Prologue

The Empress's blood tastes of light.

When she dies in my teeth, when I feel her heartbeat slowing through the arteries tangled around my tongue, I learn the taste

of death.

Everyone thinks that I've forgotten that moment.

They never speak of it because it was for the greater good, because I survived, because all people want is a victory. They

don't want to know what it cost.

But I've felt tendons snap and recoil between my teeth like zither strings. My tongue has scored the Empress's spine, my teeth

have peeled back her white powdered skin. It is not a taste that one easily forgets.

The moment plays again and again in my dreams. Every night, I hold her face still, keep her quiet, keep her mine, drink the

gold from her withering veins.

But some nights, she does not die.

Instead, she reaches out and clasps my jaw with her bloody hands, burning red qi on slick pearl. She turns my face toward her, and I obey because she is my Empress, because when you see something beautiful, you can't look away.

Then she leans close to my ear and whispers words I know are not a dream. They are a memory.

Whatever power you think you have is an illusion.

Whatever your dreams are, they belong to me.

And wherever you run, I am already there waiting for you.

She sinks her nails into my cheek.

A crack ripples across my face, a single jagged line of darkness that begins beneath my right eye and races across my body.

I am a daughter born from clay, I am a glazed porcelain doll on a shelf, and with a quiet sparkle of sound, I fracture apart.

She cradles me in her arms even when I'm nothing but fine white dust and jagged shards, and even then, she won't release me.

My thoughts scatter like faraway stars, but all I can think is that her bloodless, blue-tinged skin is a beautiful contrast

to the scarlet running down her throat. She is the first bright light of morning that slices across the horizon, peeling it

open. She is my Empress.

And then at last, she dies. Not because she is weak, or because I've truly defeated her, but because she made me a promise.

Wherever you run, I am already there waiting for you.

A resurrection alchemist should not fear death. But now I do.

Because I know that on the day that I die and wake up in the river of souls, the first thing I see will be a pair of bright,

golden eyes.