ON THE OUTSIDE, LIFE IN THE PALACE returns to normal in the weeks after the executions, the only main change for us being that we aren’t allowed beyond Paper House without an escort of at least one guard. With the arrival of winter, the air grows icy, the wind hard and biting. Colors drain from the gardens like calligraphy paints being washed away. Since the executions, an air of unease has hung over the palace, and it seems a premonition somehow, all this gray and whiteness. A reminder that more death is to come. But while I continue to go dutifully with the other girls to classes and dinners, just as I had been doing all these months before, on the inside, everything is different.

With the increased security within the palace, everyone in Women’s Court has been advised against leaving their rooms after nightfall. Even better, the King hasn’t called for any of us in over a month, too busy with his hunt for the assassins’ supporters and rumors of a dark new project that I suspect is just code for too much liquor. And as the days become shorter and the nights longer, this all gives Wren and me the cover we need to love each other in the dark.

As often as we can, we sink into the immediacy of our bodies moving together—our lips, fingertips, the hungry press of our thighs. Over the nights I learn how to lick the curving slopes of her skin, the way it makes her shudder when I run my tongue down the ridge of her spine. And even though I soon get used to Wren’s body, I never lose any of the enjoyment. The wonder.

With every kiss, the pleasure is instant—a flood of heat, a fiery rush.

With every kiss, it consumes us.

In our first qi arts lesson, Master Tekoa told us that mastering control of our internal energy is about understanding the concept of “nowhere.” Two words hidden inside the one: now and here. When we practice qi arts, he said, what we’re really trying to do is to ground ourselves into the here and now. That being truly in the present means to disappear.

But with Wren it’s the very opposite. Instead of disappearing, she makes me feel reappeared. Reimagined. Her touch shapes me, draws out the boldness that had been hiding in my core. Where the King’s touch closed me, shut me down, Wren’s opens me up. When I’m with her, every part of me is weightless and free, a soaring rush igniting my veins with desire as bright as sunlight.

Her kisses heal the parts of me that the King broke. They tell me: You are strong, Lei. You are beautiful. You are mine. And, always, most important: You are yours.

Because these kisses, these stolen nights with Wren, are the only thing I’ve had control of since coming to the palace, and it gives me satisfaction to know there are some things even the King does not have the power to stop. It builds my confidence that one day we’ll be able to rebel with more than just our bodies and our love. That we will find a way to turn our growing hope and bravery into action.

Desire cannot be tamed, the King told me that night in his chambers. Well, he’s got one thing right.

We might be Paper Girls, easily torn and written upon. The very title we’re given suggests that we are blank, waiting to be filled. But what the Demon King and his court do not understand is that paper is flammable.

And there is a fire catching among us.

A month and a half after the executions, the King finally begins to summon us again.

Blue is first. After that night in the bathing courtyard, I can’t help but feel sorry for her, knowing what I know about her now. But any pity I have is tempered by my relief at neither Wren nor me being called. These last few weeks have been a refuge, the two of us safe in the sanctuary of each other’s arms, the spherical world of our small, secret geography. I always knew it was just an illusion of safety, a temporary reprieve. But I wasn’t prepared for the fresh shot of fear at the moment the illusion is broken.

After that, the names click by, each bamboo chip delivered by royal messenger a countdown to the inevitable.

As is custom, Wren has to stay behind after her name is announced for the preparations. We’re in Mistress Eira’s suite. Winter sunshine streams in through the open doors to her garden, glancing off the half empty plates and bowls on the table. I meet Wren’s eyes, struggling to keep my expression level. While the world is bright around her, she has her back to the doorway, so her face is shadowed. The corners of her lips lift the tiniest fraction, more a grimace than a smile, and I get the strange idea that she’s apologizing for something. Then she turns aside as Mistress Eira asks the rest of us to leave.

Numb, I get to my feet.

Someone nudges my shoulder. “Come on,” Aoki says. “We have to go.”

I’ve been staring. “Sure. Yes, sorry.” With one last hopeful look to Wren—who doesn’t return it—I follow Aoki out of the room.

“She seems a bit different, don’t you think?” Aoki murmurs as we walk down the corridor, the other girls chatting ahead of us. “Wren, I mean.”

I hardly hear her, too busy trying to breathe normally, to force thoughts of Wren and the King from my mind. “Oh? How so?”

“Just… she doesn’t seem as focused anymore.” Aoki throws me a sideways glance, slowing her pace. “You must have noticed. Has she said anything to you?”

“Not really. I guess it’s just the stress of everything. Maybe she’s homesick.”

Aoki nods, though she’s still watching me with an odd expression. “Some of the girls think she might be sneaking off at night to meet with a man.”

