Chapter 2

Chapter 2

For the first time, I learned that even the wind inside the Royal Palace is warm.

It took less than half an hour for the carriage to travel from the clock tower to Glimmersnow Palace. I spent the entire journey huddled in the corner, but as feeling slowly returned to my fingertips, they began to ache as if thousands of needles were stabbing into them. A eunuch tried to press a copper hand-warmer into my arms, but I didn’t take it. The sudden rush of heat against my sleeve made me feel nauseous instead.

Poor people aren’t used to touching hot things so suddenly.

When I was little, my grandmother took in a boy whose throat had been scalded by hot soup. He had stolen a gulp of boiling broth from a charity stall at the entrance of the Warmhouse Yard; he was dead by the next day. As my grandmother buried him, she cursed while shoveling dirt, saying that the heavens were cruel-it could freeze a person to death, but it could burn them to death just as easily.

By the time I was led into the side hall, the silver charcoal was already burning. Rows of antler lamps hung on the walls, their flames so still it looked as if someone were holding them down with their bare hands. Yan Zhichuan stood by the window, still wearing that same black cloak, though the snow on his shoulders had already melted away. He didn’t turn around, merely gesturing for the doors to be closed.

“Can you write?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Can you read?”

“A little.”

He turned around, his gaze falling on my face. Up close, I realized he was quite young, barely in his early twenties. He had a sharp brow, but there was a permanent shadow of fatigue beneath his eyes. He looked like someone who hadn’t slept in a very long time, or perhaps someone who hadn’t seen the sun in years.

“How many years have you been selling matches?”

“Six years.”

“Who else is in your family?”

I was silent for a moment. “No one.”

He nodded, as if he had already expected that answer. Then, he pushed a wooden box across the table toward me. When the box opened, I saw dozens of matchboxes arranged neatly inside, each with a different name branded onto the lid. Ah Qiao, Ah Man, Dongsheng, Xinger…

They were all people I had known, people who had vanished into the snowy nights.

I stared at the row of names, my throat suddenly tightening. “Why did you buy these?”

“To keep warm.”

When he spoke, he didn’t even blink.

In an instant, I felt a wave of revulsion, as if a handful of ice had been shoved into my stomach. There were many rumors about the Crown Prince. Some said he was born with a frigid aura and that anyone he touched would meet with misfortune; others said he was the king personally chosen by the Snow Queen, and that the only reason Baili City survived the lengthening winters was because he stayed up every night in Glimmersnow Palace, lighting fires to keep the cold at bay. But regardless of the version, no one had ever told me that the fires he lit were fueled by the lives of children.

“Is the fire outside not enough for Your Highness to burn?”

My tone was too sharp, and the eunuch beside me paled. Yan Zhichuan, however, only looked at me. “What did your grandmother tell you?”

I felt a chill run down my spine. “You knew my grandmother?”

“She used to deliver matches to the palace,” he replied flatly. “Then she stopped.”

Grandmother had never mentioned this.

I wanted to press him for more, but he suddenly let out a low cough. It didn’t sound human; it sounded like ice cubes clinking against a porcelain cup. A moment later, he raised a hand to cover his lips, and a white object the size of a rice pearl rolled from between his fingers, hitting the floor with a crisp clatter.

I looked down and saw a bead of ice frozen to a shine, with a faint spark of fire sealed inside.

Yan Zhichuan didn’t let me look for long; he quickly crushed it under his foot.

“Starting tonight, you will live in the palace,” he said. “Every night at the hour of the Dog, bring the matches to me. Don’t wander, don’t enter the West Corridor, and don’t go to the Warmhouse Yard.”

“And if I refuse?”

He glanced at me, his eyes cold to the point of exhaustion.

“Yi Jiangxue, every child who sells matches in Baili City eventually ends up here. You were invited in; you should consider yourself lucky.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a wind suddenly picked up outside. It swirled with snow, scraping against the glass windows like something clawing with its fingernails.

I looked up and, through the window paper, saw a row of pale, ghastly lamps lit at the end of the West Corridor.

Behind the shadows of the lamps stood a line of very short figures.

They looked like a group of children whose backs had been bent double by the weight of the snow.