Chapter Three

My gaze locked with Junyi's, and for a moment, the walls of the sunbaked clay hut fell away. The harshness of the desert sun

dissolved, replaced by frigid golden tiles, a throne room soaked with blood, pale sunlight cast across me in sharp diamonds

through the elaborate lattice windows. I would know those eyes anywhere, even if the face had changed.

"Who said the Crown Prince was dead?" I said again, leaning into my knife, a desperate edge to my words.

"No one had to say anything, Scarlet," Junyi said, his smile glass-sharp. "I was the one who killed him, after all."

Then the Empress's grip tightened on my wrist. She shoved my blade away, and I couldn't even think to fight back, could barely

even breathe. I had killed the Empress, ripped her throat out with my teeth. What kind of monster would have resurrected her?

If she still lived, then everyone had died for nothing.

"You're creative, Scarlet, I'll give you that much," the Empress said, releasing me and crossing her arms. Her expression shifted, no longer the weathered and determined face of a villager who'd lost everything, but the proud glare of someone who owned the entire world.

I shook my head. "You're—"

"I've thought about it a lot, you know," she said. "The fact that you surprised me. There's very little that I don't foresee.

In another life, maybe you could have been my adviser."

I couldn't bring myself to move, my feet rooted to the ground. I'm dreaming , I thought. I dream about the Empress all the time. This is nothing new.

"But the more I think about it, the more I realize that you couldn't possibly have planned all this," she said. She raised

one hand to cup my cheek, her touch searing. "You couldn't have known what necklace I would wear, or that the pearls would

roll in front of you. All that happened is you got very, very, lucky. Isn't that right?"

I tried to form words, but the Empress's touch was stronger than any venom. Distantly, I was aware of the knife sliding from

my limp hand, clattering to the floor.

"You're not a great alchemist, are you?" she said, thumb caressing my cheek. "You were just struck with dumb luck and seized

your chance. Good for you, Scarlet. Fate favored you this once. But victory is not a single moment."

The Empress leaned closer, and her next words came as warm desert winds whispered across my face, lips a breath from mine,

speaking into me, through me. "This kingdom belongs to me," she said. "I earned it. I will die a thousand times before I let

you take it from me."

Her grip tightened on my face, and something about the sting of her nails piercing through my skin shocked me awake. I took

a step back.

"Then I'll kill you a thousand times," I said. "China belongs to Hong, not you."

The Empress's eyes widened, then she let out a sharp laugh. I kept talking, afraid I'd lose confidence at the Empress's next

words.

"I don't know why you bothered borrowing a peasant's body," I said, "but you know as well as I do that you have no authority in any body but your own. No one will obey a farmer

from Lanzhou who claims to be the Empress."

The Empress rolled her eyes and applauded melodramatically. "Well done, Scarlet. You could have been a first-tier scholar

with that deduction. Luckily, I know for a fact that my body was one of the few that you didn't feed to pearl monsters. Shame

about your friends, though."

My mind flashed to Yufei, alone in the palace. Wenshu had made sure she was surrounded by a ridiculous number of guards and

made her swear not to leave the palace, but it was hard to dissuade Yufei from doing what she wanted, no matter how risky.

"You're not getting your body back," I said.

I pulled my second knife from my left sleeve and tightened my grip on it. The Empress wasn't worth wasting my last few stones

on, and I doubted she knew much about hand-to-hand combat. I struck at her throat, but she dodged and wrenched my arm behind

my back, forcing me to the floor. Even with no real skill in fighting, the Empress was wearing the muscled body of someone

who worked in hot fields, taller and heavier than me, and she crushed me into the floor easily.

"You're not going to kill me," I said, as her weathered hands crushed my face into the tiles. "You still need someone to make

life gold." And deliver you my sister's body , I thought, but didn't want to say it out loud in case she didn't actually know that Yufei was currently wearing her corpse like a dress.

"I'm not going to kill you yet ," the Empress agreed, pulling my hair back and running a delicate finger across my throat, as if imagining all the blood

that could spill.

I leaned down and bit her fingers.

I'd meant to snap them clean off, but only managed to break skin before her other hand yanked my hair and forced me away.

