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I feel like I’ve stepped through a passage in time, where everything and nothing has changed. My house remains the same: shabby, dark, with simple, cracked furniture and walls in need of repair. The shutters are closed so that only slivers of moonlight illuminate the living room, and my gaze immediately goes to the figure on the wooden bed.

“Mā,” I whisper, rushing to her side. She’s turned to the wall, her blankets drawn over her. Sucking in a breath, I place a hand on her shoulder and tense. I do not know whether to expect screaming or nothing at all.

I get the latter. My mother’s eyes are glassy, fixed on the wall in front of her. She’s dressed in a fresh gown, her hair smells like soap, and there’s a cup of water on the small cabinet by her cot. I lean in and catch a familiar bitter herbal scent. Fú’yí. An ache rises in the back of my throat as I run a hand over my mother’s thinning hair. My neighbor has kept true to her word; she has looked after my family.

But that doesn’t mean she has the ability to save Méi’zi.

I turn to the bedroom, my hands beginning to shake. I’m aware of Yù’chén’s gaze on my mother, but my mind is empty of anything and everything but my little sister.

When I push open the door, I can immediately tell something is off. The room smells of sweat and urine. A vase of chrysanthemums on the bedside cabinet has been knocked over, water dripping onto the floor. Fú’yí must have dropped by within the last day. My sister’s sickness must have worsened after our neighbor’s last visit.

My watering eyes immediately settle on the figure curled up on the mattress in the corner of the room.

“Méi’zi,” I choke as I stumble to her side. My little sister’s eyes are pinched shut, a dribble of vomit on her cheek. Her breathing is faint, her face deathly pale.

I have not felt this helpless in a long time. My blades and my spirit energy, all the preparations I have made these past nine years and the training I have gone through at the Temple of Dawn…I have worked hard for each, layering them on one by one like pieces of armor. I thought I would become powerful enough to protect those I love.

Yet again, fate has proved me wrong.

I spin and stagger to Yù’chén, grasping fistfuls of his shift with both hands. “Help her,” I say, and finally, I know how it feels to beg. “Please. Please save her. I’ll do anything.”

Yù’chén turns his gaze from Méi’zi to me. Something hardens in his face. He grabs hold of my wrists and yanks my hands away from him. “No,” he says.

“I’m begging you—”

“You’ll do it.”

“I can’t!”

“I’ll teach you.” His grip softens as he leads me toward the bed. Fear rises in my chest as I kneel by my sister. She looks so small, so frail—in so much pain, and all I want is to end it quickly.

“Yù’chén,” I whisper. “Don’t play games with me. Not about this.”

“àn’yīng,” he replies, and his eyes flash red as he turns to look at me. “If I were playing games with you, I would be so much crueler. I would make you beg. I’m teaching you now so you don’t have to beg anyone ever again. Including me.”

I stare at him. Again, the strange feeling that we are dancing at the edge of something, that one wrong move and the walls between us will crumble.

Yù’chén takes my hand. I rein in my fear and focus on his voice, on the strokes of his fingers as he presses acupuncture points across Méi’zi’s body, guiding me to find the pools of her life energy, to identify the shadows that seep between them as the corruption of life energy: death energy.

There is so much of it. My thoughts jumble, and I think of asking Yù’chén to take over. I could never live with myself if my sister died at my hands.

“Focus, àn’yīng.” His voice wraps around me in the darkness. “Think of them as tangled threads. You are the guiding needle. Unravel them.”

Again, that metaphor—it works as no other. The world rearranges itself in my mind, the energies becoming live, interweaving threads. Sweat drips down my forehead, but I hold on to my consciousness of Méi’zi’s energies, drawing out the death energies from her blood and bones and guiding them up her throat. I am sewing, that’s what I’m doing: I’m sewing for my sister’s life.

At some point, I feel Yù’chén’s hands lift from mine. He must be watching me, but I am in a trance, the life and death energies running beneath my fingers like silks responding to my touch.

“Good.” Yù’chén’s voice startles me; his fingers wrap around mine, stopping me. I’m focused on her throat; the death energies have pooled there, lodging as bile. “Very good. Normally, one would puncture the place where the death energies have gathered and bleed them out. But in your sister’s state, she cannot stand to lose too much blood.”

I realize I’m shaking from exertion. “Then what do I do?”

His hands tighten momentarily around my fingers, then he shifts mine away and presses his own to her throat. “This part, I’ll do.”

I shift back, leaning against the bed. It’s all I can do to breathe, to still the fatigue that has settled deep into my bones. I’m drenched in sweat.

But I have learned to draw out sickness.

Yù’chén hunches over the bed, his body blocking my view of Méi’zi. I don’t know what he’s doing; I only feel his magic heating the small room, hear Méi’zi make little noises in her sickness. Finally, he rises and turns to me with a nod. I straighten.

