Chapter Fourteen

The Silver Alchemist sat perfectly still as she awaited my answer. She wore no alchemy rings, or gloves, or anything that

she could have wielded as a weapon. Here she was, completely unarmed, yet threatening to kill me.

This, more than anything, told me exactly how powerful she was. Alchemists did not make idle threats.

"There are people that I need to bring back," I said at last. Hopefully that was a vague enough answer to stop her from trying

to kill us like the Arcane Alchemist, but truthful enough to satisfy her.

The Silver Alchemist stood up, stepping around the table. I drew back against the chair, but her arm on the armrest caged

me in, her other hand gently cupping my face as she contemplated my eyes. Up close, her irises glinted with starry flecks

of silver.

"There's someone you love," she said after a moment, drawing back and crossing her arms. "You would go to all this trouble

for a boy? You , an alchemist? How pitiful."

My face burned. "It's not just for one person," I said, shrinking back against the chair.

The Silver Alchemist turned away with a sound of disgust, drawing a jar from one of her shelves. She caressed the side of

the glass with the same gentleness that she'd held my face, staring intently into the jar.

"I had fifteen husbands, you know," she said.

Zheng Sili choked on his tea, spilling half of it down his robes.

"Not all at once, of course," the Silver Alchemist said, smirking at him. "Life is long."

"Not that long," Wenshu said, eyes bright and focused, the way he looked when he was studying Confucian texts.

I was sure that what he was thinking, but too polite to say out loud, was that it made little sense for a rich woman to remarry

so many times. Once remarried, she would have lost all rights to her late husband's property. Poorer women often remarried

out of necessity, but I'd always thought that the rich valued widow chastity and saw remarriage as something shameful.

"I thought I loved them all," the Silver Alchemist went on, holding her empty jar up to the light from the window, casting

a rainbow prism across the floor. "Love is beautiful when it blooms, but it dies, like everything and everyone else." She

lowered the jar, and the rainbow disappeared, the room pale once more. "There will always be another love," she said. "To

risk everything for something so ephemeral is madness."

"If saving him is madness, then I lost my mind long ago," I said, rising to my feet. The chill from the floor had seeped deep

into my bones, and I could distantly sense myself shivering even as my blood felt like it was on fire. "If you never would

have saved any of your husbands, then you have no idea what love is."

The Silver Alchemist's grip tightened on the jar. "Some people cannot be saved," she said. Then she let out a tense breath, and when she turned back to me, her expression was even once more. "Regardless, there is no way back to Penglai Island," she said. "It was sealed with blood, and that is how it will remain, forever."

The Arcane Alchemist had said nearly the same thing, but hearing it from the Silver Alchemist's lips felt like a door had

slammed shut in my face. Maybe the Sandstone Alchemist had truly gone mad and his transformation wouldn't bring me there at

all. Maybe it would rebound and kill me instantly—a trap laid to punish anyone who dared try to find Penglai.

But there was only one thing that didn't make sense.

"I can't lie to you, but you can lie to me?" I said.

The Silver Alchemist raised an eyebrow.

"Hùnxiě," Zheng Sili said warningly.

My gaze dropped to the ring on the Silver Alchemist's hand.

Song of silver, the serpent's bite.

"You're wearing my ring," I said.

" Your ring?" the Silver Alchemist said, jaw clenched.

"The opal," I amended. "It won't give you beauty, the Arcane Alchemist said so himself. If it's not on his hand, then its

only use is to unlock Penglai Island. If all you wanted was to stop me from going there, you would have destroyed it or hidden

it while I was sleeping. But instead, you're wearing it."

The Silver Alchemist's eyes narrowed. Zheng Sili looked like he was about to pass out, while Wenshu's gaze darted around as

if cataloging the exits.

"You don't want to stop me from going to Penglai," I said. "You want to go there yourself."

A dark smile crept across the Silver Alchemist's lips. "It's no wonder you took the Arcane Alchemist's ring," she said at last. "He's a fool."

