Page 1

1

The nights have been longer and more beautiful since their world began to bleed into ours. It also gives them more time to hunt. But tonight, I will not be prey.

Through the silk-spun mist, moonlight catches on the wicked curves of my crescent blades, two snug against my palms and six more tucked up my sleeves and bodice for quick access. My thumbs rest against the grooves of the unique talismans engraved on the hilts by my father. The magic of these talismans, activated with a touch of spirit energy, amplifies the power of my blades and makes them lethal weapons against demons.

I move quietly through the fog, each step carefully stitched between silvergrasses and pines, weaving in a manner that renders me ghostly on a mountaintop dulled to shadows and smoke. My senses are weaker than theirs—it’s hard hearing past my own breathing—so I don’t know if any are waiting for me out here in the dark. If they are, I’m prepared. I’ve spent years learning how to fight them.

Not by choice, of course. I once had a normal life as the daughter of a seamstress in our village. My sister and I grew up surrounded by fine needles and soft silks, in patterns both beautiful and ordinary, that we delivered all across the Central Province. But then the Kingdom of Night broke the Heavenly Order across the realms, destroyed the border wards that kept our realms separate, and demons—mó—began to invade the Kingdom of Rivers, the mortal world. Soon our emperor and his armies fell to the powerful demon queen, then province after province collapsed, and the immortals in the Kingdom of Sky raised the wards on their realm and left us on our own.

I was ten years old the night the ministry of my province dissolved. I swapped needles for knives, silks for talisman spells, and lost my father in a lesson I will never forget.

Nine years later, I am still alive.

And tonight, I will not be prey.

When the sound of rushing water threads through the trees and the ground begins to flatten, relief lightens my chest. I’ve survived another trip to the moon spring at the summit of the westernmost mountain range of our kingdom. I will harvest light lotuses: flowers that drink in the magic of stars and are rich with the life energy that fuels our mortal souls. I will return to my village of Xī’lín and grind the petals and seeds into an elixir.

And my mother will live for a few months more.

Waves lap at the root of a great willow, swallowing the grass and muddy banks at my feet. I push past the curtains of wisteria that grow thickly around the spring—and freeze.

Beneath the moonlight filtering through the fog, the water is red.

My senses sharpen. Too late, I catch the sweetly putrid stench in the breeze. Too late, I notice the shadow in the middle of the spring. As fear tightens my chest, I feel the press of its gaze upon me.

Demon.

Mó take on a human appearance; beneath their beauty are their true monstrous forms, yet on the surface, there isn’t much to differentiate them from mortals. This one has taken the form of a young man. Through the branches of the willow, I see the powerful muscles of his shoulders, the spill of his hair in the moonlight. He carries a fresh, half-eaten corpse in his arms, blood spattering his chest. I am relieved to see it. Only the young, lesser mó will consume mortal flesh. The Higher Ones are less inclined toward the taste of our flesh; they prefer our souls.

The young male holds his hand out toward me.

“Come.” His voice is song. The air heats with the signature dark energy of their kind, and I feel the power of his magic in that command. It’s a spell that mortals are powerless to resist.

Most mortals.

Unbeknownst to the mó, I’m holding Shield, the first of my father’s crescent blades that I learned to use. Shield has a talisman that blocks attacks—including magical ones.

I tap my thumb to the blade’s hilt and push a small spark of spirit energy against the engraved talisman. I sense it activate, its power flowing through me to resist the dark magic of the mó’s command.

I will my body to relax. As much as I hate it, I have to play the part of prey. In fighting the mó, I have only two advantages: that of surprise and that of being underestimated. I can’t let this demon know that I am armed against his magic…or that I have magic of my own.

Though all mortals are born with life energy flowing red in our veins, few of us are able to channel spirit energy: the life force and magic of immortals and, some say, the gods. Those of us with the ability to do so are named practitioners: warrior-magicians who dedicate our lives to learning the martial arts and cultivating our magic.

Most died in the war against the Kingdom of Night.

I brush aside the willow branches and step into the water.

