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I wake to sunset, soft silks, and plush pillows. A warm wind stirs the gauze drapes that hang between the rosewood pillars. I recognize this as the Temple of Tranquil Longevity, the healing wing.

“You are awake.”

The voice is not one I recognize: it is soft, feminine, and beautiful—as is the figure that steps out from the shadows of the chamber. She walks into the light, and it is as though the sun worships her, kissing the soft honeyed tones of her cheeks, the perfect bow of her lips, shimmering down the blush of her dress, gold silks woven through, and the lotus flower she holds. She smiles, and all the realm’s blossoms might turn to her in this moment.

“Honorable Immortal Shī’yǎ,” I whisper, feeling as though I have stepped into the world’s most beautiful dream. I shift into a sitting position on the bed, leaning against its frame.

I have yet to see an immortal this closely, and this personally; the proximity convinces me she is real and that she is something otherworldly. There is an absolute grace to her movements, a divine radiance and beauty that spills from her. Yet beneath the cool exterior with which immortals seem to view the world, there is a semblance of warmth to her gaze as she regards me.

“I am sorry it has taken so long for me to see you,” she continues. “The rules are strict here, but Hào’yáng has created this opportunity for us to meet.”

Hào’yáng. I remember the disappointment in his features as he carried me away earlier. “Where is he?” I ask.

“Making a report to the rest of the Eight Immortals.” Shī’yǎ smiles, and her eyes seem to drink me in. “You do resemble your father.”

I draw in a tight breath. In the bodice of my dress, my handkerchief seems to pulse. “How did you know my father?” I ask.

Shī’yǎ gestures with one hand. A steaming porcelain cup appears on the cabinet by my bed. “You must be thirsty, and it is a long story,” she says.

The tea is camellia and mint—my father’s favorite, I realize as I sip.

“Your father arrived at the Temple of Dawn just thirty years ago,” Shī’yǎ begins, and something settles in her expression, as if she recounts a faraway dream. There is a hint of sadness to her lips and the slant of her brows. “Back then, mortal practitioners registered at our temple to train under the discipleship of immortals. The goal was to cultivate their practitioning arts and their power, not simply to achieve immortality. The borders between our realms were open, and those who gained immortality could still return to the Kingdom of Rivers to share their knowledge. They could lead a life between the realms.” She looks at me, and her lips curl. “Certainly, your father wished to. You see, he was my disciple for ten years.”

“Oh,” I say softly. No wonder his journals recounted a very different experience to the Immortality Trials and the Temple of Dawn. “Why did the trials…change?”

Shī’yǎ’s expression shifts: the shadow of a cloud, racing briefly over sunlit waters. “They changed when the Kingdom of Night defied the Heavenly Order. The Kingdom of Sky sealed its borders. But our High Court knew the Kingdom of Night would not stop at the mortal realm; they decided we needed more warriors to defend ourselves against the mó. And so they turned the trials into an opportunity to recruit mortals. To turn the best of you, the most worthy warriors…into ours. ”

That’s why the discipleship my father mentioned in his journals is gone. They don’t care to train us, and they don’t want to share their knowledge for us to bring back into our realm. No, they want to recruit the strongest of us into their ranks. To protect them.

“You disagree with this,” I state carefully, observing the small crease in her brow.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“In large part, because of your father. Most immortals view mortals as…fleeting. At best, mortals resemble cherry blossoms: beautiful when they bloom, yet ephemeral—there one season, gone the next. Why bother caring or fighting for anything when your lives are so short, when at the end of everything, all falls to dust and ashes for you?”

“It is because our lives are so fleeting that we have to fight,” I reply. A stinging ache has arisen in my throat, and a flame resembling anger curls in my belly. “We have only this short life, this one life. If there is something we want, something we desire, we must fight for it.”

Shī’yǎ is watching me with bright eyes. “That is almost exactly what Zhàn’fēi said to me,” she says softly, and for some reason, my breath hitches at the way she says my father’s name. “Eternity makes us cruel, does it not? Why care when you have all the time in the realms?” Shī’yǎ’s lips part, then curl at the corners. “I digress. I came to speak with you on a topic Hào’yáng tells me he broached with you.”