I reached for my knife, which had skittered into the corner. The Empress lunged for me but froze as I pointed my blade between

her eyes.

"Nine hundred and ninety-nine to go," I said.

She let out a sharp laugh. "Go ahead and kill me," she said. "Add me to your death toll, Scarlet. Along with all your friends."

My hand trembled around the blade, but I tightened my grip, determined not to show the Empress that her words could hurt me.

"You think this is the only body I have?" she went on.

I froze, my gaze dropping to the soul tag on her wrist. "You can't be resurrected into more than one body at once."

" You can't," the Empress said, a dark smile twisting Junyi's features.

I should have asked more questions, but she was leaning forward, brushing my blade away, and I couldn't stand the thought

of her hands on me again.

I slammed my knife into the soul tag on her wrist, pinning her to the floor.

With a sharp gasp, her muscles tensed. Then her eyes went gray and she fell over limp in the dirt. Her robes had come untied

in the fighting and loosened enough that I could see a wound in Junyi's stomach, crisp with dried blood. He must have died

recently, probably in the raids.

Someone had come through this village and resurrected him for the Empress. But who?

I ripped my blade out of his arm, wiping it clear on a nearby rag. My white outer robe was stained with blood, so I balled

it up and shoved it into my bag, even though it left my arms bare. Durian peeped in protest from under the fabric.

I stumbled back into the main road, retracing my path with numb feet until I found Wenshu, one hand covering his mouth as

the other villagers skinned one of the desert goats.

"We're leaving," I said in Guangzhou dialect.

"What?" Wenshu said through his hand. "I helped kill a goat, and now you—"

" Now ," I said, grabbing his arm. He clamped his mouth shut and followed me past the bewildered villagers.

"We have a problem," I said, as we walked back out into the lonely desert, the cold and borderless sea. "The Empress is back."

We walked all night across the silent desert, dunes painted gray and blue by nightfall. We didn't dare stop walking, for we

needed to keep warm. My mind still hummed like it was full of sand flies as I remembered the Empress's eyes. Even wearing

another's face, her gaze had held the same knife's edge of cruelty.

I didn't often feel dead, but at times like this, my mind was so loud and my bones so numb—the Empress had that effect on

me, stripping away the colors from the world, the warmth from the sky. I thought of the faces of my friends, of Hong, of my

cousins, whose real faces I hadn't seen in so long. All of them had died so that the Empress's reign could end. If she was

still here, then they'd died for nothing at all.

She'd named me the Scarlet Alchemist, and now it no longer felt like an honor but just another one of the Empress's cruel jokes. Because when it was over, I'd stood alone in a palace drenched in blood, having destroyed everything while the Empress laughed.

The memory of her voice kept me awake as the hours wore on, even when I could hardly feel my limbs anymore.

We arrived back in Lanzhou when the sky burst orange across the horizon. Wenshu was so tired he probably would have given

the innkeeper all the money we had left in exchange for a few feet of empty floor to lie down on, so I took the coin purse

from his pocket and called the innkeeper myself.

After a moment, he came out from behind a curtain and said something in Lanyin.

"Do you speak the capital dialect?" I said, putting down a few coins so he would understand my purpose if not my words.

He glanced at the coins, then looked between me and Wenshu. "Visitors from the capital?" he said in Chang'an dialect, already

swiping my coins off the counter.

"Not from the capital, just passing through," I said, eyeing Wenshu warily where he was falling asleep leaning against a wall.

"Do you have any rooms?"

"I have nothing but rooms," the innkeeper said. "You're about the only people heading this far north right now. Everyone else

is going the other way."

"Where are they going?" I said.

"Chang'an," the innkeeper said, marking something on a sheet of paper and fishing a key out of a drawer. "Some sort of commotion

at the palace."

" Commotion? " I said too loudly, startling Wenshu awake. "Why is there a commotion?"

The innkeeper shrugged, holding out a key. "My guess is it's something to do with another private army," he said. "You want the room or not?"

I thanked him and took the key, grabbing Wenshu by the arm and leading him upstairs. I didn't like the thought of a large

private army congregating in Chang'an. It was one thing when local uprisings tried to draw out their own alchemists, but clearly

someone wanted more manpower than what they could find in Chang'an alone.

