Three was startled awake by a scream akin to that of a sughtered pig.

  A bloody haze over her eyes, she blinked away the searing white spots. Her throat burned, worse than the most unforgiving hangover, with a sour bitterness ripping into her tongue.

  …What’s going on?

  She was lying in a ditch, the one she’d fallen in st night. It was a narrow, long hole, with the dirt sides of the walls frozen into hard brown. Everything was covered in snow. The cold of it bit into her, into the numbness of her body.

  ‘You, boy, go get some help! This servant — go get the physician, have someone inform the First Prince —’

  ‘No, wait,’ Three groaned. Her fever — the only damned thing that kept her from freezing to death — pounded in her head. All of her words came out strange; her tongue wouldn’t listen to her. ‘Don’t… don’t call the First Prince.’ Stiffly propping herself up, she rolled over to face the ashy sky.

  It was a pale, dirty sort of grey, with the hazy blue of early dawn. She blinked her eyes blearily, almost confused — if the dull, cloudy sky told her anything, she hadn’t been unconscious for long. It had probably been no more than a shichen.

  Her mind couldn’t help but wander. Was the princess safe?

  Then, a terrified, raisin-wrinkled face peeked over the top of the ditch’s edge.

  She stared, a little amazed even in her numbing pain. The woman who had found her was the very same kind soul who’d given her the buns just the day before. ‘…It’s you,’ she mumbled. The breathy sigh of hers fluttered in her lungs. It couldn’t clear her head. It was clear like water in the air.

  But the woman’s face twisted from terror to horror. ‘You — child, don’t look down. Can you climb up?’ Then she spped herself and said, ‘No, of course you can’t, you’ve got knives stuck in you! Child, hold tight, I’ll have someone climb down —’

  What am I lying on?

  She obeyed and didn’t look back.

  Isn’t this just dirt and bark? The snow’s covering everything, so why…?

  The elderly woman was interrupted by a girl’s shriek. ‘No! We can’t go down there, not with that —’

  ‘Then what? Watch the girl bleed to death?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe —’ Three couldn’t see the speaker, but the fear and panic and guilt billowed out of it like dark, heavy smoke. ‘Maybe she’s a bad person! No-one normal would be here, with such injuries, isn’t it strange how she’s still alive? Maybe she’s the one who killed all the princess —’

  She froze.

  She forced her body to roll over, ignoring the burning pain that ripped its way down her side. Her fingers, numb from cold, brushed away the snow, revealing —

  The Seventh Princess’s crushed, dead face.

  The woman’s skin, already pale, was now whiter than the snow. But it was marred by purplish-blue spots and angry red bruises, the chest caved in. The princess must have gone through the hells and high waters in her doomed battle for survival; blood was still trapped under those chipped nails, even the teeth having been sanded raw, with both restraining and stab wounds twisting the corpse.

  Three couldn’t move.

  She couldn’t climb out.

  The ditch was too high. The snow was too cold. Her warmth, her qi, it had been leeched out by the frost and now she had none to spare, not even enough to use the most basic qinggong techniques.

  If it weren’t for the pain, the weakness in her, she would have vomited.

  She pleaded, ‘Get me out of here.’ Her hands — a whiteish blue, pale like a corpse — shivered, the gooseflesh on her arms rising from a twisted mix of fear and disgust and cold and that terrible horror.

  The snow seemed to fsh before her, fluttering in and out of her eyes in the dim light. Was she breathing faster? ‘Please get me out. Get me out of here. Please. Please!’ Her words were slurred, lips numb, as though she was trying to speak without a tongue.

  I don’t want to die like this.

  She still wanted to feel the burn of alcohol in her throat.

  She still wanted to taste all the foods of the world.

  She still wanted to kiss her princess again.

  Panic seized her. The pounding of her heart echoed in her ears; it blinded her, deafened her, and dragged up a terrifying face with rain-soaked copper-brown hair, empty chestnut eyes and icy fingers.

  The snow turned into rainwater, the dirt into gravel, and suddenly Three was kneeling at her young miss’s side.

  ‘Why couldn’t you just die with me?’ The woman begged her, almost ughing and snarling, bitter and angry and sobbing all at the same time. ‘We didn’t run, but couldn’t we have died together, happy?’

  Little Melon’s hands trembled, shaking. She could barely sign the words, ‘But I really…’

  ‘We’re lovers.’ The woman reached out a cwed hand. It tried to grip around her neck as it had done countless times before, but fell down short, nding in her p. ‘If I can’t be the Head Shadow, you can’t be Three!’

  She flinched. ‘Young Miss, I really don’t want to die.’

  A pause. The other whispered, ‘Not even for me?’

  ‘Not even for you.’ She hesitated. But for the first time in her life, the urge to spill out all her forbidden thoughts consumed her. She couldn’t stop it, only pleading, ‘Young Miss. Don’t you think something is wrong? Between us, you’re always angry, and I’m always scared. When did we go wrong?’

