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A woman stands at our doorway, peering in. She wears a dirty purple robe that looks as if it were made for a child. In the darkness, her stance is predatory, shoulders hitched and arms spread, with that unnatural stillness not seen in mortals. Shadows wreathe her face, yet as she steps forward, a sliver of moonlight catches her ethereal beauty. Lips too full; eyes too large; hair that spills like ink onto a firm, willowy body. There is a detached curiosity to her face, one that instantly gives her away—if the other signs hadn’t.

Mó.

She’s absolutely still but for her head, moving as she takes in the room. Her tongue snakes out, and she licks her lips when she spots me. “Delicious,” she murmurs, and her voice shifts to song: “Come to me!”

I grit my teeth as my feet move of their own accord, responding to the magic in her command. I reach for my crescent blades, and Yù’chén steps in front of me. He doesn’t use his power to command me to stop, only advances with me, step by step, as I raise my weapons.

“Leave.” His voice is a low snarl.

The mó pauses, her gaze pulling to him. She sniffs the air. “Mortal… and mó,” she rasps, cocking her head. “I’ve never met one like you.” Her eyes flash. “Which side do you take after, hmm? Do you desire the mortal girl, you poor thing? Do you want her—body, heart, and soul?”

Yù’chén’s jaw tenses.

“Come. You can share, lovely.”

“Get out,” he growls.

Her expression twists at last, turning her into something feral and otherworldly. Demonic. “I’ve traveled far, and I’m starving, ” the mó snarls, “and lest you wish me to eat you, too, halfling, then get out of my way.”

My blades are out, ready to fight, but it’s Yù’chén who moves first. Faster than I can blink, faster than humanly possible, he leaps at the mó.

She’s even quicker. With a shriek of laughter, she dances around him, then she’s close, too close, to my mother. “Oh, this one’s spoilt,” she simpers, then that simper turns to a scream as one of my blades finds her. Yù’chén’s attack has thrown off the magic of the original command she gave me; her compulsion slips from me, and I’m free to move.

I barely scratch her. She’s too quick for me, and as I pull away, positioning myself between her and Mā, a cloud of ichor spills from her side like smoke, hissing against my blade.

With the few mó I have encountered in my life, I have used tricks to fight them. Get them to underestimate me, think me a defenseless mortal, and strike when they’re most vulnerable.

I don’t have that advantage here, which means I have no advantage at all. And this one isn’t new to the mortal realm; she’s experienced. She doesn’t strike me as refined enough to be a Higher One—though I don’t know anything about rankings and status in the realm of mó, nor how they classify themselves.

A burning pain pierces my neck. I cry out as the world tilts and my back slams into the floor with the mó’s weight on me. She is a tangle of hair and purple dress, hands and legs pinning me down—

Then she’s lifted bodily into the air, my blood dripping down her chin, her teeth sharpened to terrifying points, her eyes large and ravenous. Yù’chén’s arms are around her waist; he drags her back toward the door, and I hear him shouting something at me, but there’s a ringing in my ears and sharp pains shooting up my head—

Wards, he’s saying. Put the wards up again.

I push myself onto my elbows, shaking my head to clear it. My mother’s whimpers filter through the white noise, and the awareness that real harm is just several steps away from her and Méi’zi is what spurs me into motion again.

I crawl forward and trace a protective talisman on our floorboards. Spirit energy shimmers to life, pulling from my blood and knitting into a ward against the mó. Yù’chén is wrestling with her at the door; I crawl forward as close as I can to the two of them and trace another talisman.

The mó hisses as the ward flares up and comes into contact with one of her elbows. She staggers back, out the door, where she and Yù’chén slam into the grass beneath our plum blossom tree.

I drag myself to the threshold of my sliding doors. I lift trembling fingers and draw the final talisman. There’s a ripple in the air as the ward springs up, whole and complete, and my house is protected once again.

I turn to Mā. She’s shivering, her eyes staring blankly at the wall again, her body twitching every once in a while. A part of her, I realize, remembers. Even if she is not conscious, her body and—I want to believe, need to believe—part of her soul knows when there is danger.

Swiftly, I close her eyes and lay her back in her blankets, where she continues to tremble. Then I run into Méi’zi’s room and scrawl talismans on every wall. My little sister is still asleep, her breathing steady, though I see her eyes rolling in unquiet dreams.

That’s when I hear Yù’chén cry out.

I turn and sprint toward the front of the house, Fleet and Shadow in my hands. What I see through the door sends a fresh wave of horror through me.

