That night, beyond the frontier, the lone moon curved like a hook. Wen Tingrong tore off a bloodstained strip of her skirt to bandage a soldier.
Three months earlier, a spy had mixed rotten weeds into the army's grain. Now the bodies piled outside the tents were denser than the poplar forest.
"Report! The Crown Prince has been ambushed!" A blood-soaked messenger stumbled into the tent.
Wen Tingrong snatched up her medicine chest and rushed into the night. Barefoot, she crossed a field of caltrops and finally found the bloodied figure at the edge of a cliff.
Yang Xiaoyun had a poisoned crossbow bolt lodged in his chest, yet he pressed the tiger tally into her hand. "Take the soldiers... home."
That day, Wen Tingrong pulled out her golden hairpin and plunged it into her own heart. Warm drops of blood fell between his lips. "Your Highness said you wanted to see me become empress with your own eyes."
Wen Tingrong knelt on the flagstones as the twelfth-month wind swept fine snow through her thin clothes.
Wen Yuyao toyed with the white jade pendant the Crown Prince had given her, grinding her embroidered shoe over Wen Tingrong's red, frostbitten fingers.
"Sister, did you know the Eastern Palace sent twelve chests of betrothal gifts last night?" Her scarlet-painted nails traced Wen Tingrong's pale face. "What a shame. They're all for me."
A metallic sweetness suddenly welled in Wen Tingrong's throat. She watched the drops of blood splashed across the snow turn into red plum blossoms. As her consciousness blurred, she heard Chu Wuya's clear voice break the silence: "This poison is called 'Beauty's Doom.' If it's not cured within three days, your meridians will be severed."
