Chapter 1

“Hey! I asked you a question. Are you mute?”

Zheng Yuandu lashed me with a twig, annoyed.

He was only seven, my younger brother in name, but everyone in this household accepted that he was the young master and I was a slave. All I could do was huddle on the ground and let him bully me.

“Young master, don’t play with her. She’s filthy and stinks. You’ll dirty your new silk robe!”

The steward’s son gave me a disgusted roll of the eyes, pinched his nose, and pulled him away to kick a ball in the courtyard with a group of half-grown servant boys.

I tilted my head back toward the water.

Filthy and stinking indeed: tangled hair hanging loose, a face smeared black with dirt, flies circling my body.

Anyone who saw me would keep their distance.

I felt no shame. I felt safe.

What a pity my brother had exposed me so soon.

Watching my reflection, I copied the steward’s son and rolled my eyes upward.

I overdid it. One eyeball nearly came loose and fell out.

Flustered, I caught it with my palm and pushed it hard into the socket. Only when it stayed in place did I let out a long breath.

I had worn this skin for nearly half a year. However carefully I patched it, it was reaching its limits.

I lifted my head and inspected the lively boys one by one. Zheng Yuandu was too short, the steward’s son too thin, and the little servants all had such shifty, ratlike faces.

I couldn’t learn to look like that. A shame.

“Young master!” Chuntang, the maid who had come with my stepmother upon her marriage, hurried over. Seeing them enjoying themselves, she drew her fine brows into a fierce scowl. “You thoughtless louts! Master Pei is already here, and the mistress is beside herself. Yet here you are, encouraging the young master to play!”

The servant boys drooped in embarrassment. Only the steward’s son thrust out his neck in defiance. “It was the mad girl who lured him out! What has it got to do with us?”

Quick-witted as they were, the boys seized on a scapegoat at once. They swarmed over and hauled me up.

“Let the mistress punish her!”

“Yes! She put him up to it!”

“Stinking lunatic! Leave her unbeaten for a few days and she forgets her place!”

Chuntang covered her face with a handkerchief and walked ahead, dragging Zheng Yuandu along with an air of wary disgust.

From behind, with her black hair, pale neck, slim waist, and rounded shoulders, she was just my height. An excellent choice for a new skin.

Besides, for eight years she had led the others in tormenting me in this house.

For eight years, day and night, I had practiced every smile and frown of hers, every expression of arrogant cruelty.

Life among humans was very difficult for us bone demons.

Foxes could take human form. Snakes could shed their scales. But a bone demon had only bones.

Luminous as white jade. Clear and clean.

Since ancient times, so the story went, people had hunted us and made our bones into ornaments worth a fortune.

To survive, each bone demon carefully sewed a human skin, then fitted fresh organs and flesh over its bones, piece by piece, filling out the skin.

When Mother was still here, she often told me it wasn’t enough to look human. I had to imitate how they spoke, moved, and made expressions. I also had to understand why they laughed and why they cried.

If one day I truly understood, even bare bones could feel love and grow a demon heart.

I had seen hers grow.

After Father came to the apothecary, red threads began to seep into her chest, little by little.

Those bright threads sank into her bones and formed a fist-sized ball of flesh inside her hollow rib cage.

It beat wildly in response to Father’s solicitude and endless tenderness.

I was born after her heart had fully formed.

A bone demon might not bear a child in a thousand years. Mother was delighted, and named me Zheng Xi.

Xi—the name sounded like the word for hope.

I was both a priceless treasure and her earnest hope—

Her hope that one day she could bear a child who was truly like Father.

That hope had come to nothing.

Now Father’s child was pouting while Father scolded him fiercely and struck his palms.

My stepmother kept pleading beside them, calling, “My lord, my lord.” With her fine brows and almond eyes brimming with tears, she looked even more helplessly beautiful than the skin Mother had once sewn.

Sure enough, Father put down the ruler and made Zheng Yuandu kneel and apologize to his tutor.

My stepmother dabbed at her eyes, aggrieved. After they left, she turned and took out her anger on me.

“It’s all this little slut’s doing! My lord, look at her. She’s mad, a disgrace and a misery. Why keep her in the house?”

Over the years she had pleaded and made scenes, but Father had never relented.

Kneeling before the hall, I stared blankly at the silent Zheng Qingxu.

He was over forty but had kept himself well, with the same bamboo-slender waist and handsome, open features he had possessed sixteen years ago, when he came into the apothecary to shelter from the rain.

Mother had been deceived by that face. She thought him merely a gentle scholar fallen on hard times, took him in as a husband who joined her household, and could hardly bear to let him do any heavy work.

Even as she died, she could never have imagined that Zheng Qingxu’s slender, pale hands could wield a knife as well as a brush.

His face had twisted hideously as he hacked open her chest and belly, blood and flesh flying.

Hidden behind the medicine shelves, I heard the crisp crack of a blade breaking jade and couldn’t help peering through a gap.

Blood covered Zheng Qingxu’s neck, face, and the front of his robe. Greedy with excitement, he lifted a breastbone threaded with red and shouted deliriously, “I’m rich… I’m rich! At last, I, Zheng Qingxu, will rise above other men!”

The next day he hurriedly packed his bags and left for the capital.

I slipped away to the mountain where he had buried her and dug with all my strength at the still-loose earth.

All I found was a heap of dead flesh, tangled in a thin, soft skin.

Mother’s bones were gone.

From head to foot, even the tiniest stirrup bone in her ear, Father had stripped them all away.

For a long time I could only stare. Then I tried to find the heart that had once been so warm and beaten so strongly.

I searched and searched. It was useless.

To remove her breastbone whole, Father had already cut it to pieces.

The demon heart was mixed with human flesh. Both were cold and wet and soft.

Both drenched in rank blood.