I push out a laugh that I hope sounds disbelieving, but from the way Aoki doesn’t react, I can tell she doesn’t believe it. I tuck my hair behind my ears and carry on walking, a little faster now. “Which girls? And why would they even think that?”

“Zhin said she saw her the night she was coming back from the King. Wren was leaving her room. She didn’t seem to be going to the toilet or to the maids’ dormitory, because that’s the direction Zhin was coming from.”

“Maybe she couldn’t sleep.”

“Apparently she had shoes on, and an overcoat. Like she was going outside.”

“So she just needed some air—”

“In the cold?” Aoki’s nose wrinkles. “At three in the morning? With the guards outside?” She stops me with her arm. “I know you’re close with her, Lei, but Wren is hiding something. I’m certain. I don’t want you getting caught up in it.”

If only she knew.

But I manage a nod. I palm my hands on the skirt of my robes and stride onward, wresting my face into an unfazed expression. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll ask her about it tonight—tomorrow. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation.”

That night, as I wait for Wren to return, the hours crawl by. Every second is a slow, pulling agony. I pace my room so many times that my vision spins, the floor seeming to careen sideways, and I eventually have to sit down before I faint. When footsteps finally sound in the corridor, I wait a few moments more before going to Wren’s room. I don’t mean to surprise her—I thought she’d have known I’d come. But I’ve only just slid the door shut behind me when she shoves me painfully against it, an arm across my neck, her eyes wide and alert.

She releases me immediately. “Lei! I’m so sorry.” Blowing out an exhale, she circles her arms round my waist, dipping her forehead to mine. Her breath is sweet and warm on my skin. “I’m just on edge tonight. I didn’t realize it was you.”

“How was it?” I ask tentatively, shifting back.

She avoids my eyes. “He was… rough. More so than usual.” I wince, and she carries on quickly, “But I expected he might be like this. The attack has exposed his vulnerability. He’s angry. He’s trying to reassert some of the power he’s lost.”

“So the rumors are true?” I say. “The assassins were helped from within the court?”

She nods. “I heard that he arrested eleven officials on suspicion of being involved with the attack just this morning. He’s out for blood.”

“Hasn’t he had enough already?”

In the dark, Wren’s eyes seem to flare as she answers huskily, “Not nearly.”

Gently, I help her out of her clothes. She’s wearing a tangerine-colored ruqun set with jewels, a slit running up the length of one side of the skirt. But as I pull her robes off, I discover that the slit isn’t a part of the design; the skirt has been slashed clean in two. Only a makeshift knot at its waist was holding it up.

I swallow, a prickly sensation creeping across the back of my neck. The sky is clear tonight, a moonbeam slanting into the room. By its light, I make out the dark blossoms of bruises on Wren’s skin. There’s one on her shoulder. More along her hips. A huge handprint wrapped around her throat.

I stare at them, heart wild. Anger charges through me so forcefully I almost retch.

“How dare he,” I snarl.

Wren grabs my hands. “Don’t waste your thoughts on him,” she says, lifting my fingertips to her lips.

“But—”

“Lei, please. At least not tonight. Not now. I can handle pain—it’s only temporary. And Madam Himura will have a shaman heal me tomorrow.”

I gape at her. “Do you realize how sick that sounds? ‘Dear shamans, won’t you please give us some magic so we can go back to the King and get broken all over again?’”

Wren kisses my hands softly. “No one said anything about breaking.”

We lie down and draw the blankets over us. Moonlight silvers Wren’s face, draws a sharp outline along the line of her cheekbone and the hollow of her neck. My fingers trace it down to the upward roll of her shoulder.

“Some of the girls are suspicious of you.” I say. “Aoki told me earlier. Zhin saw you leaving your room at night, and they think you might be going to meet someone. A lover. You have to be more careful, Wren.”

Her brow wrinkles. “They don’t know where I’m going.”

“Neither do I.”

“Lei—”

“I know,” I say before she can finish. “You’re trying to protect me.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

I sigh. “It’s just, I’d prefer it if you let me decide whether to be protected.” My thumb skims her shoulder, sloping up into the warm dip of her neck. “Maybe I can handle it. Whatever you’ve got going on, maybe I could help.”

Wren closes her eyelids. Tiredly, she takes my hand and moves it to cup her cheek, her palm on top of mine. She opens her eyes. In the moonlight they are bright—the opposite of her voice when she whispers, “You can’t. Not with this. No one can.”

I want to press her more. But remembering what she went through tonight—the thought of it makes bile fly up my throat—I stop myself. Pulling her close, I burrow my nose in her skin, drawing her cool, ocean scent into my lungs. She smells like home, like happiness and safety and hope and… love.

I want so much in that moment to tell Wren how I feel. To offer her the words that come to my lips every time she kisses me now, every time she even looks my way. But I wait too long and my courage fades. Instead I murmur, “Can you imagine a world where we’re free to be with each other?”

