Page 8

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It takes me a long time to fall. The wind screams in my ears, and the world around me is a blur of gray clouds. Shapes within them haunt me, forms appearing and disappearing in the gray. But in the moments before I die, I do not see the ones I love.

I see the ones I need to kill.

I see Yán’lù’s despicable sneer. I see the red-lipped Higher One, smiling at me from the shadows outside my window. I see Yù’chén in all his impossible beauty, turning to me in the forest glade the first time I met him.

No, I think numbly, fumbling for my blades. No, I cannot die yet. I cannot leave this life with people like them here, in the same world as Méi’zi and Mā.

My crescent blades are still strapped to me. I palm my eighth blade, Healer.

Come on, I think desperately, jamming my palm into the hilt and sending a spark of spirit energy into the talisman. It activates and I hold on to it against the shriek of wind in my ears, the nauseating tumble of free fall that I am in.

But even Healer cannot prevent the certain death rising up to meet me.

The clouds end abruptly, the skies yielding to an expanse of deep blue water glittering like diamonds.

I slam into the sea, and I’m struck with the acute pain of every single bone in my body breaking.

—

When I was eleven, I nearly drowned. It was my first time seeking out the light lotuses for Mā by a pond in the bamboo forest north of our village. It was a winter’s night, the forest floor a maze of glittering ice, yet I could not risk bringing a lantern for fear of attracting mó.

I slipped and fell into the half-frozen pond.

I remember my chest constricting, my muscles ceasing to move as the cold slid like daggers into my bones. The darkness and pressure were overwhelming as I sank into certain death.

A voice, and the water itself, saved me that day.

—

There is a light in the darkness. A glow, softly pulsing, flickering like the embers of a fire. It winks above me like the beat of a heart. Growing stronger, lighting up the ocean currents around me like strokes of golden ink.

I am here.

There is a voice in the silence. Faint at first, but growing clearer. àn’yīng, it calls, gentle, firm. Familiar. àn’yīng, wake up.

Something in the periphery of my vision flashes. At first, I think it is one of my mother’s silver needles. In the shifting waters, I imagine her warm brown eyes, the smile she used to wear so easily, which Méi’zi inherited. Their wavy hair, the way they brimmed with music and sunlight.

I hear their voices now, echoing from somewhere distant.

I am here, they tell me.

I am no longer sinking. Currents wrap around me like the arms of a lover, cocooning me. That flashing, weaving silver comes closer, curling and twisting like a ribbon. Something twines around my body, long and serpentine and gentle, and I feel myself drawn upward…toward a pair of large, liquid brown eyes, like those of a snow-pelted deer. Antlers, teeth that flash silver…and scales like moonlight.

Dragon, the currents around me whisper.

But there is pressure on my shoulders as though someone is grasping me, and in the spots crowding my vision in the delirium of drowning, I see a face: a young man in a cloak of white, as beautiful as a sea god, long hair sweeping gracefully in the waves. He carries with him the light of the sun, radiant and warm. His expression is gentle, his curved lips mouthing my name as he holds me to him.

Strange that I should dream of someone I don’t know.

The vision swirls away as darkness closes in.

—

I dream of flying on the back of a milk-colored horse with a mane like seawater. I hear that voice saying to me, I am here, as clear as crystal above the rush of tides. Yet in my dream, I still search for the ocean my mother so often spoke of in her stories—an ocean I cannot see.

I am here. The roar of wind and water, fading. Warmth and light and something solid beneath me. àn’yīng, wake up.

Wake up.

My eyes fly open.

I’m lying on a flat outcropping of rock. From beneath me comes the sound of crashing waves, yet this high up, all I can see are gray clouds…and a trail of rocks jutting into the sky like stepping stones.

The Immortals’ Steps.

In the distance, between rolling clouds, are curved golden rooftops and jade pillars, a marble staircase that sweeps up to a grand palace of white stone. The walls are flecked with crystals and inlaid with pearl dust, and when the sun comes out and gilds everything with its rosy, fiery light, I realize that all the depictions of the Kingdom of Sky and the immortal realm were wrong.

