Page 11

11

I chose to train you for a reason, my father wrote.

I do my best to remember that as I fail practice after practice after practice.

If I thought the Temple of Dawn beautiful in the dusk, it is even more so during the day. The training halls are all open-air, upheld by columns of marble carved with immortals dancing amidst flowering trees, phoenixes, dragons, and deer. The sun pours in through the gauze drapes, lending a golden shimmer to everything. Outside, beyond the halls and gardens and ponds, white clouds drift into eternal blue skies. Once in a while, I hear the trill of distant laughter, glimpse immortals soaring across the sky, borne on wisps of cloud or the wings of great cranes.

It’s perfect. It’s everything we don’t have in the mortal realm.

For some reason, Fú’yí’s wrinkled old face comes to me, her expression fierce. You let those bastards in the Kingdom of Sky know. You let them know we are still here. You let them know we are still alive.

The immortals are powerful—perhaps more so than the mó. And clearly, if they’re holding this tournament every year, they know there are still mortals out there fighting for survival.

Why haven’t they tried to help us?

“Focus, àn’yīng!”

I blink and find Lì’líng’s large amber eyes peering at me. “I am,” I say.

“You’ve sunk into the pond!” she exclaims, pointing.

I look down to see that I’m up to my knees in water.

Lì’líng has decided to adopt me into her group, and I can’t say that I’m anything but grateful. We haven’t spoken of the incident with áo’yīn, or how she saved my life on Heavens’ Gates, but that cements my trust in her. She could have killed me back when I was weak from fighting áo’yīn, or when I was about to be attacked by Yán’lù’s crony at Heavens’ Gates.

But she didn’t. Instead, she’s spending time training me in qīng’gōng.

I cast an envious glance at where the shapeshifter Fán’xuān, in the form of a giant carp, circles just beneath the surface of the water. I know that most of the candidates here have likely had more training resources than I. The Second Trial could start at any moment, and being able to walk on water could save my life.

But try as I might, something isn’t working.

We’re in the Celestial Gardens today, practicing by a stream that winds to the very edge of the grounds before plunging off into the skies. Fán’xuān seems to be enjoying himself, swimming downstream and plunging off the edge of the waterfall before resurfacing as an enormous crane. Tán’mù still looks as though she hasn’t slept, though her throwing stars meet every single target.

Most of the other candidates give us a wide berth; no one wants to associate with a group of yāo’jīng. I don’t blame them; we all grew up on the same stories of how the yāo’jīng steal mortal babies from their cradles and drink their blood.

But I discover that these stories are just that. Lì’líng shows a fondness for chicken dishes, Fán’xuān will pour entire platters of food down his throat, and though I’m not sure what Tán’mù is, the one thing that unites them all…is how human they are. And how easily I interact with them. So far, they’ve been careful not to reveal much of their backstories to me, and I’m fine with that. We’re not here to become friends, after all.

“Try it again,” Lì’líng says encouragingly. In the daytime, she looks bright-eyed and energized, her cheeks round and her lips as red as cherries and prone to laughter. She crouches by a growth of orchids, their yellow petals bright against her white robes. She has twined a flower into her hair, and I can’t help but think of how lovely it looks with her amber eyes. “Remember, find the rhythm of the water’s spirit energy, which will always be moving, and point yours so that it flows in the opposite—” She pauses, her nose twitching in the exact manner of a small fox. “Is that soy chicken?”

I bite down a smile as I look back at the water. The currents flow so fast, it seems impossible to pinpoint any form of energy and be able to…walk on the surface. There’s a reason the practitioners in the storybooks take entire lifetimes to cultivate these types of abilities.

I draw a deep breath, focusing in on the energies flowing in the water. It is complete chaos, attempting to catch any of them; they slip in and out of my grasp, a tumultuous mess.

I summon what I can of my spirit energy, channeling it to the soles of my feet. I take a step forward—and plunge face-first into the water.

I hear snickering around me when I come up for air, coughing and spitting water.

“Walk it off, walk it off,” Tán’mù says. She glances at Lì’líng, who looks crestfallen. By her side, the yellow orchids seem to droop their heads. “Maybe we try archery instead.”

I catch movement across the clearing. Beneath a copse of golden ginkgos is a familiar figure. Watching me.

Yù’chén covers his mouth with a hand, but I can see the traces of laughter on his face. He’s in his crimson cloak, cinched at the waist for easier movement. His sword is strapped to his hip, and on his other shoulder hangs a siyah-horn bow.

He straightens and tips his chin at me, smirking as though to say, Watch me.

Effortlessly, he takes off at a run and leaps into the air, too high, too light, and too graceful. His cloak trails bright red, stirring petals into the air. Between one blink and another, his bow is in his hand and his arrow nocked. He takes aim and fires—one, two, three times.