She knows him , I thought grimly. Of course she did. Like the Arcane Alchemist, she must have been much older than she appeared. Marrying

fifteen times hardly made sense for a wealthy young woman, but made a lot of sense for someone who had been alive for centuries,

perfect and ageless from the waters of Penglai while her husbands grew old and died, one after another. She was one of the

Eight Immortals, which was why the red zircon ring on her finger looked just as bright and alive as the Arcane Alchemist's

opal.

"Well," she said, clutching the jar to her chest, "I suppose you want the ring back?"

Tentatively, I nodded.

"Then we have an issue," she said. "We've made an equal exchange. That's how alchemy works, isn't it?"

"I never agreed to your terms," I said.

The Silver Alchemist sighed. "I accepted the ring in exchange for your life. If you intend to take back the ring, then I must

take back your life."

I let out a sharp laugh. "Many have tried," I said, jamming a hand in my satchel full of alchemy stones. "Only a horse has

ever succeeded."

As I spoke, I brushed my fingertips over my remaining stones, mentally cataloging how many I had left. Zheng Sili had his fist in his green velvet bag, doing the same. But even now, the Silver Alchemist didn't reach for a single stone of her own. She turned away, completely vulnerable with her back to us, and ran her finger across a row of jars. She paused after half a row, her fingers hovering over a jar with a yellow and white ribbon around the neck. She carefully pulled it from the shelf, then twisted the lid off.

"Guān Rén," she said sweetly, setting the open jar on the floor, "I need your help."

Wenshu and I looked at each other in confusion. She thought her husband was... in the jar?

"Do you want to just hold her down while I take the rings?" I said quietly to Zheng Sili. There was no point in hurting her

if she really was this helpless.

Before he could answer, the jar fell onto its side with a heavy thunk , spinning in circles on the floor, faster and faster.

A familiar scent knifed up my nose, making my stomach clench. I clapped a hand over my nose and backed up into Zheng Sili,

who gagged into his sleeve. This was the scent of half-baked corpses that customers dragged into my shop in Guangzhou, the

kind with maggots for eyes and skin that slipped right off flesh like a loose jacket. A body poisoned with rot, far beyond

the help of an alchemist.

Abruptly, the jar stopped spinning, and a silvery mist crept across the floor. It shrouded the tiles and blurred the shelves,

casting the whole room in cold gray. My teeth chattered harder as the mist numbed my ankles.

A dark shadow rose from the fog, stretching up the wall and spilling onto the ceiling before congealing into a dark figure

in the center of the room.

A man rose unsteadily from the silver blur, his skin bruised blue gray from rot, his flesh falling from his body in wet chunks,

eyes shrunken and dry like two tiny pearls deep inside his skull.

The rotting man shuffled closer, legs bumping the low table and jolting the teacups. At the touch of his flesh, the wood of the table rapidly turned wet and crumbled, as if unmaking itself. Even after it fell to the floor, it continued to rot, gnawed through with a sudden bloom of fungus, settling on the ground at last as wet dirt.

"Nope. No way," Zheng Sili said, already heading for the door. But the man lunged to the left and swiped a hand clumsily at

him, making him yelp and duck behind Wenshu. I stood rooted in place, barely able to feel the alchemy stones beneath my fingertips.

What kind of alchemy was this? Presumably, if the yǐngbì in front of every door were any indication, this was some sort of

ghost. I was no stranger to raising the dead, but I'd only ever been able to do so if I had a body to put them in once I restored

their flow of qi. I supposed it was possible to manipulate a dead person's qi into another form, but that must have required

immense alchemical skill.

I glanced at the red ring on the Silver Alchemist's finger, now so bright that it cast the entire room in a sinister red tinge.

The Arcane Alchemist had found a ring at Penglai that had let him push the limits of normal alchemy. Surely, the Silver Alchemist's

ring could do the same. But rather than using its powers for incomparable beauty, she'd used it to trap the souls of the dead.

As the rotting ghost stumbled forward, the Silver Alchemist sat back down and lifted her teacup to her lips. "My husbands

promised themselves to me until the end of time," she said, leaning back in her chair. "My alchemy still sings through them,

honoring all that they were. This is the only way that love can be eternal."