The mó has Yù’chén pinned to the ground. She straddles him, her face bent to his neck in what appears to be an intimate pose—but when he jerks against her, I see dark, glistening liquid drip down her chin and his neck.

She’s drinking his blood.

For a moment I’m frozen, shock coursing through me at the incongruence of this scene. I have always thought of Yù’chén as the demon, the predator, the one who would be drinking the blood of mortals from their bodies…yet to see him in a position I had attributed only to myself, the prey, robs me of my reality and reverses my world.

Halfling. To me, he is predator and power, beauty and infallibility.

To them, he is prey. Weakness and imperfection, an abomination never meant for these realms.

He fights her with every ounce of his strength, but she easily overpowers him. With a sickening smile, she plunges knife-sharp nails into his stomach and then rips her hand from his torso.

Yù’chén makes a sound I never want to hear again. The mó’s smile grows. As she trails her tongue up her forearm and her palm, licking off Yù’chén’s blood.

Then she opens her mouth so that it splits her lovely face in half and plunges too many rows of razor-sharp teeth into his stomach.

Yù’chén screams; the mó laughs, and this is what gives me my opening.

I kick off in a burst of spirit energy that propels me so high, I’m somersaulting directly over her back.

This time, when I bring my arm down, Fleet finds its target. I feel the sickening crunch of bones and sinew and soft tissue, hear the mó gurgle from where she gorges on Yù’chén’s blood and flesh. Smoky ichor leaks from her skin, but I’m not done. I pull out Striker and ram it into her chest.

The creature screams as her core shatters with the force of my blow. Her lovely face is no longer lovely but contorted, her mouth cutting from ear to ear to reveal pointed teeth, reddened with blood, and a tongue forked like a reptile’s. I jerk back to avoid the ichor streaming from her, but I don’t look away as she melts into smoke and shadows. The last to go are those teeth and her red, furious eyes.

Then there’s nothing but the night breeze, the moonlight, and the whisper of trees and grass all around us.

My mind hasn’t stopped spinning. A mó broke through our borders. I need to stay, need to fix the wards around our village and around my house. But that’ll take more time than I have.

There’s a soft noise next to me. Yù’chén.

I turn to him, heart in my throat. “Yù’chén—”

But he’s on the ground, holding his face in his hands, and twists away from me. “Don’t,” he rasps. “Don’t come near me—”

“What are you talking about?” I reach for him. “You’re injured—let me help you—”

“Don’t look at me!” he yells, and I start back, because I think I see the reason why.

Between his fingers comes the glint of teeth sharpened to points. Where his skin should be, red-and-black scales bloom on his cheek. He’s crouched over, hands grown over with the same scales. His shoulders shake.

“Please,” he says, more quietly, his voice muffled by his hands. “Don’t come near me.”

I know that all mó wear the faces of mortals over their true, monstrous forms and that their beauty takes energy to maintain. I’ve seen the darkened veins over Yù’chén’s skin when he has overexerted himself. But this—this is new.

I stare at the red-and-black scales covering the skin of his hand. “Is this”—I can’t hide the tremor in my voice—“is this your true form?”

His silence is confirmation enough.

The seconds pass. Blood drips from the wound in his stomach. It pools on the ground with his cloak, fanning out like the petals of a crimson flower around him. His chest hitches with each labored breath.

If I don’t do something, he’ll die.

I take out Heart. A single slice, and blood flows from my wrist. I hoist myself behind Yù’chén and, careful not to turn his way, hold my arm out to him. “Drink, or my life energies will bleed out anyway.”

For a few heartbeats, he doesn’t move. But then I hear him shift and come up behind me, feel the rough scales of his hands clasp around my forearm, the heat of his lips as he presses them to my skin. I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to think of what I’m doing, of how I’m giving myself and my life energy to the very kind of being I’ve sworn I will kill.

Half of one.

Too mortal for the mó. Too demonic for the mortals. It’s then that I understand, fully understand, Yù’chén’s plea: I want you to stop looking at me as if you’re afraid, or suspicious, or disgusted. As if you’re thinking of what I am instead of who I am.

I look at him and see a demon, an enemy pretending to be human. But when the mó looked at him, she saw him as something beneath, something frail and breakable and mortal. Something to be used. He’s unbelievably powerful in my eyes, but to the mó, he is no more than a plaything. Prey, just like me. His entire life, he has never been enough for either side.

At some point, he’s stopped drinking. His fingers are warm, smooth, soft as they stroke over the wound on my wrist…and when I look down, I see skin instead of scales. I follow the line of his arm up to his bare neck and then the sharp edge of his jaw, and when he doesn’t protest, I lift my gaze to his face.

