Chapter Twenty-Five

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A cross the river, Fanli gazes at the moon. His hair is windswept, his cheeks still slightly flushed from riding fast all throughout the night.

He doesn't know yet that it's too late. That if he had come only minutes sooner, he would have seen me, and saved me. But perhaps that is asking too much. He has already saved my life once on those shores. Nobody under Heaven is that fortunate to experience the same miracle twice.

He doesn't know either that I'm here, mere feet away, watching him while he watches for me. I cannot be sure what I am now, what I've become. Perhaps I am a ghost. I've heard legends about it: those who die with unfinished business, anger or grief so heavy that it prevents them from floating on to the Yellow Springs of the underworld.

The moon rises higher. A cool wind blows through the trees.

And he waits.

The black veil of the sky has started to lift when he senses that something is wrong.

A twig snaps behind him.

He spins around so fast that all I see is the dark blur of movement, the trees shrinking back from him. His face is half hope, half horror. But it is not me he finds—it's Luyi.

"Where is she?" Fanli demands.

Luyi shakes his head. He cannot speak. He's afraid of the raw look in Fanli's eyes, the sharpness to his tone. Even in battle, Fanli has always been the perfect picture of calm, unfazed in the face of death.

But Fanli steps forward, his gaze pitch-black. "Where is she?" he repeats, louder.

"I—I don't know," Luyi gets out. "They saw her head down to the river but—hours have passed by now and…" In a small, frightened voice, he finishes, "I thought she might have gone to you."

Fanli freezes. He is one of the most intelligent people I've met, with a mind that works three times faster than the ordinary man's, weaving together threads invisible to most. I see him understand before anyone else does. His fingers curl into a fist; when his hands flatten forcibly again, his palm has been dented with small, bloody crescents.

"Search the entire village," he says, his voice a low rasp, threatening violence. "Search every single corner, every path, every room."

"It—it might take time," Luyi stammers. "We don't have a lot of people—most of the villagers are too old to walk long distances—"

"Use the soldiers."

Luyi stares at him. After a long beat, he says, "But—I thought they weren't meant for personal use… Won't you get into trouble with…" He stops himself at the dark expression on Fanli's face. It is how a man looks before walking into flame. "Yes, I'll—I will go do that right now—"

"Wait." There's a knot in Fanli's throat. He breathes in, steadies himself. Swallows. At last he says, so quietly Luyi has to lean in to hear him: "And search the rivers."

At dawn, they finally pull my body out from the water.

A small, somber crowd has formed on the riverbanks. One unsuspecting child catches a glimpse of my corpse and bursts into loud, inconsolable sobs.

Death knows no mercy; it has robbed me of all my beauty. My skin is bloated and starting to slough off, dark veins running under the surface like mountain creeks. Angry red marks are etched into my wrists and ankles from the rope. Strands of wet, black hair cling to my cheeks like seaweed. My lips are colorless and cracked, my eyes closed.

Fanli makes a sound I didn't know a mortal man could make.

Those watching have the sense to move out of the way. And just in time too. He falls to his knees beside me, cradling my corpse. He has never cried before, not even when he was held captive by the Wu, when they tore his back into strips of raw flesh. But he weeps now, his shoulders trembling.

The air is completely silent. Even the birds have stopped singing.

"Fanli, please…," Luyi tries, taking a step forward. He is brave for it; I do not think anybody else would have dared utter a word. "We'll get to the bottom of this. Perhaps she was swept away by the currents— Perhaps it was an accident—"

Fanli hugs me tighter, his hair spilling free from its knot and tumbling over his shoulders, tickling my face. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse, that of a dead man, somebody who has already lost everything there is to lose. His eyes are crimson. "It was no accident." He had tried to warn me. You must watch out for King Goujian. But he had miscalculated; he thought Goujian would wait longer to act. He thought we would have more time.

A chill settles in over the crowd.

Luyi looks at him uncertainly. "What—what do you mean?"

