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I cleared my throat. “I will never help you,” I said, my voice raw and cracked. “I would rather die.”

The Empress’s expression hardened. “Then I suppose you won’t mind if I burn Hong like I did your family?”

“No,” I said, my fist closing around the pearls. “That’s not what I said.”

“Well, you—”

The Empress froze as I held up a handful of bloody pearls in my palm.

“What are you doing?” she said, her eyes wide.

I tilted my head back and let the blood drip from my hand and pool under my tongue, my mouth filling with shattered pearls. I rolled one between my teeth, and bit down.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The pearl scraped down my throat, my abdomen clenching as my body tried to reject it.

I folded into myself, my stomach seizing up, my insides full of sharp teeth. An infinity opened up within me, a screaming emptiness in the center of my chest, demanding more blood, more darkness, anything to feed the night.

My skin grew tight and stiff, sealing me in a shell of pearl, burying me in ice. My vision fractured, all my breath stolen and choked out, moisture sapped from my mouth. I was the impenetrable walls of Chang’an. I was the endless gray of the northern sky. I was the darkest shadows in the dungeons, the gods that no one wanted to pray to, the end of days that the rich thought would never come for them.

And deep in my core, something new blossomed—a hunger so voracious that I could see nothing else but the Empress and the blood pulsing in her throat, the veins in her neck as bright as molten steel. Pearls spilled from my mouth, clattering to the floor. I grabbed the metal bars of my cage and wrenched them to the side, then stepped through.

A door burst open somewhere far away and guards started shouting, but they were too late. I could hardly even feel their touch through the shell of my skin. I grabbed one by the throat and pinched until his neck splintered like kindling. Others poked at me like swarming flies, so I jammed my fingers into their eyes and shattered their ribs with a swipe of my hand and pulled their arms from their sockets. It was as easy as breathing, their bodies dough-soft, their dying silence a breath of Heaven. When they lay in pieces around me, I turned back to the Empress, her rushing blood just beneath her thin skin the only color in the dark landscape.

She ran for the back door, but tripped up the stairs and grasped at the feet of her throne. She had just reached the armrests when I sank my teeth into her throat.

I ripped through coarse tendons, my mouth filling with sweet blood. I felt like I’d been dying of thirst my entire life until this moment. The need yawned wider as my teeth forced more blood from her flesh, broken gasps croaked from her lips, body twitching, bones rattling. More guards tried to pull me away, scratched at me with their useless knives, but the blood dribbled down my neck and I didn’t care, I didn’t care at all. Nothing mattered but the syrupy sweetness spreading warmth through my frostbitten bones.

Until something sharp slipped between the knobs in my spine.

Lightning lanced up my back, the crackling spreading through me, and all at once, my jaw unlatched, my whole body going numb. My hands shook, the blood tangy and nauseating in my mouth. The hard shell of pearl flaked away from my skin, leaving me pale and soft and trembling. The spot between my shoulder blades burned, and I didn’t understand what had happened until one of the guards threw something on the ground, and I saw my own name staring back at me in the flickering cast of the fire.

They cut out my soul tag.

I clenched my teeth and dug my knuckles into the ground, but I felt like a kite holding on to earth by the thinnest string. I was just an untethered soul clinging to stolen bones, my whole body corpse-cold. I collapsed onto my side, teeth biting into the stairs, my own hot blood mixing with the Empress’s.

I rolled my gaze up to her, where she lay slumped in her throne, her silk robes painted with blood, a pale hand clutching the wound at her throat. She wouldn’t live long, not without an alchemist to stop the bleeding, and there were none left. By the time they found one from outside the palace, it would be too late.

Then I couldn’t breathe at all, and as much as I didn’t want to die at the Empress’s feet, death didn’t wait for anyone. My chest ached for air that wouldn’t come, and my limbs felt as heavy as mountains. My fingers twitched, the discarded soul tag lying a few feet away.

Maybe everything was ending, but at least I’d brought the Empress down with me.

My vision flashed with images of the dark river, flickering between the throne room and the in-between plane, but wouldn’t settle on either one long enough for me to sink into it. I caught glimpses of Wenshu and Yufei sitting on the riverbank, the prince smiling in the sunlight of the courtyard, the Moon Alchemist offering me her hand, my mother braiding my hair, the hazy face of my father and his low voice.Zilan, he said, and this time I understood the words that came next, his language no longer forgotten, a prayer and a memory all at once.Get up, Zilan, he said.Please.

The floor jolted with heavy footsteps, dragging me back to the throne room, and blue robes fell into my line of vision.

“Your Highness, we’ve found one,” a guard was saying.

I managed to look toward the sound and saw Zheng Sili, a sword at his throat. My vision was hazy, but he seemed ragged and unshaven, robes caked with dirt, face stark white. I thought the Empress had killed him, but perhaps he’d been thrown in the dungeons?

“Save her,” a man said, and at first, in my dizziness, I thought he meant me, but then Zheng Sili was rising to his feet, drawing closer to the Empress.

“I need moonstone,” he said shakily.

No.

I tried to push myself up, but it was like trying to topple a mountain with my bare hands. After everything I’d given, Zheng Sili was going to save the Empress, and everyone would have died for nothing at all.