Chapter 1

Chapter 1

In Baili City, the snow is never white.

When it falls upon the eaves, it carries a hint of gray. When it falls into the collars of the poor, it feels like a blade. Only the snow atop the Royal Palace glows in the lamplight, looking from afar like a dusting of powdered sugar.

I was huddling beneath the Holy Bell Tower selling matches, my toes already frozen numb. I held the wooden box against my chest; only seven sticks remained inside. The old man selling chestnuts nearby packed up his stall. Before leaving, he glanced at me and shook his head. “Jiangxue, if you don’t sell them all tonight, don’t bother going back to the bridge tunnel. Just find a corner out of the wind and curl up. When you freeze to death, don’t grip the box too tight, or the match heads will snap off.”

He spoke casually, as if he were teaching me how to peel a chestnut.

Everyone in Baili City knew the rule. A child who couldn’t finish selling their matches wouldn’t live to see dawn. Even if they were lucky enough to survive, they would walk into the Warmhouse Yard the next day of their own accord, begging the adults draped in fox furs for a bowl of hot soup.

No one ever asked where the heat in the Warmhouse Yard came from.

I lowered my head and blew on my fingers. My knuckles were cracked, and the blood seeping out had quickly frozen into a dark red scab under the biting wind. The edges of the wooden box were polished smooth from use. Years ago, my grandmother had carved a crooked flame into the inside of the lid. She said that a match seller could be poor and could be cold, but the one thing they must never do is light the final match.

“The last one will call the dead back,” she had said then, squinting as she pressed her palm against my forehead. “They don’t come back to keep you company. They come to ask you why the living are still borrowing their fire.”

I was too young then to believe her.

That was until a snowy night last year, when I saw with my own eyes a young girl named Ah Qiao curled up under a doorframe, clutching a full box of matches. By dawn, she was stiff, yet her lips were curled in a smile. A yamen runner pried open her frozen hand and picked out a half-burned match from her palm. The fire hadn’t even gone out yet; a thin wisp of blue smoke carried the scent of roasted goose.

Ah Qiao’s family had been so poor they hadn’t seen meat in three years.

That evening, a carriage from the Royal Palace came to take her away. The yamen runner said that those who freeze to death must always have a place to go. As the wind lifted a corner of the carriage curtain, I saw it was piled high with empty matchboxes, lined up like rows of tiny coffins.

“Are you selling matches?”

Someone stopped in front of me.

The voice was low, sounding as if it came from beneath a layer of ice. I looked up and saw a black cloak. The edges were embroidered with fine silver thread, and the snow that fell upon it melted instantly into water. The man wore a half-mask, revealing only his jaw and lips. His lips were pale, almost entirely devoid of color.

I held the wooden box out. “Three copper coins a box.”

He didn’t take it, but instead looked at my frostbitten fingers. “How many do you have left?”

“Seven.”

“I’ll take them all.”

He dropped a silver coin, its weight making my palm sink. Just as I was about to hand over the box, he pressed his hand down on the lid, his gaze fixed on mine.

“The last one-do not light it.”

I froze.

Everyone in the city would tell me not to freeze to death, not to wander off, or not to be lazy. Only my grandmother and this stranger had ever said the exact same thing.

Before I could ask him why, a sudden, urgent ringing of bells echoed from the end of the long street. A royal carriage drawn by four white horses stopped before the Holy Bell Tower, the gilded Snow Falcon Pattern on the carriage gleaming piercingly in the night. A eunuch draped in a white fur cloak pulled back the curtain and stepped down. His gaze swept through the crowd before finally settling on me.

“Yi Jiangxue,” he recited my name like a death sentence. “His Highness wishes to see you.”

I clutched the empty matchbox and didn’t move.

The wind grew stronger.

I watched the man in the black cloak turn around and step into the lamplight of the palace carriage. Snow fell onto his shoulders like a thin layer of frost.

He removed his mask, revealing eyes colder than the night itself.

Everyone in Baili City recognized that face.

The Crown Prince, Yan Zhichuan.