“She’ll be fine,” Yù’chén says. His voice is low. “I’ve put her in a deep sleep. Her body needs to heal.”

I hurry forward. My little sister is asleep, but her coloring has changed and her breathing comes easily. I wipe the sweat from her face and smooth her hair. Her cheeks are flushed and her lips red, but it’s no longer the feverish hue I saw in the memory. I don’t understand how the death energies of her sickness could simply have vanished.

I glance at Yù’chén. He’s leaning against the doorframe, eyes shut, one hand gripping the wall as though it pains him to stand. I can’t tell whether it’s the colorless moonlight filtering through our shutters or he’s turned very pale. “What did you do?” I ask.

“I drew out the death energies of the illness and replenished her with some of my life energy.” He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing: “I’ll wait for you outside.”

I clean the room and change the sheets and blankets. Then I wash Méi’zi’s hair and wipe her down with cool water from our well. When the room is aired out and filled with the crisp scent of night, I sit next to my little sister, smoothing out the fresh nightgown I’ve dressed her in. The enchanted sleep Yù’chén put her in is strong; she doesn’t stir.

I give myself another minute to sit in quiet contentment, stroking her face and combing her hair. I found the gloves I gifted her tucked beneath her pillows when I changed the covers; I lay them out by her side and press her fingers to the stitching. “Jiě’jie was here,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll always be here.”

Then I force myself to rise, because I have my mother to take care of before I leave.

Yù’chén is not in the living room when I exit, but the front door is open a crack.

I find him sitting outside, leaning against the house, his eyes closed. A cold autumn wind stirs plum blossom petals from the tree, encircling him in a flurry of deep red and dancing shadows. As I draw closer, I make out dark circles under his eyes that I’ve never seen before, not even when he received the lashings back at the Temple of Dawn. His lips, normally flushed, are nearly white.

I drew out the death energies of the illness and replenished her with some of my life energy. I suddenly wonder if this means he had to absorb them with his own body.

An ache forms deep in my throat, near my heart.

He stirs only when I tap him on the shoulder. His eyes flare crimson, and I have never seen them this unfocused.

“Why are you out here?” I ask. “You’ll catch cold.”

His lips part; he glances at the door, then back at me. His voice is hoarse when he speaks. “I didn’t think you’d want me inside.”

He thought I wouldn’t want a mó in my house.

Even after he saved my sister’s life.

I want you to look at me and see me.

Wordlessly, I extend a hand to him.

Wordlessly, he takes it and follows me back into my house.

—

I suddenly feel self-conscious as we stand in my living room. Yù’chén is tall, and his head nearly scrapes the ceiling as he walks. Nothing about him looks as though it belongs in my small, earthly house, cracked and breaking at the seams, paint peeling and furniture chipped.

He looks around with a cautious curiosity and…a semblance of wonder.

“You can wait in the kitchen,” I tell him. “I need a few minutes to take care of Mā.” Fú’yí has taken good care of my family in my absence: my mother’s nails are trimmed, her hair is freshly washed, and her nightgown still smells of soap. But I won’t leave without caring for my mother. I don’t know the next time I’ll get to do this.

Yù’chén folds himself into a tiny kitchen chair and leans on the counter; even this doesn’t rob him of his unnatural grace. I don’t miss how his eyes roam our house, taking in the details, the spiderwebs in the corner, the shutters that have broken in storms and I’ve attempted to mend with oiled paper of my own making.

“It’s nothing like the Kingdom of Sky,” I say as I set a bucket of fresh well water next to my mother’s bed. I’m curt, if only because I’m trying to preserve my dignity. “Not much to see.”

“No,” he says. “It’s…real.”

Real. I try to decide how I feel about that word as I dip an old towel into the bucket to wet it.

“I’ve not been in many mortal homes,” he continues.

I wring out the towel and look sharply at him. “Were you raised in the Kingdom of Night?” There they are again, those threads of caution tugging at me, tightening. Being with him is like walking a never-ending cliff’s edge. I never know when I will fall.

“No,” Yù’chén says. “I was born in this kingdom. My father was mortal.”

Was.

He’s picked up a little teacup I made out of the clay mud I found down at the stream. I etched oceans and dragons into it with my needle. “My mother wished for me to be raised in the ways of the mortals, so I spent time with him,” he continues, studying the little engravings. “Not a lot, and always in secret, stolen moments, because my mother was his mistress. When he found out what she was—and what I was—he tried to have us killed. My mother fought him off, and we escaped.”

I process this as I gently guide Mā into a seated position. She leans against the wall, staring at a blank space somewhere between the front door and the window shutter. It’s better this way. I don’t want her to see me, or Yù’chén, in case she starts screaming again. Her cheeks are hollowing, I notice as I wipe sweat from her skin. Her bones are brittle.

