Chapter 2

When I woke again, my hands and feet were bound, and I had been dumped on a bed inside a tent.

Alarm rang through me. I immediately checked my clothes—the fastenings were intact.

Relief had barely reached me when I realized how weak I felt. I could summon no strength at all. Had they drugged me?

I glanced around. The furnishings clearly belonged to a commander’s tent.

No, wait. Why were there imperial dragons everywhere?

I had heard that Qi’s emperor was leading this campaign in person. Surely not…?

The tent flap lifted. A rough voice announced, “Your Majesty, the Sixth Prince we exchanged for the princess has been given the muscle-weakening powder and put on the bed.”

“On the bed?”

I was squirming helplessly when a tall figure loomed over me.

He was extraordinarily handsome, with a striking red mole at the corner of one eye. Yet his face bore all the weight of imperial authority.

As he leaned closer, the cool, intrusive scent of sandalwood reached me.

It came from the string of sandalwood prayer beads in his hand.

Xie Lin, Qi’s new emperor. In less than three years on the throne, he had swallowed up the surrounding small states that had once raided his borders.

Each time he destroyed a state, another bead appeared on his wrist.

They said he carried the beads because he felt the burden of all the killing his conquests had required.

There were seventeen now.

My own country, Yue, was the last great power capable of resisting Qi. One wrong move, however, and it might become the eighteenth bead in his hand.

“Y-you! Don’t come any closer!”

With the hand wrapped in prayer beads, he gripped my chin. His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “A stutterer?”

“You’re the stutterer!”

The retort came quickly enough.

He gave a soft laugh. “Lu Wei abandoned you for the princess. How does that feel?”

I had trained in the army for years. Since war broke out between our countries, I had served as the strategist behind Lu Wei’s victories.

Openly and in secret, I had already crossed swords with Xie Lin many times.

I could hardly say I feared him. But this was the first time he had been so close, and with the drug in my body, I couldn’t help feeling uneasy.

One thing I knew: until Lu Wei rescued me, my identity as a prince was my only protection.

Even a prince fallen on hard times could survive in enemy hands as a royal hostage.

If he discovered I was a woman, however—an unloved princess, no less—my fate would be grim.

“She’s a woman, and I’m her younger brother. Saving my elder sister makes me something of a hero!” I said stubbornly.

He watched me for a long time, amusement in his eyes.

Then he slid a finger down my neck toward my collar.

I was terrified.

But his hand never went inside my clothes. Instead, he untied the ropes around my wrists.

Perhaps I imagined it, but his eyes seemed to darken at the sight of the red marks the bonds had left.

“You dare untie me? Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you?”

He turned, picked up a dagger, and placed it in my palm himself. “Go on, then. Kill me.”