But Fanli doesn't hear him, or doesn't care. He turns back to me, and strokes my hair gently, so gently, brushing it back from my ruined face as if afraid to hurt me. He does not let anybody else approach. He does not speak. He just kneels on the cold, damp dirt, holding me, the river rushing on and on behind him.

A day passes. Two. Three whole cycles of the moon chasing the sun away, of him losing his mind with grief. He doesn't eat or drink or sleep, and refuses any company, any comfort.

"You have to take care of yourself," Luyi tells him tentatively one morning. I can tell he has practiced this many times over, attempting to find the perfect combination of words. But of course, no words could ever be right. "Please, Fanli," he says, his tone low and pleading. Fanli has not responded. Perhaps Luyi mistakes this for encouragement, because he continues, "It cannot go on like this. She wouldn't want—"

It is as if Fanli has been brought to life, jolted by lightning. All of a sudden he moves, swift as a serpent, and in a violent flash, he has Luyi pinned to the ground, one hand fastened around his neck.

Luyi's eyes widen. He struggles uselessly, beating at the dust. Fanli digs his knees deeper into the sides of his stomach, bracketing him with his body. "Fanli— Stop — Have you gone—completely insane—"

"Do not speak another word about her," Fanli says with soft vehemence, his pupils dilated. "Do not presume to understand what she wants. You cannot know. None of us will ever know."

He lets Luyi flail a while longer, until the flesh under his fingers has gone stark white, before he finally eases his weight off Luyi's body and lets go. Luyi bolts upright, coughing and gasping.

"Fanli," he chokes out at last. "Just talk to me. Hit me, if it'll make you feel better. I cannot…" He makes a helpless gesture with his empty hands. "I hate seeing you this way."

Fanli doesn't even look up. "I regret it now."

Luyi stills. "What?"

"I regret it," Fanli repeats, his voice rusty with disuse. "I should never have trained her. I should never have let her go to the Wu."

"But—she saved the kingdom," Luyi says. "She saved us all. She will go down in history as a hero."

Slowly, Fanli lifts his gaze. His face is hollow, haunted, his eyes black as the darkest night. Luyi flinches. "And who was there to save her?" Fanli rasps.

Luyi cannot seem to find a reply.

He laughs then, a harsh, wild sound. He laughs until tears flow down his cheeks. "Isn't it funny? I used to dream of changing the world. Of working for the greater good. But what good is the world," he asks, "if she is gone?"

That evening, Fanli accepts a shallow bowl of millet porridge. He must be starving at this point, but he drinks it like it's flavorless, like it's just air to him. Sustenance, and nothing more. I watch the relief spread over Luyi's face. He thinks that Fanli is starting to recover. That perhaps he will move on past this, and return to his old self.

But I know him all too well.

Desperate, I visit him in dreams. It is the only place I can go for him to see me.

We're standing in a meadow of some kind, with ten miles of peach blossoms stretching all around us. Vivid pink petals bloom from the slender branches. A pair of white butterflies flutter past in the blue sky, weaving their way around each other.

He's dressed in the same robes as the day we first met. The sun rises behind him, gilding his sharp outline.

"Fanli," I call, stepping forward. "I have to talk to you."

He looks up at me, wild hope and disbelief and grief painted all over his features, and I see his breath catch in his throat. "Xishi?"

I don't even have time to reply when something flashes across his eyes, and he grabs my wrist, tugs me forward. I crash against his chest. Then his lips are on mine, firm and desperate, his fingers tangled in my hair. It feels—real. Wonderfully, impossibly real. The softness of his mouth, the heat radiating from his skin as he deepens the kiss, his hand tightening around the small of my waist, drawing me closer until there's no space left between us at all.

"I should have done this a long time ago," he breathes against my mouth.

"Fanli," I manage, but he kisses me again, even harder than before, like it's all he's ever wanted, like he might go insane otherwise. I can feel his pulse dance under his skin, his erratic breathing, the small shudders running through his body.

I almost cave in. Let him kiss me until he wakes , I think dimly. Let him do whatever he wants. But then I remember why I wanted to speak to him in the first place, and with all my remaining self-control, I push him away.