He alights before the wooden target. Three perfect bull’s-eyes. The last arrow splits the first.

Yù’chén dips into a bow as the crowd watching breaks into scattered applause. When he rises, he catches my gaze and arches an eyebrow.

I fist Striker and turn away. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a group of girls approach him.

My thoughts have drifted to him more often than I would’ve liked over the past few days: I’m filled with a gnawing dread that I’ve made the wrong choice by not reporting him to the immortals. But reporting him could endanger my own standing in the trials.

I can’t think of protecting kingdoms when I can’t even save my own mother.

At night, though my body is sore and my every last nerve is fried from training, I work on a secret of mine.

I’m sewing a pair of gloves for Méi’zi. It’s a way we communicated with each other growing up: leaving little gifts under each other’s pillows, from socks to scarves to hats. When our kingdom fell and I gave up my needles for my blades, Méi’zi continued this tradition. Throughout the years, her gifts have become more and more elaborate, her stitches coming in neater and tighter and her patterns blooming in ways I could never have imagined. My sister makes magic when she sews.

But there is something to the sewing kit I was gifted that feels like magic, too. I have studied the threads beneath the lantern light, marveling at the way they seemed to vanish at certain angles. They are finer than any silks I’ve encountered in the mortal realm, and the way they blend into fabric makes me suspect that they were not made by human hands. In the myths and journals of mortal practitioners, there is a type of cloth woven by the song of the fish-tailed sea spirits in the ocean’s depths. The fabric is said to ripple like water, and clothes spun of sea silk are meant to feel like clouds.

The only person in the realms who knows my love for sewing is my guardian in the jade. Though I’d hoped for the sewing kit to be a gift from them—a secret signal of sorts between us—my pendant has remained silent since my arrival.

My gloves are almost complete. My skills are rusty, but I’ve sewn a golden-roofed palace on clouds and a tiny figurine in a white dress: me. I thought of giving embroidered-me a wide smile to show my victory but decided to go with a scowl. More realistic that way.

Méi’zi will recognize my stitches and the message within: that I’ve reached the Kingdom of Sky safely.

Now I just need to figure out a way to send it to her. I know a talisman—similar to the one on Heart—that practitioners use on messenger doves to help them reach the intended recipient. The problem is, no matter how skilled a messenger dove, it can’t cross realms or wards.

No one may enter, and no one may leave. I’ve thought through the Eight Immortals’ warning, and I wonder if there is a loophole. No one does not mean nothing. If an animal or inanimate object can cross the wards, can’t I conjure a talisman to guide the gloves to Méi’zi?

I decide to test this theory at the end of the week.

I wait until the others are asleep. It’s a waning moon, the night perfectly cloaked in clouds when I slip out of my chambers. The courtyard dances with shadows and the rustle of wind that howls mournfully through the mountains beyond this temple.

I make sure the protective talismans I’ve set on my chambers are undisturbed as I slide the door shut behind me.

A silhouette lunges at me from behind a willow, but I’ve prepared for this.

I lash out with Poison, feel the satisfying push of resistance as my trusty blade bites into flesh. There’s a hiss of pain, and my assailant stumbles, his hand over the gash in his chest.

No slaughter on temple grounds, the Precepts state. That doesn’t mean I can’t wound.

My assailant looks up and glares at me, blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth. In the dim moonlight filtering out from behind clouds, I make out his face: one of Yán’lù’s cronies.

Alarm bells go off in my head as I turn to another approaching figure and strike with my other hand. Fleet draws blood from the second attacker, but then a third lunges at me from behind, and I don’t reach him in time.

My shout is cut off by a meaty hand clamping over my mouth. I spin Poison and Fleet and jab them backward, yet a fourth pair of hands catches them in a firm grip; a fifth person grabs my legs, lifting me bodily from the ground. There’s a jab to my wrists, and my crescent blades drop to the ground in two light clinks.

“He said to meet by the waterfall,” hisses the assailant holding my arms.

I can’t twist out of their grasp, but I don’t stop struggling as they carry me through the moongate and past the bridge to the Celestial Gardens. We’re heading for the back of the gardens, where the forest grows thick and wild. By now, there’s an edge of panic to my anger. They’re taking me far from the Clear Skies Pavilion, from the dorms and the training temples, to a place where no one can hear me scream.

Willows and dove trees obscure the sky. Soon, I hear the rush of the waterfall that plunges from the edge of the temple grounds to the abyss and the ocean of another realm far, far below.

My assailants drop me roughly to the ground and pin me there, twisting my wrists just enough to hurt. Someone’s palm covers the lower half of my face. From my vantage point, I see only long grasses and the canopy, smell wet loam and the faint fragrance of flowers.

Yán’lù’s face appears. I can make out only the glint of his teeth as he smiles in a way that sends cold through my veins.