Perhaps I was still half dead from the spear to my stomach, or perhaps I was too entranced by the thought of how powerful the red zircon must have been, but before I could back away any farther, the ghost lunged across the table.

He moved like a silk scarf tossed through the air, a smoothness to each motion governed not by the limits of the human body

but by the flow of alchemy.

Before he could reach me, cold hands closed around my arm. Zheng Sili yanked me to the side so hard my shoulder nearly popped

out again. He tripped over a low chair, and both of us tumbled to the floor.

The ghost had barely missed me, crashing into the wall instead. A flurry of moths appeared out of nowhere and gnawed through

the paper murals of the wall he had touched, followed by fungus that devoured the wood behind it. A hole yawned open in the

wall, letting in the screaming, sandy winds from the courtyard.

He barely touched the wall at all , I thought, recoiling against Zheng Sili, dreading what would happen if the ghost touched my bare skin.

I snatched Durian from the ground and shoved him into Wenshu's arms, then pushed him toward the door.

"Get out of here!" I said.

"You don't have to tell me twice," he said, hurrying away.

As I turned around, Zheng Sili slammed a couple of woodstones against the banister of the staircase. With a surge of white

light, the stairs shivered, the ground beneath them humming. The ghost and I both took a step back as the banister tore itself

from its posts and unfurled like a great white serpent, needle-thin splinters raised along its spine. It fell heavily to the

ground, scraping along the floor as it surged across the room, then seized the ghost by the ankle and yanked him to the ground.

It only trapped the ghost for a moment before his rotting hands closed around the serpent's neck. Decay began to gnaw through it, winding in black ribbons across the surface.

Zheng Sili grabbed my arm and headed for the door, but the ghost rose to its feet before we had made it halfway there, forcing

Zheng Sili to release my arm or lose his own. A handful of his robes burst into moths at the ghost's touch, tearing a hole

in his sleeve.

"If you have any more of those demon eggs," Zheng Sili said, stumbling back into a shelf, "now would be a fantastic time to

use them!"

Durian's eggs!

I'd nearly forgotten about them. I felt around my secret pockets, sure that the Silver Alchemist had emptied them while I

was unconscious. But it seemed she'd only cared about the opal ring, because my fingers ran over the cool surface of the two

remaining golden eggs.

Before I could grab them, the ghost slammed his palms into the floor.

Decay bloomed across the floorboards, rippling through the room. The floor beneath my feet vanished as insects devoured it,

dropping me five feet down into the jagged foundations of the house, a mess of crooked planks and dirt.

Zheng Sili hopped over a chair and just managed to avoid the hole, crashing into a desk as the ghost approached. He quickly

climbed over the desk, eyes darting around for an escape, now backed into a corner.

He shot a panicked glanced down at me before his gaze snapped back to the ghost, whose moldy fingers reached for his face.

I pulled out one of the eggs, tightening my grip around it, then leaned back and hurled it at the ghost.

The egg smacked the back of the ghost's head with a hollow clunk , smashing his face into the desk, then fell unbroken to the ground beside him.

Zheng Sili made a petrified sound as he hurried to stand on the desk and hop over the ghost, nearly falling into the hole

as he landed. He knelt at the edge of the pit and held out a hand to help me up, but my sleeve snagged on a splintered floorboard

and tugged me back.

The ghost hauled himself upright, snatching the egg from the ground, but it didn't so much as crack at his touch, as if made

of solid gold. The other egg had shattered so easily, but this one seemed indestructible. I'd assumed all three of Durian's

eggs were the same, but apparently I was wrong.

The ghost tensed his fist around the egg, as if he too was confused by its strength, but must have decided it wasn't worth

the thought. He tossed the egg to the ground, where it spun in circles until it settled under a table, then turned his attention

back to us.

The ghost lunged for Zheng Sili, who yelped and stumbled away from the edge of the pit, the front part of his robes bursting

into a cloud of dust where the ghost's fingers grazed him.