He’s breathing hard, veins still carving dark streaks across his face, a trace of my blood on his lips. Sweat glistens along his brow and jaw; his hair, wild and mussed, hangs over his downcast eyes.

I press my palm to his cheek. “It’s all right,” I say softly. “I’m still here.”

He says nothing as he reaches out and draws me tightly against him. Only holds me, as if he never intends to let go. His hand comes up to cradle the back of my head. His chest rises and falls against mine, and I’m acutely aware of how my heart pounds against my chest, drumming out the confusion of feelings stirring inside me. Of how he must feel it, too.

“I…” He swallows and I feel the movement of his throat. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.” And then, quieter: “I don’t want to disgust you.”

I remember, so well, the cruel words I’ve cast at him.

I want to take them back. I want to apologize for every hurtful thing I’ve said to him. I owe him that and so much more, after how he saved my life and the lives of my family.

“You don’t,” I say. “You don’t disgust me.”

He tenses. His muscles are so tight, I can almost feel him shaking.

“Yù’chén,” I whisper, “we should go.”

He’s silent for so long that at first I think he hasn’t heard me. Then he says, a breath against my cheek, “I know.” But his fingers thread through my hair and my long white ribbon, cradling the back of my head. Holding me closer.

The stars wink overhead. A breeze stirs the trees. And on the horizon, a seam of light appears.

There’s a rustle of feathers next to us, and I look up to see his crane alight.

Yù’chén draws back. His shirt is shredded, revealing the black veins carrying his dark magic to his wound. It still looks terrible, but the bleeding has stopped.

“My crane will take us back,” he says. He can barely stand, so I sling his arm over my shoulders and hoist him onto the shadowcrane. I climb on behind him. The shadowcrane’s wings extend until they shroud half the starlit night. They wrap around me, and feathers smoother than silk, airy and liquid at once, slide beneath my fingers.

I glance back at my house one last time.

I hold on to Yù’chén tightly as we are borne into the skies on the wingbeat of a great, demonic crane. There must be enchantments at play, for the wind has taken on the scent of flowers and the moon brightens to a silver coin overhead. The landscape of my realm that we pass over takes on an impossibly beautiful sheen, the mountains and pines dusted with starlight and the rivers flowing like white gold.

Yù’chén has fallen asleep, leaning against me. I brush my fingers against his red cloak, noticing the tear in its bottom-left corner. The rest of it has escaped the mó’s attack, but I can’t take my eyes away from that corner.

I retrieve the rosewood box—the sewing kit he gifted me—from my storage pouch, where I’ve taken to carrying it.

I thread the needle and begin to sew. The tightness in my chest calms as I lose myself in the familiar motions. When I straighten, a red scorpion lily covers the bottom-left corner of the cloak.

I put my sewing box back into my pouch just as we break through the clouds. In the distance ahead are the white stone and golden roofs, resplendent in the early morning light, of the Temple of Dawn. Wards, shimmering like sunlight on water, rise into the skies.

The shadowcrane circles, and it isn’t long before I spot Yù’chén’s gate amidst the clouds: an archway where the flowers and trees of the immortal realm look clearer and sharper. The red scorpion lilies are in full bloom; the gate yawns open at our approach.

We plunge through. The shadowcrane lands, and I help Yù’chén off. He touches her beak gently. With a bow of her head, the shadowcrane takes wing back through the gate.

Yù’chén sinks down against a tree. His breathing is labored; dark veins still pulse beneath his skin. “Leave me,” he manages with a wince. “I have to…destroy the gate.”

The sun has risen, and with it, reality comes rushing back. Given the ongoing murder investigation, I wonder if the other candidates are still allowed to train. Whether Hào’yáng will look for me this morning.

My stomach tightens as I bring my hand to my jade pendant. Here, in the clear morning light, whatever Yù’chén and I had between us—all that we shared in Xī’lín—will fade like shadows.

“àn’yīng,” I hear him call, as though he, too, has come to the same realization. “àn’yīng—”

A scream cuts through the forest.

I palm Fleet and Shadow. “I’ll be right back,” I say, and I take off, ignoring him as he calls after me.

The Celestial Gardens are silent as I tread through the brush in the direction of the Mirror Lake, where the scream came from. I wonder if I misheard—if it was the cry of an injured bird or animal. The willows and blossoms are quiet, swaying in the breeze. Sunlight sparkles on the water. It’s too beautiful a day for death.

That’s when I stumble upon the body.