  At the other’s deathly silence, she confessed, ‘Young miss, you didn’t want to run with me, and I don’t want to die for you anymore. I want to keep living.’

  The silence froze. But then the woman ughed, coughing and snarling and ughing as though she would spit out her lungs. ‘Girl, I made your life worth living. I made it happy. You have no reason to exist if I’m dead!’ Those hands seized the front of Little Melon’s pels, ripping the fabric and gouging hard lines into her colrbones. ‘You’re mine, I’m your reason to live! You’re worthless without me! You’re ugly, stupid, you can’t do anything! You’re nothing, nothing!’

  But, she really wasn’t. She had a purpose, she had a reason. ‘I’m a shadow guard now —’

  The other became hysterical, screaming, ‘You think that can make you happy? You think being a shadow guard is worth more than me?’ Tears poured out of those brown eyes, mixing into the bloody mud. Their lifeforces had leaked out with it — now the dirt tasted of fear, anger and hurt, with the faintest tint of guilty relief. ‘You dare. You dare!’

  She flinched away.

  ‘You should’ve died today,’ the young miss hissed. Like a curse, she chanted, ‘Your life has no meaning, forever a worthless, repceable shadow guard. You’ll realise that everything you’ve done is useless, that your life has nothing but suffering, and you’ll regret burying me alone. And in our next lives, I’ll be Head Shadow, and you’ll just be a dog!’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Little Melon signed. Her heart pounded as though it would explode. It beat with a poisonous guilt and fear and utter terror of death. ‘I’m going to live.’ She pulled those cws off her chest, then knitted her fingers together to form words. ‘Being a shadow guard will make me happy, and that’s all that matters.’

  The rain poured down harder. Perhaps they would both drown in it.

  ‘Say that to me.’ The woman roared, ‘SAY IT!’

  Her lips parted. She took a few breaths and tried to say something, but it was as though cotton had been shoved down her throat; all she could muster was a hoarse, soundless wail.

  The young miss fell quiet. Water dripped down their bloodless skin, their pale faces.

  I’m sorry, she mouthed. I’m sorry, but I really loved you.

  She just didn’t want to die.

  Was it so terrible to want to live?

  Did she really deserve to die?

  ‘Three! Three, open your eyes!’ Someone spoke beside her — the muddy gravel before her began to twist, fshing grey then white then grey and everything was terrible mess of noise and pain and lights and colours and her deafening panting —

  Who are you?

  She gripped her head, curling up. Agony, acute and sharp, ripped down her side with a wet, hot trail. Her eyes fixed down on the white silhouette before her, that long bck hair and pale pink lips and strange yet familiar red eyes.

  ‘Three, I’m Xi Yu. We’re going to get you out of this hole, and we’re both going to be okay. I need you to look at me. Can I lift you out? Can I touch you?’

  A hole?

  Her eyes fell down to the snow, but before she could quite catch the shape of a face Xi Yu suddenly slid in to block her sight.

  She forced a nod.

  Xi Yu pced her hands under Three’s body — heavy, then a dizzying lightness, and more hands came to lift her up and she nded on something soft and thin, hanging in the air. It took her a few moments to pce names to the two faces peering down at her — the emperor and Nine. Her limbs were weighed down — by the yers of bnkets and handwarmers or her growing nausea, she didn’t know.

  She turned her head.

  The other woman, pulled out of the hole by a man in bck — Eight — bolted over to her. ‘You’re alright now,’ said the princess. That voice was soft and firm and warm, like sweetened soy milk, and suddenly all the fear and panic seemed to melt away like morning frost. ‘You’re going to survive. Otherwise I’ll carve the words “Chicken Feet” on your tombstone.’

  She let out a ugh and said, ‘I’m sorry, Your Highness.’

  ‘Why would you be? For getting stabbed? Nearly dying?’

  The sky slowly lightened, turning from a grey to a light, orange-stained blue. As the earth rolled away, the branches giving way for the jasmines and the jasmines receding for the red cquered pilrs and wooden beams, she whispered, ‘No. I thought I got over my episodes, but… it seems I didn’t. I troubled you.’

  Eight and Nine pushed open a door with a creak. Then, the emperor and princess following her in, she was scooted onto a bed. A sweltering warmth hit her — it staved off the cold and her impending frostbite.

  Nine began to peel away her bnkets and bloodstained robes one-handedly.

  Her fists clenched at the pain, hard enough to make little red crescents on her palms. But then her fingers were pried open.

  ‘Obviously,’ Xi Qian’e said. That cold hand gripped hers and didn’t let go, even when she squeezed so hard that their knuckles cracked. ‘But that’s okay. You can trouble me, Chicken Feet.’

  And Three —

  She gave the other a warped smile in the emperor’s brocaded room.