“Actually,” she replies after a pause, “I can.”

“Then take me there, Wren. Please.”

She answers, so quiet I barely hear it.

“I will.”

I leave her room shortly after, so full of the glowing thrum being with Wren brings, and the promise in her words, that a smile lifts my lips. So when I meet Aoki’s eyes where she’s watching from her own doorway, half wrapped in shadow, arms rigid at her sides, it takes a few seconds for the giddy look to drop from my face.

Perhaps if I’d not been smiling, I’d have been able to hide it. I could have said we were just talking, the same way Aoki and I still do some nights, though admittedly not as often recently. But I know that she realizes the truth the minute she sees my expression.

It’s how she looks when she talks about the Demon King. Radiant. Lit from within.

Without a word, Aoki pivots on the spot and slams the screen door shut behind her. The sound has bite in the quiet of the hallway. I lurch after her, not caring in that moment who might hear. She backs away as I enter her room, and I falter, stung.

The look on her face. I never would have believed she could look at me that way.

“Please, Aoki,” I say, my throat narrowing. “You—you can’t tell anyone.”

Her laugh is hollow. The scowl warping her mouth makes her look ugly, so unlike my sweet friend, the girl whose laughter lifts my soul like sunshine. She usually seems so young, full of lightness, her insides practically effervescent. But there’s something about the way she’s holding herself right now, as if she’d aged years in the blink of an eye.

“Is that how little you think of me?” she says, and there’s hurt in her voice, too. “I thought we were friends. That we told each other everything.”

“How could I have told you about this?” I cry, flinging my arms wide. “I know how close you are with the King! You wouldn’t approve—”

“Of course I wouldn’t! We’re Paper Girls! We’re not meant for anyone else.”

My fingers tighten into fists. “He made that choice for us. How is that fair?”

“It’s not about fairness. It’s about duty.”

“Gods, you sound just like Madam Himura.”

“Good,” Aoki flings back. “That means I’m doing my job well.”

I scowl at her. “No. It means you’re not thinking for yourself.”

Aoki stiffens, anger rising from her like heat-shimmer on wet stones. Her eyes are fierce, and I realize what she’s going to say a second before she speaks.

“I love him.”

The sentence hits me with a physical weight. Silence stretches between us, a dark, pulsing thing.

I just about get the words out. “You hated him, once.”

“I didn’t know him then.” Aoki softens, voice curling like a sleeping cat’s tail, and she kneads her hands in front of her, wide eyes glowing in the dark. “He’s good to me, Lei—kind and caring and fair. He’s even said he’ll consider making me his queen if I continue to please him.”

I almost choke. “His queen?”

Her cheeks flush, and she shrinks back. “You don’t think I’m good enough for the throne?”

“No! That’s not it—”

“Because he could, if he wanted to. Instead of a Demon Queen, he could have a Paper Queen. I could be his wife.”

My jaw slackens. Scenes from the past few months plow into me, one after the other: Aoki’s eyes brightening when she talks about the King; what she told me that night at the koyo celebrations; her excitement at the executions; the look on her face every time the bamboo chip arrives and her name isn’t the one on it. Like mine for Wren, Aoki’s love for the King has been building over the months. I’ve just been so wrapped up in my own feelings that I didn’t realize it.

I’m supposed to be her best friend, and I didn’t even notice she was falling in love with a monster.

It takes me a while before I can speak. I lift my chin, looking her straight on. “You’re too good for him. You deserve more.”

“More?” Her irises are shiny. “What could be more than being his queen?”

After all the words we’ve thrown at each other, the silence that follows is horribly loud. It grows, stretches, spirals out, a physical distance, building feet and miles and whole countries and lifetimes between us, between me and the pure, beautiful girl who once blushed at the mention of just a kiss and worried that she wouldn’t be enough for the King.

“I should go,” I say eventually in a constricted voice. I wait in case she disagrees with me. But her expression is just as defiant as before.

I turn to the door, eyes prickling. As my hand lifts to slide it open, her voice sounds behind me.

“You really love her?”

There’s a flash of the Aoki I know in her voice: tender, compassionate.

I spin round. “Yes,” I reply eagerly, offering her a smile. I step forward. “Oh, Aoki, I’m so sorry—”

“You shouldn’t.”

The rest of my sentence tumbles away. In an instant, coldness returns between us, as jolting as a wave of ice water. Her look is so hard it’s painful to hold, and I falter back toward the door, one arm wrapped across my chest, like a shield.

“At least I chose who I fell in love with,” I say roughly.

As soon as it’s out I want to take it back. But I can tell by the look on Aoki’s face that it’s too late, and I hurry from her room before I make it even worse, tears blurring my eyes as something splinters deep in my chest.