Moonlight bathes me, almost too brightly. My reflection is silver in the bloody water, and as the mó’s gaze snaps onto me, I know what he sees. I’m dressed in the breezy gauzes and pretty silks of a village maiden. My hair is in a long, loose braid woven through with a chaste white ribbon, a few strands curling over my cheeks, the soft nape of my neck. My crescent blades are hidden away in sheaths sewn into my wide sleeves, courtesy of my sister’s clever design. Most important, a protective jade pendant hangs against my collarbone, safely tucked beneath the collar of my dress.

The mó watches with interest, and I return his gaze. This part isn’t hard. Like all beings of his kind, he is beautiful, the perfectly honed edge of a silver blade: black hair that falls like a living shadow down his back. Skin that looks sculpted, unmarred by scars or any of the traces that illness leaves on us mortals. It is a cruel design of nature that takes advantage of our most primitive instincts: create something so impossibly, perfectly beautiful to lure prey in, and give it unmatched power.

It is no wonder mortals are dying out.

The mó drops the corpse he’s been feasting on. I try not to glance at the flash of entrails and hair at the edges of my vision as his victim falls into the water with a splash. I only hope it does not ruin the lotuses that I need for my mother.

I keep my smile, hoping the mó does not hear my quickening heartbeat as he draws closer. It is unsettling, not knowing if my hunter will eat me or ravish my body or drink my soul. Or perhaps all three.

The mó rises from the water and approaches me. This one is naked, confirming my theory that he is young: more animalistic in nature, not yet having learned human customs. Water sluices off his powerful muscles as he stops before me. His tongue darts out, and his eyes roam over me with unabashed hunger.

Disturbing as it is that the mó mirror our bodies, I find it worse that they also mirror our physical needs: hunger, thirst, lust, exhaustion. The only difference is that they feast on our flesh and drink our souls.

The worst? They don’t even need them to survive. To them, our flesh and souls simply taste like honey. Like sunlight. Like sweet morning dew. I know this because one of them told me as she drank my father’s soul. I will never forget her smile and the way she licked her lips, the casual cruelty of her laughter while I watched.

I force myself to stand very still as the mó closes the distance between us. His smile is almost lazy as he lifts a hand and runs it down my cheek. I suppress a shiver at how warm his skin is, how human he appears despite being a creature of yīn, of darkness and night and moon.

The mó catches my shudder and inhales, mistaking it for desire. His eyes—deep red like those of all beings from the Kingdom of Night—darken with want.

Two can play at this game. My maiden’s outfit has tricked him into lowering his defenses. He thinks me a powerless mortal girl—not a trained practitioner who is capable of putting up a fight.

As the mó lowers his mouth to my throat, I strike.

There are three key differences between mó and mortals. One slash to the major artery on his neck reveals the first: instead of blood, out pours a substance resembling black smoke. Mó’s ichor is poisonous to mortals, known to cause paralysis and pain. I pivot away, and my second crescent blade—Poison, named for its talisman—bites deep into his neck.

The mó lets out a snarl, an inhuman sound reminding me of just exactly what he—it—really is. As he jerks away, my lips curl in grim satisfaction. It’s too late: poison has begun to spread through his veins.

The third crescent blade I select, which I’ve named Striker, is reinforced with a talisman that gives it extra power as I drive it into the demon’s chest—into the soft spot between the ribs. The second difference: in the place of a mortal’s heart, the mó have cores of dark magic.

The demon’s scream sounds uncannily human, but I grit my teeth and follow him like we are in a twisted dance as he stumbles back, trying to extricate himself from my blade.

My blade has cut through his core. I will my gaze to never stray from his face as his flesh cracks like porcelain, melting away into the smoke and shadows that make up these creatures. I savor the fear in his eyes, the ichor dripping down my blade, and for a moment, I’m ten years old again, crouched in the kitchen with my mother’s prone body in my arms, shielding my baby sister from the sight of the woman who was not a woman drinking my father’s soul. For a moment, the events of that night unwind, but I shake them off and know that I am not a helpless child anymore. I am powerful, and I am the hunter.