There was little I could do about it from here. I could write to Yufei, but had no return address to give her, so there hardly

seemed to be a point. I would have to trust that she was safe with her army behind the palace walls, and finish up this business

with Penglai as quickly as possible so we could return to her.

I unlocked the door to a small room and found a single set of blankets folded up in the corner. Wenshu shook one out and checked

it for bugs, then spread it on the ground and dropped onto it, face-first. I threw another blanket over the lattice window,

blocking out the morning sun. I set Durian down on a windowsill, where he started pecking at a spider.

"I need to do something before you sleep," I said, tugging at the corner of Wenshu's blanket with my foot.

Wenshu groaned, brushing his hair back and exposing his scar as I knelt down beside him.

"Can't I sleep while you do it?" he said into the blanket.

"It might be fine, or you might never wake up again," I said, shrugging. "Your choice."

He grumbled something indecipherable. "Just hurry up. I've lost enough sleep because of your stupid boyfriend."

I knelt down and brushed a few more strands of his hair back, running my fingers over the glossy, gnarled skin.

範

文

書

Fan Wenshu.

Weeks ago, I'd carved the name onto the prince's body to bind Wenshu inside of it. The wound had healed, leaving raised pink

scar tissue that didn't show any signs of fading. Wenshu had yelled at me the first time he saw it, saying, Your handwriting is so bad that you almost resurrected someone named Fan Wénhùa!

The fact that I'd been half dead at the time wasn't a good enough excuse for him, and he'd forced me to practice my stroke

order until he was satisfied I wouldn't bind strangers to his dead body in the future.

I chose not to remind him that he was the one who taught me to write in the first place. I sensed that my handwriting bothered

him far less than the realization that I'd chosen him over the prince.

Fans were not accustomed to sentimentality. We were the children of merchants, who were the children of farmers, who were

the children of slaves. Sentimentality was for royal court poets and painters who could stare in longing at the night sky

and contemplate the depths of their love, render their feelings in sumac tree sap and silk canvases. None of us knew how to

accept grand gestures of love, because we simply didn't need them. We loved as we poured our uneaten soup into each other's

bowls, as we stood in the sun to let the other rest in the shade.

But what I had done for Wenshu went far beyond that, and I was sure he knew it. I was equally sure that it was the only reason he was entertaining ideas of a mythical island on my behalf. Whatever his reasons, he was here with me now, and I wanted to finish this up before he lost patience.

I steadied my breath, fingers pressing into the scar, and closed my eyes.

The sounds of the river rose slowly. At first, there was only a distant whisper of rushing water, its coolness numbing my

fingertips where they touched my brother's scar. Then the water began rushing faster, its roar wiping away the sounds of the

road just beyond our window and the low voices beneath the floorboards until there was nothing but the river's song.

When at last I felt the tepid water around my bare feet, I opened my eyes to the blank cage of sky above me.

I was standing in the in-between plane, where the world was only bones and darkness and qi—the life inside all of us that

could fuel your alchemy if you only knew how to listen to it. I stood before the river of my brother's life, the dark waters

of his qi rushing unstopped past my feet.

Back in Guangzhou, I'd made a living by unstopping the dams that blocked the flow of qi in the rivers of the dead. I'd dragged

their souls back to the plane of the living like a deep-sea fisherman wrenching monsters back to the surface, even if they

were never meant to see the sun. I hadn't cared for the consequences, only for the gold that their families paid me.

You shouldn't be here , the river said to me, as it did every time, the words an echo that hummed through my bones.

But I had already broken enough rules to send me to hell for all of eternity, and I wasn't going to start listening now.

I stood up straight, turning away from my brother's river and looking out across the shadowed tree line, the prickly leaves

and stark white trunks like an army of ghosts daring me to pass through.

I closed my eyes and walked forward.

The trees parted for me as I passed, the edges of their leaves knife-sharp, scoring my face. The parched earth crunched and

shattered beneath my feet as if I was walking over a bed of glass.

It didn't matter where I walked, because this plane answered to no map or compass or north star. Desire was what guided you

onward, deeper into its maw.

Li Hong , I thought, repeating his name a thousand times in my mind, picturing the characters painted across the sky in gold.

