Huang Yanyan's POV:
The safehouse smelled like damp wood and desperation, a squat little shack tucked in Beijing's outskirts where the city's neon glow barely reached. I leaned against a splintered table, my ribs screaming from the steelworks brawl, blood still crusting my arm where a blade had grazed me. The dim lantern flickered, casting shadows that danced like ghosts across the walls—ghosts of Zhao's men, of that masked figure who'd saved my ass, of the life I'd left back in Chicago. Amber's life. Not Song Yanyan's, not this princess crap, but mine. Except the lines were blurring, and I hated how much it scared me.
