chapter 3

At first, I restrained myself. Before long, I abandoned all dignity.

With a stick of candied hawthorns in my left hand and a little pinwheel in my right, I raced down the street making it spin. I looked magnificent.

Lou Guanshan followed behind, lecturing me. “Try to show some sense. Can you act even slightly like the Crown Prince?”

“Ah! Someone over there is sculpting sugar figures!”

“Are we still drinking? Do you still want to switch bodies?”

“Should I ask him to make Zhu Bajie or Sun Wukong?”

“I’ll pay for the wine. You choose our midnight meal.”

I turned and gave him a radiant smile. “Then I want the most expensive food.”

He reached up to pinch my cheek, discovered he could not reach, and rose on tiptoe. “Now you can hear me.”

Lou Guanshan and I had a serious disagreement over where to eat.

He wanted a pleasure house.

I wanted a restaurant.

Years ago, I had spent an entire year learning to cook so I could assassinate him. A restaurant kitchen felt as welcoming as home. Under this moonlit, star-sparse sky, homesickness struck me fiercely. I desperately wanted to visit a restaurant.

We tugged at each other at a fork in the road.

“You’re a girl right now!” I snapped. “What could you possibly do in a pleasure house?”

He shot back, “If you pass up a pleasure house, can you still call yourself a man?”

His argument was so sound that I had no reply.

In the end, Lou Guanshan dragged me into a pleasure house.

What else could I do? The wretch had my bed-wetting incident to hold over me.

A heavily painted madam came to greet us, only to say that young ladies were not allowed inside.

Lou Guanshan stiffly linked his arm through mine. “I am His Highness’s bedchamber maid. Why shouldn’t I enter?”

The madam looked uncomfortable. “Well… young women don’t usually visit a place like ours with a man. I fear the dirt might soil your shoes, miss.”

“No matter. This lowly maid enjoys sharing.”

How shameless! How could he use my innocent face to say something so filthy?

I refused to be outdone. “I prefer men.”

Lou Guanshan followed at once. “This lowly maid is flat-chested and terribly insecure.”

I pressed harder. “Too much wine has rendered me impotent.”

The madam maintained a professional smile through sheer force of will. “Whom would Your Highness like tonight?”

“Do you have handsome men?”

“Y-yes.”

I brightened. “Send us a few of those.”

Lou Guanshan coughed heavily behind me, reminding me to preserve appearances.

“And for this young lady?” the madam asked.

“Bring her a few beautiful women.”

The madam stared at us.

Cloudlike hair, fragrant sleeves, and cups passed endlessly around the room. By the time our line of handsome men and beautiful women withdrew, Lou Guanshan and I were both dead drunk. We leaned on each other as we stumbled outside.

The world had gone silent. The moon was sinking and the stars were fading. Shifting light made Lou Guanshan’s familiar features look strange.

Never one to lose sight of our goal, he said, “Kiss.”

I grabbed his collar and kissed it.

His smile was beautiful, his lashes casting delicate butterfly shadows over his cheeks. “Fool. Kiss my mouth. What good will kissing my collar do?”

I had never known my face could smile so seductively. My head spun as I slowly bent and kissed his lips.

He licked them, smiling. “The book says it has to be a wet kiss. Do you know what that is?”

My tongue felt twice its usual size. “Wh-what’s that?”

“Crouch down.”

I dropped into an unsteady squat. Still moving like a man, Lou Guanshan swept his skirt aside with habitual boldness, knelt before me, cradled my face, and kissed me.

The kiss tasted of wine and made us drunker still. Soon we were talking nonsense.

“If we switch back after this, are you going to throw me in prison again?” I asked.

“I told you before,” he said gently. “Confession earns leniency. Resistance earns severity.”

I nodded. There was still time to run. I braced a hand on his head and began to stand. Fortunately, I had prepared for his treachery and slipped a muscle-weakening drug into his wine.

Then my own legs melted beneath me and my entire body refused to move. The bastard had played the same trick on me.

Shameless!

We glared, cursing each other with our eyes, until a fact even more serious than our mutual paralysis dawned on us.

We had not switched back.

A late-spring chill swept through the empty street. I sneezed and wept silently inside.

Lou Guanshan shook me awake.

His eyes held three parts shock, three parts embarrassment, and four parts fury. His first words struck like a killing blow.

“Shen Changying, did you sleep with me?”

I snapped fully awake.

He glared at a spot on the bed. “Look at that virgin blood. Is this your doing?”

I stared.

Surely not. I tried to remember the previous night. Lou Guanshan and I had lain helpless until the drugs wore off, supported each other back to the Crown Prince’s bedchamber, and collapsed into sleep. How could we possibly have…?

Still reeling from the horror of having been ravished, Lou Guanshan lunged to strangle me, only to crumple first. Clutching his lower belly, he muttered, “No one ever told me a woman’s abdomen hurt this much after her first night.”

“No one ever told me a man could lose control after drinking without feeling a thing,” I said miserably, “or even taking off his trousers.”

But his trousers were still on. That made no sense.

I paused. “Where did you say it hurts?”

“My… lower… belly.”

I counted the days on my fingers, drew a deep breath, and exploded into earth-shaking laughter.

“Hahahaha! Lou Guanshan, you’ve started your period! Hahahahahaha!”

His face went gray.

From the day his period arrived, Lou Guanshan became extremely irritable.

I suggested that since kissing had failed, we should try another method.

Lying in bed with a stormy expression, he declared that questioning the text he found meant questioning the library pavilion, questioning the archives of the entire realm, and questioning the intelligence of every person under heaven.

I had no words.

Once his period began, I ordered the kitchen to stop making spicy rabbit heads and iced bayberry soup. I even switched bedchambers with him so Lou Guanshan could sleep more comfortably through his first experience of cramps.

He remained miserable.

Sometimes, as we walked together, he would sneeze, look abruptly furious, and secretly pull a menstrual cloth from his robe before marching to the privy in silence.

Sometimes, after sitting for too long while supervising my paperwork, he would stand, freeze, then draw out another menstrual cloth with trembling hands and stalk to the privy with a dark face.

Sometimes I emerged early in the morning to find a figure furiously scrubbing sheets beside a washbasin. When I approached, Lou Guanshan threw down the wooden beater.

“Forget the rest. Why didn’t you tell me women keep bleeding in their sleep?”

“You leaked a few days ago.”

“I thought that once I used the cloth, it wouldn’t…”

I chuckled. “Naive.”

At last, Lou Guanshan’s body recovered. I lay in the bed originally prepared for Miss Shen, longing for the Crown Prince’s enormous mattress. Once his period ended the next day, we would switch back.

The night was still except for insects chirping outside. I was drifting toward sleep when a shadow passed the lattice window. Alert at once, I laid a hand on the sword beside my pillow.

The window opened and someone slipped inside. I held my breath and pretended to sleep, waiting for him to come close enough for my blade.

Then a familiar voice spoke.

“Changying, it’s me. Guanyue.”

In the darkness, I remembered the Sixth Prince’s handsome, open face. Complicated emotions churned within me.

When the person on the bed did not move, Lou Guanyue’s heart seemed to stir. He approached slowly.

“I thought you were dead. A few days ago, Changfeng told me he saw you with the Crown Prince at the night market. That was how I learned you were alive. Changying… are you well?”

He sat at the bedside and reached for my shoulder. “Three years apart, and you’ve become so… so muscular?”

I turned my face toward him. In the moonlight, the corners of the Sixth Prince’s mouth twitched.

“E-elder brother? Why are you here?”

Damn it. I had forgotten whose body I was in.