“Hand off her mouth,” he orders. “I want to hear her scream.”

The pressure on my face loosens. Then Yán’lù backhands me across my cheek so hard that I see stars, hear a sharp, high-pitched ringing in my ears. When the world settles again, I taste blood on my tongue.

I spit on the grass. “You can’t kill me.” My voice is barely a croak. “No slaughter on temple grounds. Precepts.”

“Oh, I’m well aware,” Yán’lù says. His voice is dangerously soft. “But there are so many ways I can hurt you without killing you.”

So he’s figured out the loophole to this particular precept, too.

My heart hammers, but I force myself to hold very still. If I show fear, I lose. I test my limbs, but there are five of his lackeys pinning me down. The waterfall pounds in my ears; the river is so close to me, I can feel its spray on my skin.

“Unless.” Yán’lù crouches by my side. He bends to my ear, and I shiver as I feel his breath against my cheeks. “Unless, my flower, you tell me the secret you hold.”

I freeze. What secret could Yán’lù want from me? “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, but even as I speak, I think of my father, of the note in the handkerchief. The truth to everything is at the Temple of Dawn. And I think of Yù’chén, of the dark secret he hides that only I know.

Yán’lù’s eyes take on a manic gleam. “In that case, I think we should wash the blood from her lovely, lovely face,” he says. “Clean her up a little.”

I barely have time to draw a breath as I’m lifted and dunked backward into the river. It’s no use; the currents buffet me relentlessly, and the air immediately burbles from my lips. Water rushes up my nose and fills my mouth, and it is agony. I splutter, my body convulses, my lungs are on fire, and I think I will die—

—and I’m dragged up. I cough out water, my body heaving in great, racking gasps. But as Yán’lù’s face appears close to mine again, I lift my chin and meet his gaze. My teeth are chattering so hard that I know he can hear it, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of breaking.

I will not be prey.

“Having fun?” he asks. “We can stop, if you beg.”

I swallow but keep my lips sealed. No slaughter on temple grounds. They can’t kill me. I’ll live. But my heart and the terror pulsing through my veins scream otherwise.

“No?” Yán’lù says. “Let’s clean out your mouth.”

Water gags me again, and when I surface, I’m on the verge of begging. My entire body trembles. There’s the cold press of a knife against my cheek, and I feel my skin split open, feel warmth down my face.

“Tell me your secret,” Yán’lù snarls. “Who’s watching over you?”

I think of the immortal guard whose face I dreamt in the ocean that day, who saved me from Yán’lù our first night here. But there is another answer to his question: the reason I’m alive, the one who has watched over me all these years.

My guardian in the jade.

My dearest, oldest secret, passed to me from my father.

I look up at Yán’lù. Then I spit in his face.

For a moment, he’s so frozen in his shock and fury that it might have been funny. But when his hand whips across my cheek, I see white and feel my face slam into the soil.

When feeling returns to me, I’m lying on the grass, head spinning, blood pooling in my mouth. Yán’lù’s knife is pressed to my collar. He drags it onto my chest, then down the plane of my stomach. Lower. “I’m going to humiliate you,” he snarls, and there is a mad glee to his words. “I’m going to humiliate you until you wish you’d drowned in the ocean that day.”

He lifts his knife, and that’s when the darkness behind him moves. Between one blink and the next, Yán’lù’s dagger spins out of his fingers…and simply vanishes.

“Talk to me again about humiliation, ” comes a deep, familiar voice.

There’s a sickening crack, followed by a shout, and suddenly Yán’lù is sprawled on the ground, his leg twisted at an odd angle.

The figure that steps from the shadows is utterly terrifying and utterly beautiful—a combination I did not know could coexist until I set my gaze upon him in this very moment.

In the moonlight, Yù’chén’s deep crimson cloak takes on the color of blood. He hasn’t drawn any weapons, but there is something cold and completely lethal to his gaze and his gait, the way he falls very still when his eyes land on the five men pinning me down. The air around him seems to crackle, and I realize it’s his spirit energy rolling off him in thunderous waves.

He’s furious.

“If I were you,” he says, “I would let her go.”

The biggest and bravest of Yán’lù’s cronies opens his mouth to talk back. What comes out instead is a scream.

Something thuds to the grass. I catch sight of fingers and nails, and my stomach turns.

Whimpering, the candidate brings his bloodied stump of an arm to the dim moonlight. “Y-y-you cut off my hand,” he stammers, and then his voice rises to a scream. “You cut off my hand!”

“Leave any fingerprints on her skin, and it’ll be all your hands as well as the softest, smallest parts of your bodies,” Yù’chén replies, his tone still low. His sword is at his side, a dark liquid staining its steel. “If I were you, I’d grab your leader and go before that happens.”