"Hùnxiě, I'm about to lose all my clothing!" Zheng Sili shouted, falling halfway onto the tea table and sending cups spinning

across the floor. The Silver Alchemist leaned to the side to avoid the spilled tea, but otherwise didn't react. "Unless that's

what you want, get out of that hole and help me! "

"That is definitely not what I want!" I said, tugging harder at my sleeve until it tore free from the broken piece of wood,

fabric splitting up to my elbow. I gripped the jagged edge of the pit and hauled myself onto the main floor, ignoring the

splinters that stabbed into my palm and under my nails.

With my feet on solid ground, I reached into my pocket for Durian's last egg. Maybe it wouldn't knock anyone unconscious like the first egg, but surely it would do something . Durian's birth had saved my life, so surely his eggs would help in some way.

I rolled to my feet and threw the last egg at the ghost.

It shattered on the side of his face, a bright burst of golden yolk seeping into the crevasse of his eye, chunks of shell

sliding down his neck. He froze, outstretched hand suspended in midair.

Zheng Sili wasted no time running away. He ducked around the ghost and braced himself in front of me on the other side of

the room. I spotted Durian's unbroken egg glistening on the floor and snatched it, stuffing it back in my pocket.

The ghost pressed a hand to his cheek, then pulled back and observed the stringy yolk between his fingers.

I knew right away that this egg was not the same as the one that had broken in prison. Instead of durian, the room began to

smell of fire.

The collar of the ghost's filthy robes began to dissolve first, blackening and vanishing as if gnawed away by an invisible

flame. Steam rose from his face, and darkness devoured the pale edge of his jaw, spreading fast across his teeth. The hole

in his face screamed wider and wider, a rain of yellowed teeth clattering to the ground as his jaw dissolved, the darkness

spreading fast across his eye socket. Over half his skull was now gone, revealing the cavern where a brain should have been.

Instead, there was nothing inside but liquid silver dripping onto the ground.

The ghost clutched a hand to the hole, but yanked it away when the caustic yolk ate away at his fingertips, which quickly

dissolved down to the wrist. He collapsed into the pool of silver and slowly oozed into it, the cream of his bones spilling

across the uneven floors.

With a flurry of white silk, the Silver Alchemist finally rose to her feet and uncapped a glass jar, kneeling before the puddle. All that remained of the ghost rushed inside the glass and vanished as she twisted the lid, her lips pressed tight together.

"Disappointing," she said, holding the jar up to the light. "But then again, you always were."

She set the jar down next to the teapot, then grabbed another from the shelf, twisting the lid off. This time, we didn't wait

around to see what would appear.

Zheng Sili grabbed my arm and yanked me around the spirit screen and into the hallway. The Silver Alchemist's footsteps grew

farther away as we wound deeper into the labyrinth of her mansion.

"We need to find Wenshu Ge and get out of here," I said.

"You told him to get out, so if he has half a brain, he should already be outside," Zheng Sili said.

"And which way is out?" I said.

Zheng Sili grimaced, sliding to a stop as we reached the end of a hallway. "Back the way we came," he said.

"Wonderful," I said, flinching at the sound of approaching footsteps. The room to our left had a spirit screen painted with

summer constellations, while the screen to our right was a dark and lightless forest.

"We're finding another way out," I said, stepping around the yǐngbì covered in stars and into the room.

This room had no windows, no source of light save for what spilled past the edges of the spirit screen. Just like the room

where we'd had tea, the walls in this room were packed full of glass jars. I'd hoped for a door to an adjoining room, but

of course we could never be that lucky.

Zheng Sili huddled closer to me and stepped on my skirts.

"Watch it!" I whispered, shoving him away. He tried to step back but tripped over a low table, falling against a shelf.

All of the jars rattled, tilting dangerously as he tried to right the shelf. I hurried over to help, but it was too late—two

jars tumbled off the edge and burst on the floor.

"Shit," Zheng Sili and I whispered at the same time, backing quickly away from the shattered glass. After a few moments with

no sudden surge of mist or rotting apparitions, I dared to relax my shoulders.

"Maybe she keeps her empty jars in this room?" I said.

