Chapter 1

My name is Lin Zhao. Northern Marquis of Great Zhou.

I have worn that title for twenty years. The whole capital thinks I am the kind of man who could drop three grown fighters with one punch.

Only I know what is wrapped inside this body.

A girl.

My father died on the Northern Frontier. My mother hemorrhaged in childbed and only lived long enough to look at me once.

Uncle Fu, the old steward, held me in his arms that night and knelt in front of the mourning hall until dawn. No heir meant the title got stripped. Three hundred mouths in the household would have been meat on a chopping block by morning.

So the next day, the manor put out word: the lady had borne a little marquis.

From then on, my life was three things. Bind the chest. Pad the shoulders. Learn to swear in a voice that could scrape paint.

And fight my nemesis on the court floor — Shen Yan, heir to the Duke of Dingguo.

We had been at each other's throats for eight years.

He stole first place on the policy essay. I put dog shit in his ink.

He impeached me for hoarding troops and showing no regard for the throne. I impeached him for being spoiled by favor, a disgrace to letters.

The whole capital bet on the day we would brawl on Vermilion Avenue. The book had been open for three years. The house was getting rich.

Then this year's winter-solstice banquet went wrong.

I drank two cups too many that night. Not because I liked the wine. Old Chancellor Zhao Song came over with a cup, smiling that thin smile, and said, "Marquis Lin, a tiger doesn't sire a dog." His eyes crawled over me like a snake. I used the liquor to keep from throwing up.

I slipped behind a rockery in the Imperial Garden and undid my collar for air.

Winter night wind poured down my neck and finally blew off some of that snake-crawled stickiness.

That was when something tugged my pant leg.

I had spent years licking blood off a blade on the Northern Frontier. My hand went to the short knife at my waist before my brain caught up.

I looked down. The knife never came out. I did.

A four- or five-year-old scrap of a thing was squatting on the ground. He looked like a sticky-rice dumpling, white and soft, clutching an oil-paper packet to his chest. Big black-grape eyes stared up at me.

The Imperial Garden had a guard every three steps. How had a baby gotten in here?

I had not finished thinking it when he opened his mouth and hit me with a thunderclap, bright and sharp:

"Mom!!"

My soul left my body. I lunged, clapped a hand over his mouth, and growled through my teeth. "What the hell are you yelling? I'm a man!"

The little thing kicked, trapped under my palm. Tears welled up on the spot.

I realized I had scared him. I fumbled and loosened my hand a fraction. He sucked in a huge breath, hiccuping, mouth wobbling:

"You are my mom. Northern Marquis Lin Zhao. I'm Shen Nianzhao. My dad is Shen Yan. I came back from three years from now."

My brain rang.

Shen Nianzhao. Shen from Shen Yan. Zhao from Lin Zhao.

"That's a load of crap." I pinched his little shoulders and dropped my voice on purpose, trying to scare him. "Who sent you here to frame this Marquis? Talk. Was it that old snake Zhao Song?"

People had tried every trick in the book to frame the Northern Marquis. Planting a bastard to call me Mom was a first.

"Nobody sent me!" The dumpling sobbed in jerks, then went up on his toes and locked his arms around my neck.

Milk-sweet hit my nose.

I went rigid. Twenty years, and nobody but Uncle Fu had ever gotten this close.

He hung on my ear, sniffling:

"Mom hates bitter worst. Every time you take medicine you hide two pieces of candied fruit under your tongue, and then you chase it with cold water… When you were seven you broke your left arm on the Northern Frontier. You didn't make a sound while they set it. Then you went home and cried in the blankets half the night… You've got a crescent birthmark under your right collarbone. Dad is so gentle every time he kisses it…"

Stop.

The first half I could live with. The last half — what kind of filthy mouth was that?

Lightning went through me.

Candied fruit. The broken arm. The birthmark.

Every one of those was a secret I had let rot in my own gut.

Especially the birthmark. I hated how girlish it looked. I never let anyone attend me in the bath. I covered it with powder every single day. Not once had I skipped.

Nobody in this world could know that.

Unless—

"Three years from now," the dumpling's voice started shaking hard. His little hands fisted in my lapel. "The court's hounds framed you. Your secret came out. You were a woman dressed as a man. That's deceiving the throne. House of Lin and House of Shen — they executed both families, one after the other."

It came out in pieces. Every word still went into the top of my skull like an ice pick.

"That's why I came back from three years from now. I have to save you." He tipped his face up. Tears hung on his lashes. "Mom, the fate-thread between me and Dad is breaking. I'm about to disappear. You have to get close to Dad and stay close for twenty-four hours. That's the only way I can take solid form and stay in this life…"

I opened my mouth.

Then the corner of my eye snagged on something.

On the other side of the rockery, in the shadow — a flick of a sleeve. There and gone.

Someone.

Someone had been squatting in the dark, and they had heard all of it.