“The revolution,” I whisper.

Shī’yǎ nods.

“Why me?” I ask. It is the question that has been burning inside me since I arrived, since the day she vouched for me. “Is it because of my father? Is that why you saved me?”

“So much has to do with your father, àn’yīng,” Shī’yǎ says quietly. “When he won the trials and rejected our pill of immortality, he set a great wheel in motion. He asked us to save his place in this kingdom should he one day have need. A place that almost went to you. A place that, instead, went to Hào’yáng.”

Everything in me falls very still. The jade pendant is warm against my collarbone. Throughout these long years, I have always wondered at the reason my guardian in the jade—Hào’yáng—has watched over me.

Now I know.

It is because my father gave him a life of safety, of shelter, of security, away from our own dying realm. A life that should have gone to me. Or Méi’zi. Or Mā.

I did not know your father, Hào’yáng told me. But I owe him.

“Why?” I whisper. I would not wish for a place in the Kingdom of Sky should it be handed to me, for I need to be home to protect my family. But the place could have gone to Méi’zi, then barely a child of five. Or Mā, whose soul might have been healed here. I’m breathing hard as I think of Hào’yáng, strong and healthy and radiant and everything that my mother or my sister might have been.

“Because,” Shī’yǎ says, “Hào’yáng is the sole surviving heir to the emperor of the Kingdom of Rivers.”

My breath catches.

“Your father and I corresponded when the Kingdom of Night first invaded. I begged him to bring you and your sister here; I told him I would face any ramifications and break any rules to help. He agreed—until the day he showed up with a young boy instead.”

All the pieces are now falling into place. How my father was away at war, leading the army from the Southern Province during the initial resistance the emperor led. How he returned months later, somehow changed, and began to focus on fortifying our town.

So he had gone to the Imperial Palace and he had found the emperor’s last child and brought him to safety here.

He had planted the seeds of a future resistance against the Kingdom of Night, long before anyone had thought past the first war.

All this time, my father was thinking of the greater cause, yet now, a small, selfish voice inside me can’t help but cry, What about me? What about Mā and Méi’zi?

“Over the years, Hào’yáng and I have been forming alliances with those who believe in fighting back against the Kingdom of Night,” Shī’yǎ continues. “The pieces are nearly in place, àn’yīng. All we needed was someone familiar with the mortal realm to join us, and to help him once he decides to return to the Kingdom of Rivers and gather an army. I wished to…place that burden on you, on account of the work your father did to make this possible in the first place.

“I know it is a heavy weight to carry, and I would ask for your forgiveness and preface my request with this: I understand that you have obligations, to win the trials and to heal your mother’s soul. My respect for you and Hào’yáng’s affections for you will not change should you decline; you will not lose our support for the remainder of the trials. And I need no answer today. I simply thought it was time you knew the truth.”

She turns to leave, and I have the acute feeling, in that moment, that my fate, my destiny, everything my life has been building up to, will slip away with her if I do not seize it.

I am tired. I am exhausted. Deeply, down to my bones, I do not wish to fight any longer. Nine years I have been alone, taking care of my mother and my sister, dedicating my life to protecting theirs, ensuring our survival. I close my eyes briefly and lean back against the rosewood frame. A memory finds me: Méi’zi, four years old, running to me in a blooming courtyard of spring, her laughter piercing through the bleating of goats and the squawking of chickens. I recall the flashes of her hair, warmed by the sun, as she ran through the ripe fruit trees in our village. I think back further, to Mā sitting on the small, creaky wooden stool in our yard, beneath the shade of the flowering plum tree, Méi’zi curled on her knees and watching as she sewed.

Winning the trials might cure Mā, but the mortal realm will continue to sink into the Kingdom of Night, mó will continue to threaten our village, and we will continue to die out.

How could I live with myself if I had the chance to turn that all around and let I it go? How could I knowingly walk away from the chance to fight for that sunlit afternoon beneath plum blossoms for Mā and Méi’zi?