"Either way, she probably heard that," Zheng Sili said. "We should go."

I nodded and took another step back, but instead of touching the yǐngbì behind me, I pressed against something soft and cold.

"Wait," a man's voice said, a hand closing around my wrist.

I tensed up, prepared for my flesh to start decaying and slough off, for holes to gnaw through my bones. But my skin only

felt cold and numb, like my hand had fallen asleep.

I turned around and faced a young man, half translucent in the dark. Unlike the other ghost, he looked whole and human, save

for his translucent skin. A young woman stood in the shattered glass a few paces behind him, gaze darting between me and Zheng

Sili, her skin the same hazy tinge, as if both of them had stepped out of a dream.

I glanced at Zheng Sili, who was backed against the shelf, his face white.

"Where is the Silver Alchemist?" the man gripping my arm whispered.

I tried to pull my wrist away, and to my surprise, he released me easily.

"Please," the man said. "She'll kill you and keep you in one of her jars."

Zheng Sili laughed incredulously. "Yes, I think we've figured that part out already."

I glared at him, then turned back to the ghost. "Who are you?" I said.

The man pressed his lips together, looking mournfully over his shoulder at the woman, who was staring sadly at the ground.

"We don't remember our names anymore," the man said quietly.

I thought of Hong, slowly losing his memory in the river plane. Would he forget his own name one day? An ache bloomed in my

chest at the thought.

"We were her friends once," the woman in the corner said. "A long time ago."

"How long are we talking?" Zheng Sili said, arms crossed.

"Are you her friends who went to Penglai?" I clarified.

"Yes," the man said, the word so quiet that I felt it more than heard it, a cold breeze stinging my eyes.

"So much for the Eight Immortals ," Zheng Sili said. "Two of them are already dead."

"Four of us," the man said, grimacing. "The Silver Alchemist made sure of that."

" Four? " I echoed, my heart racing. There were only eight immortals, four were dead, and we'd met three of the living ones. That

meant there was only one left we had yet to meet, and I prayed they had one of the stones we needed.

"Why did she kill you?" I said. "And who else is alive?"

The man opened his mouth to speak, but flinched at the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

"We don't have much time," he said. "You need to take her ring away. The red one."

"Easier said than done," I mumbled, readying a few firestones.

"She has many types of ghosts trapped here," the female ghost said. "They can do awful things. Be careful."

The footsteps drew to a stop just outside the door.

"Zilan?" Wenshu called from the hallway. "Where are you?"

"Let's go," I said to Zheng Sili, who nodded quickly and hurried from the room. I hesitated just before leaving, looking back

at the ghosts of the two immortals standing pale in the darkness.

"She can't control you with alchemy like the others?" I said.

The man shook his head, smiling sadly. "Her alchemy can trap souls, but not control, them," he said. "Love does that."

I fished three firestones from my pocket. I didn't have many to spare, but I supposed I could make do without these ones.

"No reason to keep you here, then," I said, pressing the firestones to the yǐngbì. It burst into wood scraps at my touch,

my fingernails cracking from the sudden surge of alchemy. I heard Zheng Sili swearing outside at the sudden spray of wood

chips.

The ghosts stood stunned for a moment, then turned to each other and smiled.

"Thank you," the woman said, reaching for the man's hand. I nodded as they hurried into the hallway and stepped into the bright

patch of sunlight that the window cast on the tiled floor. Their skin began to glow, as if drinking in the light, then their

features grew softer until they faded into the glow, nothing but sunbeams and falling dust where they had once stood.

Wenshu and Zheng Sili stood gaping at the square of sunlight, hair covered in wood chips.

"Yes, go on and unleash strange ghosts on the world, that's a great idea," Wenshu said after a moment, crossing his arms.

"I've unleashed far worse than that before," I said. "Where's the Silver Alchemist?"

"I don't know," Wenshu said, glancing around uneasily, "but let's not stick around to find out."

We moved quietly down the hallway, peering around every corner, but the Silver Alchemist seemed to have vanished just like

the ghosts. After a few minutes, we reached a door beside a window that looked out across the courtyard. Wenshu peered through

it, checking for signs of danger.

