late to take it back.”

“You shouldn’t have touched the prince in the first place!” Wenshu said. “You shouldn’t have snuck off with him at all! He’s not supposed to even know who you are!”

“He risks nothing and you risk everything,” Yufei said.

My gaze jumped between the two of them. Somehow, no matter what I did, I was the target of their anger. It was supposed to be the three of us against the rest of the world. Now we were all being sent off to separate places, and they were mad at me for something I couldn’t control.