It's a gentle push, but he flinches, then stares at me with such open hurt I have to fight the urge to undo everything, to seize him by the collar of his robes and pull him back to me.

"Am I forbidden, even in my own dreams?" he murmurs. "This is all I have left now."

"Focus, Fanli," I tell him, forcing my voice to harden even as my chest twists with a deep, inexpressible ache. "This is important."

"Nothing is more important than you." He sounds like he has never been so certain of anything in his life.

Such sweet words. I would have given up half my soul just to hear them back when I was alive. "I know what you plan to do," I push on. "I know you're going to find Goujian."

He goes very still. "How did you—"

"I'm right, aren't I?"

He makes no point of denying it. "I'll kill him," he says, with a quick, ready violence that is completely unlike him. "I'll make sure he suffers. I'll sever every one of his limbs and feed his heart to the wolves. Everything he has, I will take from him."

"You can't, Fanli," I whisper. "He is the king."

His face is hard as stone, immovable. I imagine him standing alone on some high, jagged cliff, staring down at the tumultuous waters of the ocean, too far away for anybody to reach. "He is the reason you're dead."

"The kingdom will be thrown into unrest," I tell him. I can feel him starting to wake, the dreamscape blurring around us. The petals closest to us have withered and faded to gray. I cannot stay long. More urgently, I continue, " Both kingdoms. Everything we've done will be for nothing. Everyone we've lost, every sacrifice—all the civilians whose lives we've preserved. They deserve to know peace."

At this, his eyes focus on me. "You're too good," he says, sounding pained. "They don't deserve you. None of them. Not me either."

"That's not true. I have my own plans for revenge; I just don't want you to get hurt."

"But—"

"If you wish to do something," I tell him, "then work against Goujian in private. Use your intelligence to help the common people, to change the kingdom in ways the king will not. Distribute wealth to the poor, aid them like you aided Wuyuan, create new opportunities for those struggling. That is what matters."

It comes to me now in sharp, stunning clarity, fierce enough to sweep me off my feet. I see the map of the Wu and the Yue and all the fragmented kingdoms, the markers that separate one territory from another, the roads I had memorized until I could draw them out with my eyes closed. I blink, and this time, the perimeters blur like dents in sand, smoothed out by waves. In their place appears the vermilion palace with its gilded roofs and hollow halls, looming high above all the coasts and villages and streets.

The will of kings —that was what Zhengdan's mother had alluded to. The divine order of the heavens, the natural right to rule; those things we were taught as children, trained to accept without question. But King Goujian is not the answer to peace. None of them are. So long as we continue to put mortal men on thrones and hail them as gods, sacrifice our lives to their legacies, history will repeat itself. Just as the ocean tides ebb and flow beneath the moon, empires will rise and collapse, wars will start and cease, and the rest of us will be left to struggle against the currents.

If only I had known earlier.

If only I could go back in time.

Fanli lifts a hand, rests it briefly against my cheek. The sky buckles above us. A wind sweeps through the trees, ripping the petals from their boughs. His image wavers before me, like ink in water, and I can sense my own presence slipping away, as if there is a great wind tugging at me too.

"Promise me," I urge him, my voice already dissolving, too faint. I can only pray he will remember when he wakes.

He wakes with a shudder, a gasp, like someone breaking free from water. He recalls the dream only in fragments, but he knows I was there. Now, in the violet daylight, it is like he has lost me all over again. He buries his face in his hands, crying without sound.

Then he stands, pulls his hair into a high knot, sharpens his sword. It is a new blade to replace the one he had gifted me, with hundreds of thin, parallel marks etched down the side. I would cry too, if I had a physical form, eyes from which to weep. They are the number of days I've been gone. Counting down to the very date of my return, and my death.

Fanli. I reach for him, but it is useless now. I am no more solid than the breeze, passing right through him. Please. Don't do this.

He fastens the sword to his belt and leaves for the capital.