I thought of the way he'd looked at me when he'd mapped every inch of my skin, tried to forge me into a treasured memory.

I thought of the smile on his lips when he saw me, how it was so much brighter than the smile he gave other members of the

court when he had to play the role of Crown Prince. And I thought of the pleading look he gave me right before the Empress

slit his throat. That last memory always devoured the others—his eyes round with surprise, the black chasm of his pupils yawning

wider until I knew he could see nothing at all.

With that thought, the forest pulled me in with urgency, the ground sloping downward, forcing me to run faster, until at last,

the earth leveled out. I let out a deep breath as the night unlatched its jaw, releasing me. Slowly, I opened my eyes.

Hong was sleeping against a tree by the riverbank. He wore the same robes he'd died in, but their purple shade had grown fainter

and they were splattered with mud. He did not breathe in this plane, his form so still that he resembled a painting.

I stepped closer, but my footsteps did not wake him. His mind was somewhere else completely.

The rope I'd fastened to his left wrist had come loose, revealing raw pink skin, the slack rope bundled in his lap. I'd tied the other end to the strongest branch of the tree, and now the bark was flaking away beneath the knot. How hard has he been pulling at the rope while I was away?

Hong was not an alchemist trained to understand the river plane, the way its words could infect your blood, the way it could

pull you worlds away if your thoughts wandered too far. He had never taught his mind to withstand that kind of pressure.

Most of the dead lingered here for a week or so, clinging to latent memories in the scant drops of water from the riverbeds

of their lives, clawing at the impenetrable dam that had sealed off the flow of qi. Eventually, they gave up and they wandered

into the forest, where the darkness ate them whole.

I didn't know what happened next, but I knew that I didn't want Hong to go there.

It had been about four weeks since he'd died, and by all accounts, his soul should have been long gone. It would have been,

if I hadn't tethered him here.

I pulled out three moonstones, healing the torn skin of his wrist, then whispered an apology as I tightened the rope once

more.

He jolted awake, yanking his wrist away and grabbing on to the low branches of the tree as if trying to anchor himself in

a typhoon. For a moment, he seemed not to see me at all, his eyes a flat plane of black, like the nothingness that awaited

beyond the tree line.

"Hong," I said quietly, still kneeling in the dirt, afraid to make any sudden movements.

His gaze settled on me, his expression unchanged, and I wondered if today was the day when the darkness ate so much of him

that he forgot who I was.

But then, slowly, like a flower unfurling in the early morning, the darkness left his eyes. He released the branch, a soft smile spreading across his face.

"Zilan," he said, the word echoing as if spoken inside an immense cavern. Everything about him looked faint and far away.

He held out a hand, and I let him pull me to my feet, even though the touch of his skin spread stinging cold through my fingers.

He kissed me, his lips numbing mine, like I'd kissed a block of ice.

Every day, he felt a little bit colder, a little bit farther away. Souls weren't meant to linger in this plane for long. They

could rot just like bodies, become echoes of themselves. More than anything, I feared that one day I would come to find him

and would only see the tree, the rope snapped, his soul too far gone for me to call back.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

He hummed in thought, the sound like a low vibration of a zither string. "I'm not sure," he said after a moment. "A bit like

I'm dreaming, to be honest. But there are worse places to be than in a dream, I suppose."

I said nothing, sitting down on a patch of dry grass and gesturing for him to sit beside me. He looked like a sheet of silk

the wind might carry away. I needed him anchored to me.

I pressed my face to his chest and listened to the cavernous silence where his heartbeat should have been, his cold hands

around me while I told him about the Sandstone Alchemist and the strange transformation we'd found.

I didn't tell him about the Empress. Not yet. He had died thinking it meant she would die as well, and I worried that his soul would decay even faster if he learned it had all been for nothing. He had foolishly believed in me, even when I was nothing but a míngqì merchant in Guangzhou. He saw me as a hero, a savior of the poor. What would he think if he knew the truth?

"We never even found the map," I said, tipping my head back against his shoulder, staring at the white sky. "I nearly died,

and I have no idea where to look next."

"Why would he go to such lengths to protect a transformation?" Hong said.