I settle on the image of sunset, red and blazing against Fú’yí’s weathered face. 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. You show them how strong you are. And when you have learned the arts, just as your father did, you come back and win this war against the Kingdom of Night.

My eyes fly open. My tea trembles in my hand, once.

“I’ll do it,” I say. “Please tell Hào’yáng I’ll do it.”

Shī’yǎ half turns to me as she opens the fretwork doors. The sun haloes her, outlining her side profile and the smile that lights her lips. “You may wish to tell him yourself,” she replies, and then she is gone, as though she has simply vanished into the wind and the flurry of blossom petals outside.

In her stead, a different shadow falls on the gauze drapes: tall and armored and familiar.

Hào’yáng steps in, and suddenly, everything and nothing has changed between us. I take him in—the cool beauty of his face, the strength of his shoulders, the commanding air of his stance—with the knowledge of who he is.

The child of our emperor. The heir to the Kingdom of Rivers.

We are both mortal, but it suddenly feels that we are a realm apart.

“àn’yīng,” he says. He stops by the door and does not try to come any closer. We face each other, and I feel it again, the threads of destiny that have brought us to this moment. My guardian in the jade, rendered real in flesh and blood and standing just ten paces from me. All the secrets that were once barriers between us are gone.

Yet with that knowledge, it is as though I have lost the friend I have made in Hào’yáng these past few weeks. Before me stands the stranger I know most intimately in this world.

My hands curl around where my jade pendant rests at my collarbone. “All along, it was you.”

His gaze flickers. “You must despise me.”

I hear the unspoken words in his question. You must despise me for taking the place your father earned in the Kingdom of Sky. For living a life most dream of while you were mired in a world of nightmares.

“How could I?” I whisper. Hating him would be like hating a part of my own heart.

His eyes soften. “It must be strange, that you have known me for just a few short weeks yet I feel I have known you for nine years.”

The sun dapples him; an errant breeze stirs petals into the blue skies behind him. Again, I have the feeling that I am in a dream.

I slide off my bed and stand. Step by careful step, I approach him, my heartbeat easing as though pulled by an invisible string. He does nothing, only watches me, his eyes never leaving my face. I peer up at him, trying to reconcile the quiet, steady hand that wrote to me through the jade…with this man before me.

“I know you,” I say softly. “I wouldn’t be here without you.”

He gives me a look I can’t decipher. His eyes trail every edge and curve of my face as if he is allowing himself to gaze at me, truly gaze at me, for the first time in his life. His hands are folded behind his back, his shoulders tight. He’s nervous, I realize. Hào’yáng, captain of the guard and heir to the Kingdom of Rivers, is nervous meeting me like this.

He clears his throat. “I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times and prepared a hundred different things to say to you, yet I find that I cannot remember a single one of them,” he confesses with a rueful smile.

I remember what he told me of growing up as a mortal in the Kingdom of Sky, and I imagine him as a young boy, perched by a smooth piece of stone, imagining meeting the girl inside.

Only, he doesn’t know that on the other side of that jade was a lonely girl, holding on to that piece of rock as if it was her life.

“Then I’ll consider it a debt,” I jest, and I’m surprised at my own audacity. “We’ll have plenty of time for you to remember the hundred different speeches you prepared.”

Hào’yáng’s smile widens, and it’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen: like the sun coming out from behind clouds, shining upon me. It’s a smile, I realize, reserved only for me.

“I wish you’d been there all along.” It is only after the words fall from my lips that I realize I have spoken aloud.

He studies my face. “àn’yīng, you’re safe now,” he replies, and I marvel at how he reads the words I don’t say instead of the ones I do. “The culprits behind the murders have been caught. I will coach you through the remainder of the trials, and together, we will return to the mortal realm to cure your mother and spread the word that we are fighting back against the mó.”

The culprits have been caught.

Cold pierces my heart. “Yù’chén,” I whisper. Hào’yáng—and the rest of the guards—must still believe him to be guilty. “Where is Yù’chén?”