When he arrives at the palace, he does not bother greeting the guards or waiting for an invitation to go inside. He just barges right through them, using his sword to knock back their raised halberds and shields like they're nothing but weeds, then marches into the hall where Goujian sits on his new throne of gold.

Once, Zhengdan had said that he did not resemble a king. But he looks every bit like a proper king now, regal and removed, with his crown placed high on his head, his silk cloak shimmering around him. For one eerie moment, I almost confuse him for Fuchai.

Goujian looks up at the commotion and raises his brows. The guards have tried to follow Fanli, some still attempting to hold him back by force, others falling over themselves in apology.

"Never mind," he instructs, waving everyone away. "Leave us. I will speak to my minister in private."

A guard hesitates. "Are you certain, Your Majesty? He looks…" There is no need to complete the sentence. Fanli looks ready to strike the king down in one blow.

But Goujian just smiles indulgently, shakes his head. "No, no. I know him well. He will not harm me."

As soon as the doors fall closed with an echoing thud , Fanli crosses the marble floors until he is standing at eye level with the king. I would be nervous, if I were Goujian. There is nothing between them, nothing to block a strike to the heart.

Goujian's brows rise higher. He folds his arms slowly across his chest and regards Fanli like an uncle would his misbehaving nephew, with equal parts amusement and impatience. "You seem rather upset, Fanli. Did something happen?"

When Fanli speaks, his voice is low, barely suppressed, brutally cold. It could freeze a river over in mid-spring. "Why did you kill her?"

I notice the faintest crack of unease in Goujian's expression. No doubt his prized minister has never spoken to anyone this way before, much less him. Still, he manages a low chuckle. "It's just common sense, don't you think? She has served her purpose."

Suddenly I remember Zixu's words, as if from a hundred miles away: When the hares have all been caught, the hunting dogs are cooked.

Fanli's knuckles tighten over his sword. I do not know if Goujian notices. I do not think so, or else he would have surely fled in the opposite direction by now. "She gave up her own happiness for the kingdom. She has only ever cared for—" His voice threatens to break. He continues with a terrible air, a killer's resolve. "She has only ever cared for peace. She did everything right. She is the best of every man and woman. She would not be a threat to you."

"Ah, but like it or not, she is." Goujian shrugs. "Apply that sharp mind of yours and think for just a moment: If her beauty is enough to topple the enemy kingdom, who's to say she won't turn around and topple mine? Better to act early, and not make the same mistake that fool Fuchai did."

Fanli is silent, his face turned down, his expression cast in dark shadow. He is trembling all over.

"Are you sad, Fanli?" Goujian steps forward, and pats Fanli's cheek twice. "You know, part of me had suspected that the rumors about you were exaggerated: that you couldn't really be devoid of desire. And your investment in her always seemed… well, beyond the extent of your duties."

Still, Fanli says nothing.

Stop talking , I scream at Goujian, my voice lost to the air. My nails claw at him, but of course it makes no difference. Stop tormenting him.

"It's nothing to cry over," Goujian continues. "I agree that she is beautiful, but I'm the rightful king of both lands now. Since I can be more sure of your tastes, I can give you as many concubines as you wish, from the best brothels in the capital. Enough to fill a whole house with. Just take your pick." He laughs, the sound loud and unrestrained, reverberating through the vast hall. "I bet you will be too well entertained to even remember her—"

Fanli strikes without warning. His hand fastens around Goujian's arm in an eagle grip, and he twists. The sound of snapping bone rings through the deadly silence. Goujian opens his mouth to cry out, his features contorted in pain, but Fanli quickly grabs his face and clenches his jaw shut, preventing any noise from escaping.

Then he hesitates.

His eyes flicker to his sword, then to Goujian's writhing form. He has always been stronger than the king, smarter and faster. It is purely out of loyalty that he never used it to his advantage, but rather to aid the kingdom.

Please , I pray. Don't.

One second drags into two. The length of a heartbeat, and another. A muscle tenses in Fanli's jaw. At last, he loosens his grip slightly and draws his sword, but doesn't raise it.