"I think this is our best bet," Wenshu whispered, waving for me to go first.

I moved to go through, but hesitated on the threshold. "Where's Durian?"

"What?" Wenshu frowned. He shook his head. "Come on, we have to go."

"Not if Durian is still inside," I said. "Where did you put him?"

Wenshu paused, his eyes bright the way they always were when he was thinking very hard. Zheng Sili stepped in front of him

and elbowed him back.

"Zilan, we have to go," Zheng Sili said, grabbing my arm.

I tore away from him, drawing back against the wall. His words played again and again in my mind until I realized what was

wrong, and all my blood pooled in my feet. "What did you call me?" I said.

"Zilan," he said again, frowning.

I shook my head, taking another step back. "You never call me that," I said. To Zheng Sili, I was always hùnxiě or peasant girl . I swallowed, looking between them, my heartbeat loud in my ears. Wenshu had forgotten about Durian, and Zheng Sili had forgotten

to insult me.

She has many types of ghosts trapped here , the female ghost had said. I knew from Auntie So that there were ghosts who could cause blinding light or cavernous darkness,

dry winds or noxious gas. There were even some ghosts who could transform into objects, animals... or people .

I'd let both Wenshu and Zheng Sili out of my sight, and we hadn't walked around any spirit screens since being reunited.

Except for this one door, which they wanted me to go through first.

"Where are they?" I said, drawing firestones from my bag.

Zheng Sili seized my wrist before I could activate them, bending it back painfully until the firestones clattered to the ground.

"Come on, Zilan," he said, tugging me close to him. "You wouldn't hurt us, would you?"

I pulled back my other hand and punched him in the face.

" Ow, what the hell? " he said, stumbling back into Wenshu. "You would punch your friends in the face?"

"The real Zheng Sili knows that I already stabbed him and knocked his tooth out," I said, swiping my firestones from the ground.

"You really thought using his face would deter me? That only makes it easier."

Zheng Sili sighed, then both he and Wenshu trembled as white light rippled across their bodies. Their familiar faces faded

away, melting into faces I had never seen before—men slightly older than them, shoulders broader and expressions more stern

and lined with age, hair tied up with headscarves tight across their foreheads. Like the immortals, their skin was transparent,

the sunlight cutting through them.

"Women these days really have no class," said the one who used to be Wenshu.

"I'll say," I said, rolling my eyes and tucking my firestones into my other pocket, reaching for woodstones. The two stepped toward me, but I slammed three woodstones into the ground, and a new yǐngbì burst from the floor between us, halting them in their tracks.

I turned around, determined to search through every room of the house until I found the others, but a cold hand seized my

throat.

The Silver Alchemist stood in front of me, crushing me back against the yǐngbì I'd just built. At her touch, a stabbing pain

all over my body forced me to the ground. It felt like knives had been slipped between each of my ribs, my bones splintering

apart, my veins full of thorns.

"Do you know how I healed you?" the Silver Alchemist whispered. Sound hurt, breathing hurt, light hurt, as if my whole body

was nothing but a feral scream. My knees shook, and I slid down the wall, but she followed me to the ground, refusing to let

go. "Silver is a waterstone," she said. "It has amazing healing properties, but inevitably, some of it ends up in your bloodstream.

It filters out of your body in a few days, but for now, you're full of metal. My favorite metal. It practically sings to me."

I scratched at the screen behind me, the only thing keeping me from falling all the way to the floor and never getting up

again. It felt like the Silver Alchemist was unmaking me.

With a sudden splash , the pain lifted all at once. I collapsed back against the wall, hot liquid at my feet.

I looked up at the Silver Alchemist, who was now soaking wet and steaming, glaring over her shoulder. Wenshu stood a few feet

behind her, clutching an empty teapot. Zheng Sili stood behind him, grimacing as he peeled cobwebs from his hair.

"I told you to get out of here !" I shouted, hauling myself to my feet even though my knees trembled.