I shrugged. "It must create something important, but it's useless if I don't know what it is. You can't do alchemy without

intention. Besides, I don't even know where to start. What is the dragon's white eye supposed to mean? Am I supposed to find a dragon and scoop its eyes out?"

Hong laughed, but the sound felt far away. "Have you asked the Moon Alchemist what she thinks?" he said.

I turned, looking up at him. He had eaten gold up until his death, so his eyes still held tiny constellations of gold flecks,

the brightest light in the dark sameness of this plane.

"She's gone," I said quietly.

He blinked hard, shaking his head as if clearing his thoughts. When he opened his eyes again, they were dimmer. "Sorry, I...

I forgot."

I took his hand, lacing our fingers together, ignoring the biting cold.

Sometimes, it became all too clear that his soul was slipping away the longer he stayed here. His mind was a threadbare blanket,

holes growing wider. At times, he murmured words that made sense on their own but were nonsense when strung together. His

touch was already painfully cold, and each day it felt lighter, gentler, as if he could hardly touch me at all.

I looked into his gray eyes, and a question burned at my lips, but I could never voice it because I couldn't bear to hear the answer.

Do you forgive me for not choosing you?

With only one dead body left whole in the palace, I'd had to choose between the prince and my brother. I hadn't known which

one I was going to choose when I entered the river of souls. But desire guided you in this plane, and when I found my brother's

body on the riverbank and felt relief instead of regret, I'd known that was the only choice I could have made. He was my family.

But I still loved the prince, no matter how unfair it was to ask for love in return after leaving him here.

"I'm going to bring you back," I said, the words a quiet promise whispered into his collarbone.

"I know," he said. "I've never once doubted you, Empress."

I grimaced at the nickname, gently pushing his shoulder until he leaned back against the tree again, and I leaned against

him so he couldn't see my face. I knew that for him, the name was a promise that he would return, that we would be married

and I would be his empress consort. He'd promised to marry me on the day he died, and that was the one thing he hadn't seemed

to forget even as the rest of his mind dissolved. To me, the name could only conjure images of gold eyes, of the woman who'd

burned my cousins alive and slit Hong's throat. But I couldn't take away that small piece of hope from him, no matter how

unsettled it made me.

"You're afraid," he said, his cold palm resting over my chest, my heartbeat that felt mockingly loud.

"I'm just tired," I said, because my fears weren't the prince's problem. I didn't need him to worry about me, I only needed

him to stay.

"Rest here with me," he said, leaning back against the tree.

I shook my head, already standing up, untangling his frozen limbs from mine.

"Wenshu Ge wants to rest too," I said, looking away. "He can't do that if I'm down here."

Hong nodded. "He's taking good care of my body, isn't he?" he said. I was sure he meant it as a joke, but I could sense the

worry in his tone.

"Aside from the viper venom, yes," I said. "He's so vain now, always brushing his hair. I think you might have to wrestle

it back from him, when the time comes."

"I look forward to that day," he said. "Zilan—"

"Don't," I said, holding up a hand to stop his next words.

I would never let him say goodbye to me.

As long as he never did, we always had unfinished business. He would cling to the rope, waiting for me to return. He would

never leave me without saying goodbye.

"I'll be right back," is what I always said instead.

"I'll be here," he said. "Always. For as long as it takes."

He did not kiss me goodbye, only gave me a small, sad wave.

It felt so unfair that I could turn my back on him and return to the land of the living while he stayed trapped in the dark,

rotting.

It won't be like this forever , I told myself, and that was the only way I could bear to leave. I'm going to bring him back .

I walked through the forest, wanting a moment in the stillness of the night before heading back to Wenshu, who I was sure

would notice the tears blurring my vision. The branches parted as I strode through them, releasing me into a pale, dark night,

the moon a perfect crescent overhead.

I turned my face up to the sky, leaning against a tree. The clouds parted and a cool wash of moonlight spilled across my face. At times, I imagined the Moon Alchemist reaching up and taking the moon from the dark sky as easily as plucking a soft peach from one of the trees that lined the streets of Chang'an.

Have you asked the Moon Alchemist what she thinks? Hong had said, as if I could simply knock on her door.

Even for a resurrection alchemist, it wasn't that simple.