"I could kill you if I wanted to," Fanli says evenly, over Goujian's labored grunts and gasps. "But I won't. Only because she wouldn't be happy with me if I did."

"You…," Goujian croaks. He's lying on the ground, clutching his arm; it's been twisted at a grotesque angle, broken at least twice over, shards of bone sticking out in the wrong places. "Have you forgotten… that I'm your king? I… plucked you from obscurity. From that—that dirt-poor village of yours. I recognized your talent when nobody else did. You would be nothing— nothing… if it weren't for me."

"All I know," Fanli says, his eyes like knifepoints, "is that she is worth more than you could ever dream of becoming. If killing you could bring her back, I would do it without hesitation."

Goujian opens his mouth—perhaps to cry, perhaps to curse him. But Fanli moves forward, stepping deliberately on his injured arm. A terrible whimper, like that of a stabbed animal, escapes Goujian's lips.

"Oh, and in case it wasn't clear," Fanli says on his way out, his robes smeared with royal blood, his eyes set on the doors, "you'll need to find yourself a new minister. I resign."

A sliver of my soul lingers in the palace. Just a sliver—but enough.

I cannot harm Goujian physically in the mortal realm, but that doesn't mean I do not have other ways. That night, Goujian falls into an uneasy, painful sleep, and I let all my anger, all my betrayal and my grief pour into his dreams, filling them with dark shapes, images of my face, my gaze cutting holes into his flesh. His eyes fly open, his pillow soaked through with sweat. There is a terrible, tearing pain in his arm where the bones have been tentatively reset by the palace physician, but that is not what woke him. He had felt like there was river water rising to his throat, the taste of it blooming like blood on his tongue. He stares around the room wildly, his uninjured hand gripping the sheets. For a moment he looks half-crazed.

"Xi-Xishi?" he whispers, like he has seen a ghost.

I do not reply, but wrap my phantom hand around his throat, and it is as if somebody has doused him with cold. He shakes all over and spends the rest of the night tossing and turning, remembering his horribly vivid dream of drowning in a river, of the blackness and the cold and the burning in his lungs.

It is the same dream he will have the next night, and the night after that. Drowning without end. Always as terrifying, always as realistic, until he wakes every morning with bloodshot eyes and an uncontrollable tremor in his hands. He flinches at the slightest sound, sees spirits in the shadows. Whenever he passes by the river, he swears he can hear a girl's weeping. He conceals it well enough in court, but alone, he succumbs to the hysteria, the fear that rattles his very bones.

I am but one of the many who will haunt him for as long as he lives. All those who had died for him, because of him, at his hands.

I will not leave him in peace. I will not let him forget.

Fanli returns to the river.

He carries my corpse in his arms as carefully as someone holding porcelain. It is dusk now, the clouds floating in hazy roseate and violet wisps, the last of the sun's rays slipping beneath the river surface. He has brought a shovel and a jug of wine with him. He tears open the crimson seal, tilts his head back, his throat exposed to the cold air, and drinks alone.

"Xishi," he says, the word soft and half-slurred. He stares down at the broken shadow of my body. Each time, it is like the first: the thunderbolt of agony, the black shock of grief. "You must blame me," he murmurs, crouching next to me, wrapping his smooth, slender fingers around my withered ones. His dark eyes shine, glossy from alcohol and held-back tears. "I blame myself too. I am afraid—even if we were to meet in the next life, you would not want our paths to cross."

Don't be a fool , I wish to tell him. I will meet you again in every lifetime there is.

He seems to be waiting for something. A response. But my corpse lies there, still as ice. At last he swallows and grips the shovel with quivering fingers, then begins to dig.

The dirt is hard and unyielding, littered with rough stones. It is not a job for one man, much less somebody of Fanli's rank and dignity. The shovel clips the ground only partly, sending up a spray of loose dirt; he has to throw all his weight into the movement. Soon the sun has disappeared entirely, leaving just the faintest impression of light over the distant mountain slopes, the milky moon rising to take its place.