I twist Striker one more time, and the blade finishes its work. With a guttural scream, the demon’s body dissolves in a swirl of shadows, a melting face, a pair of glowing red eyes, twisting horns and pointed ears—its true form beneath its beautiful mortal skin, and echoes of the dark energy that once made up its core. In a last gasp, it rushes toward me.

I force myself to remain still. When I blink again, there is only wind in my face, the faint rustle of the willow leaves and wisteria at my back.

The final difference: mortals have souls, but demons don’t. Few of our souls make it to reincarnation, but the mó simply dissolve, leaving nothing of what they once were in this world.

I exhale sharply and examine my hands. My fingers tremble as I clean my blades in the water, careful not to touch the ichor steaming from their steel.

One day, I will be strong enough to no longer be afraid.

A flick of my wrists and Poison, Striker, and Shield are back in my sleeves. The water runs red, soaking me up to my waist and staining my dress, but I can’t help thinking there is a twisted beauty to the sight of the light lotuses drifting white against the crimson. My stomach tightens, though, at the sight of how meager their numbers have become.

I wade through the bloody water and harvest them, counting each one: six precious flowers, six months of my mother’s life. I will brew them tonight and store them—one vial for one month. Harvest them too early or store them for too long, and they lose their effectiveness.

This should be enough to last Mā for the next season.

These trips have come to define my life, as though my existence is meted out one season at a time, one vial of elixir for each cycle of the moon. Just one lotus can replenish the life energy of an injured practitioner, even bring someone back from the brink of death. They are rare. And with the ever-darkening night, they are dying out.

That’s why this is my last trip for the next few months. I can no longer depend on light lotuses to sustain my mother’s life. I need something stronger, something that will mend a half-devoured soul. Something that exists in the fabled realm of immortals, across the border in the Kingdom of Sky.

I cradle the lotuses against my chest. Tonight, though, this is enough.

I tuck them carefully into the concealed pockets in my bodice. Then I turn away from the blood-soaked spring and the dead human body and wade back up to the bank.

My sister will be so upset that I’ve ruined the dress she made me.

—

It’s nearing dawn when I return home. Unlike most other villages, Xī’lín did not fortify its walls in the war against the Kingdom of Night. Instead, my father and the other village practitioners set up magical wards all around the periphery to keep out anything non-mortal.

Nine years later, our village still stands, one of the last in the Central Province. The mó attacked our province first, breaking the wards between realms so they could take down our emperor and his army in the Imperial City. The devastation quickly spread throughout the province as the demon armies fed on us and our soldiers. But I’ve heard rumors that life remains somewhat normal in the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Provinces, especially far out toward the borders of the mortal realm and the Four Seas of the dragon realms. As the months turned to years and the mó remained in the Imperial City, folks in the Central Province began to migrate to the outskirts of the kingdom.

I enter our village through the pái’fāng, feeling the faint swirl of spirit energy as the wards’ magic brushes against my skin. Inside the gate, the rows of clay houses with their gray-tiled roofs and curving eaves sit silent on either side of the dusty road. Once, hawkers would have been setting up their tarps along the streets, ready to receive traders from the Silk Trail that wound through the Kingdom of Rivers.

Now the Trail is gone, as are most of the Xī’lín villagers. I don’t know why Bà didn’t just pack our bags and migrate south toward the sea in the early days. But I’m still here. I tell myself it’s because I’m not strong enough to take my mother and my little sister beyond the protected borders of Xī’lín on a journey through the mó-infested province. Yet there’s another reason, one that I’ve kept to myself. Leaving feels like abandoning the last traces of Bà that remain in this world. Leaving feels like giving up.

My house sits on a corner, with an old plum blossom tree bent over it. My father loved this tree; he named both me and my sister after it. And it saved my life when I was born.

When I step through the rickety bamboo door, everything is as I left it. The lanterns are unlit, the shutters tightly closed, though a pale predawn light seeps through the cracks, revealing the silhouette of my mother. She is curled up on the birchwood bed that doubles as her seat during the daytime.