The warmth leaves Hào’yáng’s expression, as though he has slid on a mask: that of the cool, efficient captain of the guard I first knew him to be. “He is being held in a solitary chamber in this temple. We must heal him before we subject him to interrogation, then execution.”

Interrogation. Execution.

“No.” The room spins a little. “Hào’yáng, listen to me—Yù’chén is innocent—he was fighting Yán’lù—”

“He is a mó, àn’yīng. The Temple of Dawn has seen demonic murders committed on its grounds, which has heavier implications: that the Kingdom of Sky could have been infiltrated by the Kingdom of Night.”

“He’s a halfling—”

“—who could be here in the employ of the Kingdom of Night,” Hào’yáng interrupts. His hand is back on the hilt of his sword. “We won’t know until we interrogate him. You must understand how serious this is. Until now, the Heavenly Order declared the child of a mortal and a mó an impossibility; demonic ichor cannot run in the same veins as mortal blood. We must find out how he is alive, whether there are more of his kind, who his parents are, and how a mó came to produce a child with a mortal even before the Kingdom of Night broke through the Kingdom of River’s wards. His existence changes much of what we know about the war.”

“He isn’t responsible for the murders,” I say desperately. “He had an alibi for the first murder—you told me yourself. And he has protected me from other mó. You saw him fighting Yán’lù.”

Hào’yáng looks away, toward the open window. “àn’yīng, even if I wished, I could not save him. The Eight Immortals are aware, and the High Court will be here in the morning. His interrogation begins at sunrise. Even if he is found innocent of any affiliation with the Kingdom of Night…” He exhales. “There is no precedent to a half-mó. The High Court made the Kingdom of Night their enemy. I don’t know that they have it in them to let even a half-mó live.”

I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. I remember Yù’chén’s ask of me: 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.

Now he is going to die precisely because of what he is—and because he helped me.

It’s all my fault.

“Hào’yáng. I have to help him.” My voice is low. “Please, tell me what I can do. I’ll…I’ll speak to the Eight Immortals, surely there must be a way—”

“The Eight are powerless against the High Court,” he replies. When he lifts his gaze to me, the sorrow on his features is clear. “And if you testify for him, you would jeopardize not only your standing in your trials but also your life, àn’yīng. The brewing war against the Kingdom of Night is a long-feared subject among the immortals in this realm. Now that they know two demons have gotten past our wards—even if he is a halfling, there will be no mercy. The High Court is ruthless; they will make an example of him…and any associates they find out about.”

It is all I can do not to sink to the ground with the enormity of what I have done—the consequences of my failures. I have sentenced a man to death for helping me break the rules to save my sister’s life, and for saving my life. But if I do anything against the wishes of the High Court, I could jeopardize the standings of the Eight Immortals; of Shī’yǎ and Hào’yáng and the entire resistance they have worked toward. And I could risk my own life if I try to help Yù’chén.

If I am dead, it is as good as sentencing Mā and Méi’zi to death, too.

“àn’yīng.” Hào’yáng doesn’t move his eyes from me. His brows are creased, and there is something akin to sorrow in the way he watches me. “Don’t throw away your life and your family for him.”

“I owe him so much, Hào’yáng,” I whisper.

He is silent for a few moments. Beneath the calmness of his expression, I can feel him thinking, deliberating. Then he says, “There is nothing I can do to save him. But if you wish to see him one more time, I can help.”

My head snaps up. “I wish to see him,” I say. “Please.”

Hào’yáng gives a single, slow nod. “He is in the last chamber of the healing wing. At nightfall, I will arrange for the guards to momentarily retreat and for the wards to temporarily allow entry to his confinement chamber. Then, when the moon is highest in the sky, I will lower the wards, allowing you—and only you—to leave the chamber. You must look for the sign; you will have only a moment to slip out.”

He turns to leave; for some reason, at the sight of him, my chest knots.

“Hào’yáng,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”

He pauses at the door to glance back at me in the light of dusk. I can’t make out his expression.

Without speaking, he bows his head. Then he is gone.