I'd dropped by the rivers of the other royal alchemists just long enough to make sure they hadn't dried up completely, but

I hadn't stopped to talk to anyone but the River Alchemist, too afraid of what they'd say. I could still see the flare of

hate in the Paper Alchemist's eyes when she realized that everyone was dying because of me. Maybe hiding from her now made

me a coward, but the next time I saw her, I wanted it to be with the elixir of life in hand, ready to escort her back to the

land of the living.

I had never tried to find the Moon Alchemist's river. She had wanted to die, so she'd probably walked off into the forest

the moment she'd set foot here, and I couldn't bear to see the parched dirt of her riverbed where her life had once been.

"What's the answer?" I whispered to the brilliant white moon, wishing she could hear me. "You'd know. You knew everything."

But the silent sky didn't answer me. She was dead because of me, and she would never answer any of my questions again. The

Moon Alchemist was not in the sky, or on the moon, but torn to pieces in a muddy pit. I would have to figure out the transformation

on my own.

The dragon's white eye , I thought, remembering the words scratched in ancient script across the parchment.

The words itched at the back of my mind, like scars of a distant dream carved into my brain. I'd heard them before, but where?

Something tickled my hand, and I looked down at a tiny black orb-weaver, the kind that had always reminded me of the Moon

Alchemist and her delicate, perfect sharpness.

She'd never appreciated the comparison.

I remembered studying in the palace, back before everything fell apart, when I'd watched an orb-weaver tickle across the low

table covered in scrolls in the royal library, dancing over the beautiful, ancient calligraphy.

The Moon Alchemist's fist slammed down on top of it.

I lurched back. She wiped her hand clean with a cloth, scowling down at me.

"I left you here to study," she'd said.

I glanced down at the black stain where the spider had been, just below the character for star .

"I've been studying all day," I said.

"You were watching that spider for the last five minutes," the Moon Alchemist said. "I told you to study alchemy, not arachnids."

"These are all so old," I said, gesturing to the scrolls. "They don't make any sense to me. They don't even mention stones."

"They mention many stones. You just aren't reading close enough." The Moon Alchemist jerked a finger toward the words western guard .

"What guards the west?" she said.

I hesitated. "Soldiers?"

The Moon Alchemist rolled her eyes. "In mythology, Scarlet. Alchemists believed in gods back then."

Maybe the oldest alchemists had been raised to believe in gods, but in the golden age of alchemy, I certainly hadn't. Nor had learning about ancient history been a priority for a southern merchant girl. I only knew what I'd managed to glean since I'd come to Chang'an.

"The White Tiger?" I guessed, letting out a breath when the Moon Alchemist nodded.

"The White Tiger is associated with metals, so it's a white metalstone, such as..."

"Pearl?" I said hesitantly.

The Moon Alchemist smiled. The expression was so rare on her stony face. "Precisely," she said. She knelt down beside me,

pointing to the next line. "And what about this one?" she said, her fingers hovering over the characters for dragon's eye .

I sucked in a sharp breath, the memory bleached away by the moonlight that now looked searingly white. I had talked about this with the Moon Alchemist. But trying to remember what came next was like reaching out into a thick wall

of fog. I'd never been quite as good at rote memorization as Wenshu or Yufei, had only focused on remembering the most practical

information, whatever would save me or help me win.

There were no other alchemists I could ask now, and all of the remaining alchemy scrolls were back in Chang'an, halfway across

the country. I ground my teeth together, irrationally angry at the Moon Alchemist for always disappearing when I needed her

the most. But of course, this was no one's fault but my own.

Have you tried asking the Moon Alchemist?

I swallowed, staring up at the canvas-white moon, a blank piece of paper. Maybe some echo of her presence remained at her

river, some ghostly remains, anything. Maybe she knew I needed her and had held on. She always knew things, even before I

could admit them to myself.

I realized, with a heavy pang in my chest, that I had never learned her real name. Would I even be able to find her river?

But this plane was guided by desire, not semantics. She was always my moon, my teacher, the greatest alchemist of all time.

She was the Moon Alchemist to me , and maybe that was enough.

I imagined brushstrokes against the papery white canvas of this moon at the bottom of the world, painting her name in the

sky. Slowly, I began to walk deeper into the night.