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The name hit me like a fist to the gut.
Jin Su.
My real name. The one I buried five years ago along with my mother's body. The one that would get me killed if anyone in this palace remembered it.
Yan Xiao just said it. Out loud. In front of the Dowager.
I didn't move. Couldn't. My hands were still locked around the soup bowl, knuckles white, and I could feel every single person in the room staring at me. The eunuch by the door. The two maids flanking the Dowager's chair. Nanny Liu, somewhere behind me, probably calculating how fast she could throw me under the carriage.
And the Dowager herself.
She was watching me the way a cat watches a mouse that just twitched.
"Jin Su," she repeated slowly, rolling the syllables around like she was tasting them. "That name sounds familiar."
My throat closed up. I kept my face blank. I'd practiced this. Ten years of being mute meant I was good at showing nothing. No fear. No recognition. Just empty.
But my pulse was hammering so hard I thought she could probably see it in my neck.
"Your Majesty," Yan Xiao said, and his voice was smooth as silk. Too smooth. "I misspoke. This girl's name is Qing. Jin Su was someone else."
The Dowager's eyes didn't leave my face.
"Was she."
It wasn't a question.
I forced myself to breathe. Slow. Even. Like I had no idea what they were talking about. Like I was just a scared kitchen maid who'd brought the wrong soup and now the most powerful woman in the empire was deciding whether to have me beaten or killed.
Which, to be fair, was also true.
"The cook who poisoned Empress Hua," the Dowager said, still watching me. "Her name was Jin. Jin Lin. She had a daughter."
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
"The girl was executed with her mother," the Dowager continued. "I remember because she wouldn't stop screaming. Made the whole thing rather unpleasant."
I kept my face empty. But inside, I was screaming now too.
Because I hadn't been executed.
I'd watched them drag my mother to the block. Watched the sword come down. And then I'd run. Barefoot, ten years old, bleeding from where the guards had hit me. I'd run until I couldn't run anymore, and then I'd hidden in a grain wagon heading south.
I'd spent five years learning to disappear. Learning to be no one.
And now Yan Xiao had just dragged me back into the light.
"She was a child," Yan Xiao said. His voice was still calm, but I could hear something else underneath it now. Something sharp. "Children scream."
"Mm." The Dowager finally looked away from me, turning to him instead. "And yet you called this girl Jin Su. Why?"
He didn't hesitate.
"Because she looks like someone I used to know," he said. "But I was wrong. This girl is younger. And alive."
The silence after that stretched so long I thought I might actually stop breathing.
Then the Dowager laughed.
It was a soft sound, barely more than a breath, but it made every hair on my neck stand up.
"How careless of me," she said. "To confuse a dead girl with a living one."
She reached out and plucked the soup bowl from my hands. I let her. My fingers were numb anyway.
She stared down into the bowl, at the fish bones floating in the murky broth, and her mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"This soup is interesting," she said. "It tastes like fear."
I flinched before I could stop myself.
Her eyes snapped back to me. Sharp. Focused.
"You made this?"
I shook my head fast. Pointed back toward the kitchen, then at Nanny Liu. Not me. Not me.
"Nanny Liu," the Dowager said without looking away from me. "Who made this soup?"
"Your Majesty, I—" Nanny Liu's voice cracked. "The girl brought it, but the recipe—it was—"
"Answer the question."
"Qing made it," Nanny Liu said, and I heard the relief in her voice as she threw me straight under the wheel. "She's been cooking all week. She has a gift. I thought—I thought Your Majesty would enjoy—"
"A gift," the Dowager repeated.
She set the bowl down on the table beside her chair. Then she stood up.
I'd never realized how tall she was.
She moved toward me, and I wanted to run. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to bolt for the door. But I couldn't. The eunuch was blocking it. And even if I made it past him, where would I go? The palace was a maze and I was already dead.
The Dowager stopped right in front of me. Close enough that I could smell her perfume. Jasmine and something bitter underneath.
She reached out and tilted my chin up with one cold finger.
"Look at me," she said.
I looked.
