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The pantry door shouldn't be open at midnight.
I freeze halfway down the corridor, clutching the empty water jar I'd used as an excuse to leave the maids' quarters. Cold air leaks out from the crack, carrying the smell of dried herbs and old wood. Someone's in there. Someone who doesn't belong.
I should turn around. Go back. Pretend I never saw.
But Mom's recipe book is in there. Hidden behind the vinegar jars on the third shelf, wrapped in oilcloth that still smells like her hands. I'd snuck it in two days ago, the morning after I watched Sun hand that black ring over the wall. Couldn't risk keeping it under my mattress. Nanny Liu turns over the maids' bunks every third day, looking for stolen rice or love letters.
The pantry door swings wider.
A man steps out.
Not a eunuch. Not a guard. He's tall, maybe twenty, wearing plain dark robes that don't match the silver hairpin holding his topknot. His face is all clean angles and bored eyes, the kind of face that gets painted onto scrolls and hung in hallways. He's carrying something under his arm.
Mom's book.
My throat closes. The water jar nearly slips from my hands.
He looks at me. Just looks. Not startled. Not guilty. Like he's allowed to be here and I'm the one trespassing.
I drop into a clumsy bow, keeping my eyes down. Mute kitchen maids don't ask questions. Mute kitchen maids definitely don't ask why a nobleman is stealing from the pantry at midnight.
He doesn't move.
I stay bent, heart slamming against my ribs. The book is right there. Three steps away. If I lunge I could grab it and run, but he's taller and my legs are still cramping from scrubbing the stove all evening and mute girls who assault noblemen get their hands cut off before they get executed.
"You're new," he says.
His voice is quiet. Not kind. Just stating a fact.
I nod, still bowing.
"The mute one."
Another nod. My nails dig into the clay jar.
"You can get up."
I straighten slowly, keeping my face blank. Eye contact is rebellion. Looking away is guilt. I settle for staring at the book tucked under his arm, then catch myself and drop my gaze to his chest instead.
He notices. Of course he notices.
"You want this." He shifts the book slightly, and I see the edge of the oilcloth I wrapped it in. "Why?"
I open my mouth. Close it. Point weakly at my throat and shake my head.
He sighs. Not annoyed. Just tired. "Right. Mute."
He steps closer. I step back. My spine hits the wall.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he says, and that's exactly what someone about to hurt you would say. "I just want to know why a kitchen maid is hiding a book of imperial recipes in the pantry. Recipes that haven't been served in five years."
Five years. Since Mom died.
My hands start shaking. I clasp them behind my back, press them flat against the cold wall.
He's watching me. Really watching. His eyes are dark brown, almost black, and they don't blink enough. "You can read, can't you."
Not a question.
I hesitate, then nod. Lying now would be worse.
"Thought so. Most maids can't." He flips the book open, one-handed, like he's done it a hundred times. The pages are yellowed and soft, covered in Mom's messy handwriting. Her notes spill into the margins, little sketches of garnishes and crossed-out ingredient lists. "Whose book is this?"
I don't answer. Can't answer.
He stops on a page near the middle. Lotus root soup with pork rib. Mom used to make it in winter, said it cleared the lungs. I'd helped her once, peeling the roots until my fingers were stained pink.
"Someone wrote a name here," he says. He turns the book toward me. "Look."
I don't want to look.
I look anyway.
There, at the bottom of the recipe, in Mom's hand: *For His Highness, the Third Prince. May it bring warmth when the palace grows cold.*
My stomach drops.
His Highness.
I'm standing in a dark hallway with the Third Prince, and he's holding my dead mother's recipe book, and I just tried to steal it back from him.
I'm so dead.
He's still watching me. "You knew her."
I shake my head. Too fast. Too hard.
"You did." He closes the book, tucks it back under his arm. "You knew Chef Suyin. That's why you hid this. That's why you're here."
Mom's name in his mouth sounds wrong. Too casual. Like they were friends.
Maybe they were.
Maybe that's worse.
I press harder against the wall, wishing I could dissolve into it. He's not supposed to say her name. No one's supposed to say her name. She's been scrubbed from every record, every menu, every kitchen log. The woman who poisoned the Empress doesn't get remembered.
He steps closer. There's maybe a foot of space between us now. I can feel the heat coming off him, see the pulse in his throat. He smells like sandalwood and lampblack, like he's been reading by candlelight.
"I'm not going to report you," he says quietly. "I need you to understand that."
I don't understand that. I don't understand any of this.
"Suyin didn't poison my mother," he says. "I know she didn't. And I think you know it too."
My breath catches. I force it steady. Force my face blank.
He reaches past me, one hand braced against the wall near my shoulder, and for a second I think he's going to grab me. But he just stands there, leaning in, his face so close I can see the faint scar above his left eyebrow.
"Someone set her up," he says. "Someone in this palace killed my mother and let Suyin take the fall. I've been looking for proof for five years. And then you show up with this."
He pulls back, opens the book again. Flips toward the front this time, where Mom used to tuck loose papers. Letters. Supplier lists.
He stops.
His face goes still.
"There's a note," he says.
I lean forward without meaning to. Can't help it.
It's a folded piece of rice paper, shoved between the first two pages. The edges are browned, like it's been there a long time. He unfolds it carefully, and I recognize Mom's handwriting again, messier this time. Rushed.
He reads it aloud, voice low. "'Your Highness. If you're reading this, I'm already gone. Don't trust the menus. Don't trust the tasters. The Dowager's—'"
He stops.
I wait.
He turns the note over. Checks the back. Looks at me.
"It's torn," he says. "The rest is missing."
No.
No no no.
I grab for the book without thinking. He lets me take it, and I flip through the front pages, shaking each one, looking for the other half of the note. It has to be here. Mom wouldn't leave a warning half-finished.
But there's nothing. Just recipes and margins full of her handwriting and one torn note that stops mid-sentence.
*If I vanish, don't eat the Dowager's—*
The Dowager's what.
The Dowager's food. The Dowager's gift. The Dowager's—
"She was trying to warn me," the Prince says. He's staring at the torn edge like he can will the rest of the words into existence. "Right before she died, she was trying to tell me something about the Dowager."
I look up at him. He looks back.
And for the first time since I walked into this palace with a fake name and a fake history, I meet someone who wants the same thing I do.
The truth.
"Help me," he says.
I can't say yes. Can't say anything.
But I don't step away when he takes the book back. Don't run when he tucks the torn note carefully into his sleeve.
"Tomorrow night," he says. "Same time. Bring anything else you're hiding."
He walks past me, footsteps silent on the stone floor.
I stand there until I can't hear him anymore, clutching my empty water jar, staring at the space where he stood.
Mom left a warning.
Someone tore it in half.
And the Dowager—the Emperor's mother, the most powerful woman in the palace—is right in the middle of it.