The others flinch away from me as if I’ve burned them. They scramble, hauling Yán’lù up by his armpits and dragging him away from us. The one who’s lost his hand stumbles after them, keening.

“Wait,” Yù’chén says.

They obey, freezing like rabbits.

Yù’chén half turns to them. Half his face is in shadow. “Touch her again—if I even get a whiff of you near her—you’re all dead. I don’t care what the Precepts dictate. I will kill you. And I will make it hurt like nothing you’ve felt before.”

Yán’lù’s lackeys haul him away, fleeing like dogs with their tails between their legs.

Yù’chén turns to me. He lays his sword down on the grass and, with his hands raised, approaches. I flinch as he crouches by my side. He says nothing, only rakes a gaze down my body. Fury pulses from him in waves.

“You’re bleeding.” His voice is harsh, but softer now than moments ago. He extends a hand, then hesitates, his fingers curling an inch from my skin. “May I?”

I don’t have the energy to resist. In my silence, he touches a finger to my jaw and lifts my face. I see the tightening of his lips as he takes in the cut Yán’lù opened on my cheek.

“I can heal it,” he says. “Do you want me to?”

Yes. No. I don’t know anymore. Of all the candidates here, he is the most dangerous. I am meant to revile him. But the fight leaves me when his fingers slide across my face and his palm comes to rest against my cheek.

I close my eyes and nod. The warmth of his skin and spirit energy flow into me, and my muscles relax. His other hand is on my shoulder, supporting me, injecting heat into my clothes and my body, drying the water from the river. It feels so good.

“àn’yīng. àn’yīng, don’t fall asleep.” His voice pulls me from the ocean of blackness. I’m slumped against him, my chin tucked against the crook of his neck, my body shielded from the wind by his. “You’re in shock.”

His thumb traces circles against my cheek; his other hand is warm against the small of my back. I realize it’s no longer his spirit energy but his demonic magic that’s spreading through my veins, hot and slow and delicious in a way that makes me feel good for all the wrong reasons. My head is foggy, as though I’ve drunk an entire carafe of plum wine, but between the rising heat in my belly and the strange desire closing my throat, I remember a fact about the mó: how their dark magic is designed to lure mortals to them, to poison our minds like a drug and draw us to them even as they devour us. It’s sickening, but in this moment, I can’t seem to remember why.

I tip my head back and press my palm to his cheek, turning it to mine.

His eyes glow red with his magic, and a voice in the back of my mind tells me I should be afraid, tells me I should run, but I can only think of the crimson petals of the scorpion lily, the flower foretelling tragedy.

My fingers trail lower, brushing the soft curves of his lips, tracing the hard angles to his jaw. He goes very still at my touch, his lashes casting crescents against his cheeks, breaths warm against my skin.

“Is this your true form?” I barely even know what I’m saying, but the question is one that’s been in the back of my mind. Would a half-mó, half-mortal take on the full form of a human? Or does he hide a monstrous thing beneath all this beauty?

Yù’chén’s jaw tenses. “Stop,” he says, and pulls his face from my grasp.

I feel cold, and I realize he’s shut off his dark magic. He continues to hold me, though it’s only to stop me from falling.

I blink, then push away from him. Blood rushes to my face. His magic—dark, demonic magic—is affecting me in ways that should disgust me.

Yet beneath that is the realization that this man has saved my life once more.

And then it occurs to me: Who’s watching over you? Yán’lù has asked me, over and over again.

“It’s you,” I whisper. “You’re the one Yán’lù’s looking for.”

Yù’chén narrows his eyes. “Why would he be looking for me?”

Because you’re the one who keeps helping me, I think, and my hands curl into fists. “Why did you help me again?”

He’s silent.

“I told you,” I continue. “I want nothing to do with you.”

Yù’chén angles his face away from me. Still, he says nothing.

I shut my eyes briefly and decide to give him a truth. “I don’t want to owe you.”

Yù’chén’s eyes are fixed on the grass between us, littered with fragments of moonlight like shards of broken porcelain. When he lifts his head again, his expression is casual, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips, as though we were simply having a friendly discussion. “Why were you outside by yourself?”

I hesitate, but I can’t think of any reason not to tell him the truth. “I wanted to send my sister something,” I reply. “I needed to test whether I could get something through the Kingdom of Sky wards to the mortal realms.”

He huffs a laugh, then shakes his head with a sort of helplessness. After a beat, he says, “Let me help you.”

I want to say no. I should say no.

But I’m feeling a little better, at least strong enough to move around. I’m warm and dry, and honestly, the last thing I want is to return to my chambers and feel Yán’lù’s cronies’ hands on me in the dark, remember the feeling of drowning.

If there’s anything Yán’lù has taught me, it’s that there are some mortals capable of greater cruelty than mó.

“All right,” I say.