Her eyes were black. Bottomless. I couldn't read anything in them except the faint reflection of my own terrified face.
"If I find out you put that bone in my soup," she said quietly, "I will have you skinned alive. Do you understand?"
I nodded. Fast.
"Good." She let go of my chin and stepped back. "But I don't think you did."
Wait.
What?
"Someone wanted me to think you did," the Dowager continued, turning away from me like I'd already stopped mattering. "Someone wanted me to kill a kitchen maid tonight. Which means someone is trying to cover their tracks."
She looked at Yan Xiao.
"Who else has access to the kitchen?"
"Half the palace," Yan Xiao said. "Maids. Eunuchs. Guards. Anyone who knows the back ways."
"Then we'll search them all," the Dowager said. "At dawn, I want every servant in the western wing stripped and inspected. Anyone with kitchen access gets checked for poison residue. Hands. Clothes. Everything."
No.
No no no.
I couldn't get inspected. Not with the burns on my arms from five years of cooking over open flames. Not with the scar on my shoulder from the guard who'd grabbed me the night my mother died. Not with the birthmark on my back that my mother used to trace with her finger while she hummed old songs.
The birthmark that was shaped like a plum blossom.
The same mark the imperial kitchen's head cook always had.
The mark that proved I was my mother's daughter.
"Your Majesty," Nanny Liu said, and her voice was shaking now. "The kitchen maids—some of them are very young—it might be improper—"
"I don't care about proper," the Dowager said. "I care about whoever tried to kill me tonight. At dawn, everyone gets checked. No exceptions."
She waved a hand toward the door.
"Go. All of you. And send word to the Head Eunuch. I want guards posted at every kitchen entrance until this is resolved."
Nanny Liu grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the door so fast I almost tripped. The eunuch stepped aside and we stumbled out into the corridor, and I heard Yan Xiao's footsteps behind us but I didn't dare look back.
Nanny Liu didn't say a word until we were halfway across the courtyard. Then she stopped, spun me around, and slapped me so hard my ears rang.
"What did you put in that soup?" she hissed.
"Nothing," I wanted to scream. "I didn't do anything."
But I couldn't. So I just stared at her, tasting blood in my mouth, and shook my head.
She slapped me again.
"You're going to get us all killed," she said, and then she shoved me away and stormed off toward the kitchen.
I stood there in the dark, shaking, touching my split lip.
Footsteps behind me.
I turned.
Yan Xiao was standing three feet away, hands in his sleeves, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
"Why did you say my name?" I wanted to ask. "Are you trying to get me killed?"
But I couldn't say that either.
So I just stared at him.
He tilted his head slightly.
"At dawn," he said quietly, "you're going to run. Aren't you."
It wasn't a question.
I didn't answer.
He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Don't," he said. "You run, and they'll know you're guilty. You stay, and maybe you survive the inspection."
"Maybe," I thought. "Maybe I survive getting stripped naked in front of everyone. Maybe nobody notices the scar. Maybe nobody remembers what the cook's daughter looked like. Maybe."
But probably not.
Yan Xiao took a step closer.
"I can help you," he said. "But you have to trust me."
I almost laughed. Trust him? He'd just nearly gotten me killed.
He must have seen something in my face because his smile faded.
"Your mother's recipe book," he said, so quiet I almost didn't hear him. "I have it. And I know what she could do. What you can do."
My heart stopped.
"The Dowager wants someone to blame," he continued. "I can give her someone. But you need to stay alive long enough for me to do it."
He held out his hand.
"Dawn inspection. Every kitchen maid gets checked. Unless you're not there."
I stared at his hand.
Then at his face.
He was asking me to trust him. The prince who'd said my name out loud. Who had my mother's book. Who'd been sneaking into the kitchen every night for a week.
Who might be the only reason I wasn't already dead.
Behind me, I heard voices. Guards. Moving through the courtyard toward the kitchen.
The inspection was coming.
And I had maybe six hours to decide whether I was going to run, hide, or trust the one person in this palace who knew exactly who I was.