"You're mispronouncing thank you !" Wenshu said, tossing the teapot at the Silver Alchemist and disappearing back into another room. Zheng Sili took a step

forward, but hesitated as a shadow crossed the doorway before us. All of us turned to the servant boy, clutching a plate of

chopped worms in trembling hands.

"Ma'am, where would you like these?" he said.

Zheng Sili grabbed the plate and hurled it at the Silver Alchemist, who struck it down from the air, sending chopped worms

raining down over us.

"Leave!" Zheng Sili said to the servant, who bowed and rushed into another room.

The Silver Alchemist grimaced as she wiped bits of worm from her face. "You know why I wanted to feed that abomination of

a duck?" she said. "So he can get nice and fat before I eat him."

" Over my dead body! " Zheng Sili said, slamming three woodstones into the ground. The wood panels rose up and opened like a jaw ready to devour

the Silver Alchemist in its splintered teeth, but she slid behind my spirit screen and dodged the bite. I heard the pop of another jar opening and wasted no time running down the hall, Zheng Sili close behind me.

"Where the hell did you go?" I said.

"Some ghost shoved me into a disgusting basement," Zheng Sili said, taking a sudden left turn. "Then one of the immortals

let me out a minute later. They're not a very cohesive group, are they?"

I laughed, skidding to a stop in front of a room without a spirit screen, sunlight bleeding through the windows across the

kitchen table. I hurried inside, but the room darkened as shadows eclipsed the windows. Gray fingers stabbed through the paper

and writhed through the lattice like hundreds of maggots.

"She's got the place surrounded with ghosts," Zheng Sili said, grimacing. "How are we supposed to escape?"

"Her ring," I said, thinking back to the ghosts of the Silver Alchemist's friends.

"Is now really the time to be pickpocketing?" he said. "I know you're poor, but—"

"It's where she gets her power, you moron," I said. "These aren't actually ghosts, they're alchemical creations. If we can

take her ring, I think they'll go away."

"I hope you're willing to stake your life on that theory," Zheng Sili said as the Silver Alchemist stormed into the room.

"Got any silver in your body at the moment?" I said to Zheng Sili as I backed up, trying to put the kitchen table between

us like a barrier.

"Not that I'm aware of," he said, tossing a few firestones in the air and catching them in his other hand. "Besides." He turned

back to the Silver Alchemist. "Silver is a soft metal. I would never want to be named after something so weak."

The Silver Alchemist lunged forward, but Zheng Sili cast the firestones to the ground and a wall of flame scorched itself

into the floor, encircling her. I remembered when we'd sparred in the courtyard back in Chang'an, when he'd drawn the same

wall in moments and I'd despised him for it.

But the Silver Alchemist only cast a few waterstones to the ground, and with a flash of silver, the fire turned into a hissing

curtain of smoke.

"Okay, new plan," Zheng Sili said, grabbing an iron pan off the stove and hurling it at the Silver Alchemist. It hit her nose

with a wet crunch and sent her tumbling to the floor.

"Aren't you supposed to be good at sparring?" I said, grabbing a cleaver from the counter.

"She has more stones than us! It's a waste!" Zheng Sili said, sending a flurry of spoons raining down on the Silver Alchemist.

"You're being a cheapskate now , of all times?"

"Do you have a better idea, Miss Royal Alchemist ?"

The Silver Alchemist tore off a section of her silvery robes and transformed them with a brilliant flash, a long whip appearing

in her right hand. She struck out at Zheng Sili, who tumbled back into me with a startled yelp, both of us crushed against

the window. The ghosts outside the window tugged eagerly at my hair, fingers and tongues lashing through the lattice. I yanked

my hair out of their grasp, slamming a fist against the window and breaking a few fingers.

We didn't stand a chance as long as she was wearing the red zircon ring. One way or another, I had to take it.

"I need you to hold her down," I said to Zheng Sili in Guangzhou dialect. "I'm going for the ring."

He sighed, clutching a couple stones in his palm before I could see them. "If I lose any more teeth because of you, I'm sending

you a bill," he said.

