Perhaps I’m an orange and no amount of picking at myself will make me perfect or reach any kind of conclusion.

But sometimes it’s just fun to try.

The second coffee is nearly gone by the time I hear Dean’s footsteps in the breakfast room. I’d recognize his stomping tread anywhere. When I look up he greets me with a grin, and I swear I’ve never seen him look less angry.

He sits down opposite me at my table and whispers, “Guess what.”

“Whispering is the new cool?” I hiss back.

He shows me his phone. He’s got a banking app open. And there’s his account’s current balance, a full £2,700,000 higher than was before.

I try not to react too loudly, but I can’t help letting out a gasp.

Certainty number six: we are very rich. So, therefore,

Certainty number seven: we are never, ever going back to Grace Tower.

“First thing we’re buying is a house, and we can go anywhere we want,” Dean’s saying. “I’ve sent you half the money but even half of that, I mean, think what kind of house we can get.” I can see from the recent transactions on his screen that he’s really done it, he’s transferred over a million pounds into my bank account. “So we buy the house with my half, yeah, then with your half we can buy all the furniture and shit. And then I’ll still have loads left, and you’ll have even more left, so we can get a car and clothes and stuff. And you know what else?”

“What?”

“You’ve got as much as you need to transition. If you want to. We can afford the laser hair things, and if you want surgery you can get it done whenever.”

My heart is soaring.

“Have you made up your mind there yet?”

I shake my head, but I can’t help smiling anyway.

Dean shrugs. “Well, no hurry. You know you’re beautiful, yeah?”

He reaches across the table, wrist resting in the pool of orange pith on my plate, and laces his fingers with mine. We catch each other’s eye and there’s a spark in there, I know it, and we’re thinking of each other and the money and the house we’re going to get together and the garden I’m going to plant flowers in and the new car we’ll drive and we are grinning and grinning and grinning.

Certainty number eight: I don’t know whether I’m a boy, or a girl, or both, or neither. I’m certain that I don’t know. And I’m certain that it doesn’t matter, not really, because I have a lifetime to decide – if I even decide at all.

Certainty number nine: I’ve got Dean at my side, and as long as I do, I’m going to be just fine. Because,

Certainty number ten: we love each other.

Up until the day the newly crowned Emperor declared that he was looking for a wife, I had never really thought about marriage. I knew girls who dreamed of it, but when I envisioned my future, I had never seen a husband, or children. I saw only an endless avenue of lanterns, shining against the dark, and my paint-speckled hands showing all the hues that have ever existed in the world. And up ahead, there would be my phoenix guiding the way, true and never erring, and my best friend, Xiayin, sweetly laughing ahead of me, always waiting for me to catch up.