“Mā, I’m back,” I say softly, striding over and placing a kiss on her forehead. She is perfectly tucked beneath our finest blankets, and I brush a hand over the little chrysanthemum flowers Méi’zi sewed for her. I can see in the semidarkness that my mother’s eyes are open.

I turn away. “Did you sleep well?”

Silence.

“I had a good trip,” I continue, moving to unload my pack. “The flowers are still in bloom: peonies and orchids, osmanthus and cherry blossoms. You’d love them, Mā—and so would Bà. And I saw a giant carp. You used to tell me stories of how they were descended from the dragons of the Four Seas, do you remember?”

No response.

Gingerly, I take out the light lotuses. They’re still glowing softly, as if I hold stars in my palms. I set a kettle of water to boil, then rinse the flowers in the water bucket.

“I came across one.” My words are no longer light and cajoling. “A young male, newly formed.” A flash of his beautiful face, the body with the entrails showing. “I took him down in two strokes, Mā. Poison first, to slow him and distract him—then Striker to his core. Bà would be proud, right?”

Nothing.

I grasp the pestle and mortar and begin to crush the light lotuses. They are meant to be sacred, containing the life energy of stars, and it always feels as though I am committing a sin, taking them and grinding them up.

I no longer care. I would commit a thousand lifetimes of sin if that meant I could protect my family.

I’m careful to scrape every last piece into the kettle to stew. Once the flowers are brewing, I take the bucket of water and sit by my mother.

“Come, let’s get you up,” I murmur. She’s nothing but skin and bones, and I am afraid my coarse hands will snap her as I bring her into a sitting position. Méi’zi usually does this. She is much better at it—at being gentle, at taking care of things—but I wanted to do it today, since this is my last day here.

I dip the towel into the water bucket and turn to Mā. The sun is nearly out, and light filters through our wooden shutters onto my mother’s face. My breath hitches for a moment.

Her eyes are wide open, and they are staring at me. There is no flicker of recognition in them. Wisps of her hair—now completely white—fall into her face, and she makes no motion to brush them aside. Her mouth is slack; a line of drool winds down her chin.

Every so often, there are moments that nearly break me. This is one of them.

It is one thing to die. I miss my father more than life, but that is an old pain, a scar that has grown over even if it will never truly heal.

My mother is a wound in my chest that tears itself open sunrise after sunrise. To see her alive yet not, existing with a half-devoured soul, is a reminder of everything I have lost and everything I might still save.

Of all that has befallen us, it is the cruelty of hope that hurts the most.

I lower my gaze to her swollen hands, reminding myself of how those fingers taught me to sew. My eyes heat, and for a moment, I wish I were back in the spring with that demon.

I swallow hard, pick up my mother’s arm, and begin washing her.

Throughout nine years of searching, I have never come across anything similar to what’s become of my mother. I’ve seen the shriveled corpses mó leave in the wake of their feasting, but I always thought drinking a mortal’s soul meant killing us outright—that is, until my father threw himself at the demon drinking my mother’s soul before the mó had completely finished. Sometimes, I look up at the doorway and still expect to see my father lying there, clutched in the demon’s grasp and bleeding out, his hands clawing the floor as she covered his mouth with hers and drank his life from him.

Most of all, I remember that demon’s face. I remember how she stood gracefully afterward and conversed with me, my father’s blood still staining her teeth. I remember the flash of garnet winking in the sunlight, the hoops of her hair done in imperial fashion, and the rustle of her clothes, spun of the finest samite. I remember the cruel, impossible beauty of her face. And I wonder, for the thousandth time, why she did this. Why she killed only my father, then left me, my sister, and a half-dead mother to live in the debris of her destruction.

She is the reason I am leaving my family today to journey to the Temple of Dawn, the fabled practitioning school in the immortal realm.

“Yīng’ying?”

I look up. As my sister bounds into the living room, the memories I hold in the dark of my mind fall away and it is as if the sun shines again.