She is dying.

“àn’yīng,” Yù’chén says quietly. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

I focus on cleaning her face, her arms, each of her long, slender fingers, which are now swollen from lying on her back all day. I remember how nimble and clever they once were; how they embroidered chrysanthemums and orchids, mountains and rivers and oceans that made up my world when I was small. I remember her quick smile, the warmth of her eyes and the ring of her laughter, all of which she passed on to Méi’zi.

My eyes sting, and I reach for my mother’s other arm. I try to keep my voice steady as I reply, “There’s nothing for you to be sorry for. It’s not like you drank half her soul and killed my father.”

He’s silent for a moment. His tone is low when he says, “I can understand why you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” I pause, tasting the words on my tongue, then I reconsider, moving to wipe down my mother’s legs and feet. “I don’t hate…all of you. I hate half of what you are. But…” I draw a short breath. “I don’t hate who you are.”

A heavy pause stretches between us, and I feel Yù’chén’s gaze burning into my back. I don’t know what the point of all this is—whatever we have between us is a madness that will lead nowhere. And because the certainty of that settles like an anchor in my heart, I speak. One confession for one of his.

“My mother is the reason I’m doing the trials.” I drop the washcloth into the bucket of water, then pick up the wooden comb to tend to my mother’s hair. It’s her favorite, one her mother handed down to her, which she used to comb my sister’s and my hair. I take my mother’s thinning white locks and run the comb down them. “I learned a few years ago that the pill of immortality could heal her soul. When I win”—Iemphasize the word when —“I don’t plan to take it. I plan to give it to her.”

I set the comb aside and press my hand to Mā’s neck as I guide her back into her nest of pillows and blankets. She doesn’t move; only the rise and fall of her chest indicates that she is alive at all.

I press a kiss to her cheek. Her skin is papery, as if it will tear at the slightest touch.

Then I rise and turn to my guest.

Yù’chén hasn’t shifted his gaze. Something tightens in my chest at the way he looks at me: his face is drawn and tired, but his eyes are as dark as obsidian. He sits in a straight, nearly meditative pose, hands on his knees. I don’t miss the red glow to his irises as he draws on his demonic magic to heal himself.

I look away as I rinse out the dirty towel and bring in a bucket of fresh spring water.

“Forgive my manners,” I say. “You must be tired from helping my sister. Let me make you a cup of tea.”

“I’m fine.”

“I insist,” I reply firmly and set the kettle to boil. I busy myself with scooping out the dried dandelion leaves we always keep in excess. They were once beloved tea leaves, but now they grow in clumps of weeds all around our village. Not much use for tea when you can barely fill your belly.

I look around for a decent mug, and I realize Yù’chén is still holding on to the little clay cup I made. His thumb traces circles over the childish engravings of dragons and ocean waves I carved a lifetime ago. For some reason, my neck warms at the way he’s looking at it, a faint smile playing about his lips.

I clear my throat and extend a hand. “Pass me the cup.”

Yù’chén stands, the scrape of his chair loud in the silence. He approaches, but instead of giving me the cup, he takes my hand and pulls me up. He takes the towel I’ve set to dry by my cracked old kitchen cabinet. Without a word, he lowers it to my cheek.

I close my eyes and suppress a shudder as he traces it across my skin, one cheek at a time, down to my chin and then the dip of my bottom lip. I think of that day after I fought áo’yīn, of how gentle Yù’chén’s hands were as he placed his cloak over my shoulders. I also remember how ruthless those same hands were as he fought Yán’lù. How those hands have the power to tear my heart from my chest.

But I don’t move as his fingers dab at my throat, the curves of my neck leading to my collarbone and my chest.

I open my eyes. The moonlight limns his lashes and his hair, cuts his face into shadows and light. It brings out the red hue of his irises, like blood pooled in ink. It illuminates his darkened veins, coursing with his ichor and zigzagging through his skin. It’s a sight I might flinch at, only now I focus on the familiar lines of his face. He looks exhausted, and it is as though any semblance of pretense has gone. The expression on his face, the way he looks at me, threatens to crack the shield over my own heart.

I shrink back slightly. “You look tired from the death energy you took from my sister.”

“Mm.” His voice is a low rumble.

“Take some of my life energy,” I say. He pauses and cuts me a look, his hand with the towel on the back of my neck. The way he stares at me makes me add, “I don’t want to owe you.”

Yù’chén is silent for several heartbeats. Then, slowly, he presses a hand to my cheek and lifts my face. He searches my eyes. “I don’t want your life energy,” he says before he lowers his face to mine. Pauses, just before our lips touch. For some reason, I remember his words about my house. Real, he called it. It’s…real.

I lean forward.

Yù’chén’s gaze flickers up, to the open door behind us. He stiffens. “àn’yīng—”

That’s when my mother starts screaming.