The moon rises white

illuminating your beauty,

your shadow which wounds me

until my heart's devoured

It is quiet here. The only sounds that can be heard are the repeated thud and hiss of his shovel against the dirt, and the cicadas chirping from the trees, and his muffled exhalations. Sweat drips from his brow. A streak of dirt is smeared over his cheeks; the sight is disorientating, like mud on the petal of a lotus flower. The skin around his palms and fingers has started to part, breaking open against the hard friction, blisters splitting in angry patches of pink and red. Blood trickles from his hands where they're wrapped around the shovel handle.

When the grave is ready, he stares at the ditch in the earth, his chest heaving.

"I'm sorry," he whispers again and again as he holds my body one final time to lower me into the ground. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" Until they barely sound like words anymore, just noises of inexpressible pain, harsh, rattling sobs in his throat as he fills the grave, then spills the last of his wine into the dirt.

I can feel the Yellow Springs calling to me now, their currents churning from far, far below. It's almost time for me to go.

A few yards away, footsteps crunch over the dry leaves.

Fanli twists around and sees a young boy passing through. The boy immediately blanches, his face bone-white with fear. Perhaps his parents had already warned him about Fanli. His mind is not stable , they would whisper at nighttime, in the same breath they tell him about monsters in the trees, murderers roaming the woods. He is a changed man. There is nothing he won't do because of her.

The boy tenses as if to run, but Fanli raises one hand to stop him.

"You're not from here, are you?" His voice is rough, like two stones grating together. "The fabric your tunic is made of. It is not yet traded around this region of villages."

"You're right," the boy stammers, stunned.

"Of course I am. Listen, when you leave this place—tell everyone that Xishi lives."

The whites of the boy's eyes gleam, and he darts a quick, terrified look at the uneven mound of dirt that marks my grave, like he is unsure whether to risk his life by pointing out the obvious. "But—but—I'm sorry, it's only—she is—"

"Tell them Xishi is alive, and with me," Fanli continues forcefully, a dark warning flashing over his gaze, a look that says: Finish that sentence, and I will slit your throat. "Tell them we are resting together after her mission in the Wu Kingdom. We've decided to set sail around Lake Tai, visiting all the places we never could. Tell them she is brave, and honorable, and happy, and finally free. Do you understand?" Fanli says it with such sharp intensity that the boy freezes in his place, swallows hard.

"Y-yes, I—I think so—"

"Good," he says softly, his eyes no longer on the boy but on the river, as if he can see miles and miles beyond it, to where it reaches its end. "Make sure they all know it. It is the ending she deserves."

The boy nods and scampers off.

When he is gone, Fanli kneels and touches his hand to the dirt of my grave, a lone silhouette in the bleeding darkness. "Xishi," he whispers. "Please, believe in me. I will come find you."

I believe him.

Time in the underworld passes differently than for those in the mortal realm. The years flow by like water, rush past like arrow through light. Above us, the world goes on for the living. The same domestic worries and looming disasters; empty grain stores, separated lovers, cold porridge, brutal murders, warm bedding, permanent scars, missing children, ailing parents, loud festivals. They reunite and part, celebrate and grieve, hate each other and love each other fiercely, irrationally. The moon continues rising and sinking, the sun offering up its new light every morning, wiping away the blood spilled in the previous night.

Those who have died after me have already drifted on, to be reincarnated into the next lifetime and enter the cycle anew. But I stay here, waiting, watching.

Perhaps a century passes. Perhaps only a decade.

All I can be certain of is that for the longest time, there is only darkness, the bone-deep cold of the dead, everything as blurry and insubstantial as white fog—then, one day, on the opposite shore of the Yellow Springs, I see him. His soul is brighter than the rest, a stunning blaze of silver, but this is no surprise. It is what I've always known.

I swim, crossing the water, pushing past the harsh currents until I reach the shore. There is so much between us; the years and the yards of distance. I run through it all until I am standing before him, the darkness devoured by his beauty.

He smiles, and the fog lifts.