When my father named us, he might as well have prophesied our lives. My name, àn’yīng, is an uncommon one, meaning “cherry blossom in the dark.” I was born during the thickest blizzard of the winter. My father said he had been lost in the snow, half-frozen and unable to find his way home, when he saw a flash of red in the dark: miraculously, a single blossom on our tree was in bloom. It was then that he heard my cries, which he said had guided him safely home.

When my sister was born, it was the warmest day of spring. She was named Chūn’méi, after the flowering plum in our yard.

Bà made a mistake in naming me, though. The tree outside our home is a plum blossom, not a cherry blossom. Strange, for Bà never made mistakes. He only made puzzles, and secrets to those puzzles. Secrets that he took to his grave.

“You tricked me again !” Méi’zi exclaims, her mouth puckered as she glares at me. “You promised you wouldn’t leave for the mountains without telling me.” Her gaze travels to the towel in my hands and the bucket at my feet. “And that’s my job.”

Méi’zi’s and my appearances seem to reflect our names, too. Where she takes after Mā, with her large brown eyes, open face, and soft features, I am cut to be more angled, my face narrower and my eyes as black as Bà’s were. Méi’zi was always the one beloved and favored by the villagers; I, much less so.

I catch my sister’s wrist as she swipes for the towel. Her hands are soft, fine, and delicate, made for threading silk through needles and spinning fabrics into dresses. Over the years, she’s grown calluses from the rough work we’ve had to do to survive, but nothing like my own—and I intend to keep it that way, just as I promised our father. Méi’zi was five when the war against the Kingdom of Night broke out, and she does not remember much of the life we lived before nor of the parents we lost.

“I want to do this today,” I tell her, pushing her hand back and returning to scrub at a sore on my mother’s back. “Why don’t you make breakfast?”

Something in my tone makes her look up, her eyes catching the first rays of sunlight like honey. Her hair, long and wavy unlike my own straight locks, falls in her face, which is no longer smiling.

“You’re leaving,” Méi’zi whispers. “You’re leaving today, aren’t you? That’s why you went to the spring last night.”

I study her face and wonder who will brush her hair for her when I am gone. “There’s a convoy passing by the border in two days’ time,” I say. “It’s full of mortal recruits heading to the immortal realm. It’s my safest option—”

“Nothing about a mortal going to an immortal training temple across these lands is safe, ” Méi’zi seethes. Not for the first time, I wonder if my father was wrong in thinking that I was the one who inherited his fighter’s spirit. “You promised me you’d reconsider. You’ve been lying to my face!”

I have, but only so we won’t fight. Nothing will change Méi’zi’s mind about stopping me from going to the Temple of Dawn, and nothing will change my mind about going.

“It’s our only option, Méi’zi,” I shoot back. “The wards Bà and the other village practitioners set up around Xī’lín are old. They’re growing weaker by the day, and sooner or later, a mó is going to break through them. That Higher One from nine years ago—”

I bite my tongue, but it’s too late. We each draw a sharp breath. Speaking of that day is a knife through both our chests.

Méi’zi’s lips thin and her chin juts in an expression that is a jarring reminder of my mother’s when she was still herself. “Bà wanted us to live well,” my sister says, and I don’t miss the tremor in her voice.

“Bà wouldn’t just want me to sit on my hands and do nothing,” I counter. “All our village practitioners are dead.” She flinches, but I refuse to soften the blow. “I need advanced training in the practitioning arts so I can protect us.”

“You could keep training on Bà’s books,” Méi’zi argues. “It’s worked well enough so far.”

“It’s not enough—”

“It’s enough to get by! It’s a dangerous journey to the immortal realm—you could die !”

“With just Bà’s books from mortal practitioners, I’ll never find the cure for Mā.” I press my point home. “That’s not something a regular practitioner can teach me, Méi’zi. The pill of immortality, the one that can heal Mā’s soul? That’s old magic, from the gods and the immortals.”