Then he dove for the iron pan on the floor. Blue light flashed, and when he rose again, he clutched an iron spear in both

hands. Dodging the next strike of the whip, he stabbed the Silver Alchemist through the stomach. He planted his foot on the

table and leaned his body weight into the spear until it crunched, pinning her firmly to the table.

"Now or never, hùnxiě!" he shouted.

I didn't waste a second more, grabbing the Silver Alchemist's wrist as she twisted and writhed. I tried to yank the ring from

her finger, but it stayed fastened tight as if part of her body.

"It's my ring," she said, coughing out sparks of blood. "You can't take it."

I clenched my jaw, remembering Hong, the Moon Alchemist, the life that I'd had before I'd ruined it, the life that I could have again.

"Want to bet?" I said, picking up the cleaver and, in one clean motion, slicing all her fingers off.

She screamed, a river of blood rushing hot and fast across the table. Zheng Sili flinched at the sound, and the moment he

backed away, she yanked the spear from her stomach, a burst of blood spraying across both of us as she fell to her hands.

I shuddered as I picked up her severed fingers, slid the rings off the broken ends, and slipped the bloody metal rings onto

my own hand. As her burning blood raced down my wrist, a strange calm settled through my bones, the blood suddenly cool, the

hum of powerful alchemy rising inside me once more. The sounds of scraping outside the windows grew silent, the fingers retreating

from the lattice.

The Silver Alchemist slumped to the floor, clutching the wound in her stomach. She glared at me and opened her mouth as if

to speak, but a torrent of blood rushed from between her lips, and she fell forward into it. She reached for the hem of my

skirt, but I stepped back and her hand splashed against the tiles, leaving a bloody palm print. Her face was bloodless, lips

blue.

I picked up the cleaver with numb fingers before I really understood what I was doing. This was the part where I was supposed

to finish her off—she was dying anyway, and rage was still boiling through my veins, my heartbeat pounding all the way up

to my skull, breath fast from adrenaline. She'd tried to keep me away from Hong, from the royal alchemists, from my siblings'

real bodies.

But she'd also saved me.

Someone grabbed my sleeve. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but it was only Wenshu. "Let's go," he whispered. " Now. "

We ran through the back door, where Wenshu had already untied the horses. He grabbed Durian off the ground and stuffed him

into a bag, then struggled to climb onto a saddle. Zheng Sili shoved him upright with one hand, then easily mounted his own

horse and held out a hand for me. Before I could argue that I wanted to ride with Wenshu, he'd grabbed me by the wrist and

hauled me halfway onto his own horse. Our horses took off, and I clung to Zheng Sili, afraid I would fall off at this speed.

"She'll come after us if she lives," Zheng Sili called at Wenshu over his shoulder.

"I cut the other horses loose," Wenshu shouted back. "She can chase us on foot if she wants, but she won't catch up."

I glanced over my shoulder at the mansion as we rode into the countryside, then down at the rings on my hand, my whole arm

stained with the Silver Alchemist's blood.

Once, I'd thought my cousins heartless for wanting to leave even a single soul behind when we could have helped them. But

the Silver Alchemist had saved my life and I had robbed and killed her. And yes, she had killed people, but so had I. Yet

I was the one riding away, pretending to be a hero while she bled out on her kitchen floor.

My hand felt numb from the weight of the two powerful rings, my skin stiff from dried blood. Just like the first time I'd

put on a silk gown to dine with the Empress, I felt like a child playing dress-up. But this time I wasn't pretending to be

an aristocrat, but a great alchemist who deserved to carry such important stones. As soon as we found the third ring, everyone

would expect me to do a transformation that would split the seams of the world and carry me to a mythological island—something

I wasn't sure that even the Moon Alchemist was capable of.

Yet somehow, no one had asked me if I could actually do it.

They still believed in the Scarlet Alchemist who had seized her dream at all costs, and I couldn't bear to tell them that

she was dead.

I turned my gaze to the approaching horizon and slipped the red zircon ring off my finger, examining it in the light of the

setting sun. The zircon was a vibrant, bloody scarlet with deadly sharp facets, trapped red light pulsing within the stone

like the slow but steady beating of a heart.