Méi’zi falls silent, and I know I’ve won. But it certainly doesn’t feel that way when she finally whispers, “I’ve already lost Bà and Mā. I can’t lose you, too, jiě’jie.”

It’s the way she calls me “older sister” that nearly shatters my resolve. “You won’t,” I say, gentler now. “I’ll be back every few months.” It’s a week’s journey to the fabled temple that sits just beyond the borders of the immortal realm, but I don’t say that. I’ll make it work. I have to.

I’m glad the water boils in this moment. It pulls our attention, and I don’t miss the hungry, hopeful look in my sister’s eyes as I walk over and smother the flames in the clay stove.

Méi’zi watches as I take out six vials and pour just enough of the elixir into each one. I stopper each vial, and carefully, so carefully, I store five in the birchwood coolbox that rests in the secret space between our floorboards.

Méi’zi follows me as I take the last vial and approach our mother, who’s sitting in the exact same position I left her, eyes wide and staring into space, jaw hanging slack. I sit by her side, smoothing out her lank, stray hair. “Come on, Mā,” I say softly. “It’s not quite your favorite ginseng chicken soup, but it’ll have to do.”

Méi’zi is silent, tensed up by my side. She does not remember enough of Mā, of the way our mother’s laugh used to brighten a room like the sun, of the way her eyes used to sparkle with mischief when she teased our father.

Now our mother gapes into nothingness. I grasp her chin in my hand. As I lift the vial of elixir to her lips, she blinks. Her eyes fly to me. They bulge, and her mouth widens until I see her gums.

My mother screams. I catch her hand as it flies up to strike me, then fend off the other with my elbow. The vial shakes, but I have mastered this—I hold it steady. I cannot spill a single drop. By my side, Méi’zi latches onto one of Mā’s arms, trying to pin it down.

“Mó,” my mother shrieks. “HELP ME! Mó!”

“Mā.” I squeeze the words out in a gasp. “Please, it’s me, àn’yīng—”

“Mó! HELP ME! ā’ZHàN…ā’ZHàN!”

I grit my teeth against her cries for my father and shove the vial into her mouth. I grasp her jaw and tilt her head back so she has no choice but to swallow.

As soon as I am out of her sight, she softens, sucking on the vial like a babe. Her nails loosen from my flesh, and her hands fall slack. When she has drunk the last drop, I set her head against the wall, dabbing her mouth with my sleeve and propping a pillow against her back. There is color in her cheeks now, some flush returning to her papery skin, but I can’t be sure if it’s the elixir already making its way through her or the result of her earlier exertion.

She’s staring at me now. Somehow, her eyes are more alive, and as I tuck her blankets around her shoulders, I pause, meeting them.

My mother’s lips part. “Y-…Y-Yi…,” she rasps.

Hope roars through me. “Mā?” I whisper, my voice shaking. “Mā—”

But the moment’s gone; the spark in her eyes is fading. Her head lolls back against the wall, gaze blank again.

I draw a deep, long breath. Exhale, my whole body trembling.

Then I finish tucking her in, fluffing the pillow one last time before I turn away.

“Yīng’ying, your arms.” Méi’zi’s voice is barely a whisper. She’s sprung back now that our mother has calmed down and stands by our kitchen table, her arms wrapped around herself. She looks so small and forlorn, younger than her fourteen years of age.

I look down and notice the blood pooling along my elbows. My mother has gouged gashes in my forearms with her nails this time.

“I’m fine.” I force a smile as I take my sister in my arms. She snuggles in quickly, and I feel her tension disappear as I stroke her hair. We stay like this for a while, each drawing strength from the other.

“I’m going to clean up,” I whisper, pressing a kiss into her hair. She smells like flowers, like bedsheets, just as I always remember her.

She nods against me and pulls back, then sets to cleaning up after me.

I stalk over to the bedroom my mother used to share with my father, which Méi’zi and I have taken over. I slide the old bamboo doors shut and cross to the farthest corner of the room. There, I sit, draw my knees to my chest, and hold myself tight, waiting for tears that have long run dry.