It is ten thousand times more splendid than any painting or poem could capture.

I sit, shivering in my drenched silks. My dress has survived, and my crescent blades are still strapped to my sleeves and bodice. I have sustained no injuries or bruises. And somehow, though I remember my body shattering and my lungs filling with water and burning as I drowned…I am alive. Breathing.

Healer lies innocuously by my side, as though something—or someone—placed her there. I slip her back into her sheath, sifting through the pounding in my head for memories of that face in the deep, the voice between the currents. Anything that might tell me how I ended up here, on the first ofthe Immortals’ Steps, when my body should be at the bottom of the ocean.

The sun has swung to the west and is sinking beneath the clouds. The golden haze of the late afternoon has slowly turned to the fiery corals of dusk.

Impossible. It was just midmorning when I crested Heavens’ Gates.

A warning bell rings in the back of my head. “Sundown by the third day,” I whisper to myself, thinking of the golden invitation tucked away in my bodice. “The First Trial!”

Somewhere in the direction of the palace in the clouds, a gong sounds.

My heartbeat roars in my ears. There will be twelve gongs, I know, each a countdown to the moment the sun sets. Twelve gongs before I must reach the Temple of Dawn.

The Immortals’ Steps zigzag through the skies before me. I count ten more steps—and then I have to get up the marble staircase, through the open-air hallways, and into the Temple of Dawn.

I’m not going to make it.

I’m already moving, positioning myself at the farthest edge of this step. I take off at a run, Fleet and Healer cutting through wind as my arms pump. Three steps to the ledge, and with a burst of spirit energy at my heels, I leap through the air.

I land on the next step as the second gong sounds. The sun sets fire to the skies as it sinks, and my heart pounds each beat against my chest as I take the next leap.

Gong…gong…

Five, six gongs. The clouds are beginning to clear, revealing crystalline skies below and a plunge to the death with a single misstep.

Eight, nine gongs. I can see the temple clearly now, drifting between clouds, hundreds of marble stairs glittering in the sunset, leading up to golden doors.

I’m sweating as I land on the tenth step, the highest and last one. My legs shake as I suck in breaths, blinking to gauge the distance to those marble stairs before me.

I back up to the far end of the rock. As the tenth gong sounds, I take off.

I know I’ve misjudged the distance as soon as I jump. My spirit energy flickers and sputters out like a flame, and then I’m falling, the marble stairs just an arm’s length away….

I scream and plunge my crescent blades forward. They bite into the edge of the marble stairs as I’m dragged down by the momentum of my fall—and by some miracle, Healer catches onto a groove in the stair. I’m dangling off the first marble stair, my arms trembling. One slip and I’m gone, and Mā will die a hollow shell of a person, and Méi’zi will be alone until the Kingdom of Night swallows our realm.

Gong…

Sweat and tears roll down my face as, with the last of my strength, I pull myself up.

The final gong sounds just as I haul myself onto the first marble stair. My muscles burn from overexertion, but I’m off, taking the steps three at a time even as the echoes of the last gong fade into silence and the sun slips beneath the horizon. I barrel through the tallest pái’fāngs I have ever seen; knifing into the skies, they are made of glittering marble and bear signs of lacquered wood and lapis lazuli that announce in swirling characters: Temple of Dawn.

The gilded temple doors appear before me, cast in the slanting light of dusk. Hall of Radiant Sun, announces the gleaming plaque overhead. From within, I hear voices.

I burst into a great hall of pale stone and gold accents. Silk paintings depicting mountains and rivers and rolling clouds flutter between pillars from which incense burners smoke. Guards in white-and-gold lamellar line the hallway, swords gleaming from their hips. My sight is blurring, my heart is pulsing in my ears, and I think I’m about to throw up. I barely notice the crowd gathered at a rosewood dais; I barely see the figures lined up at the very end.

“…Wèi’fán of the Eastern Province and Zhōu’kāng of the Western Province,” a clear tenor voice announces, echoing beneath a yawning fretwork ceiling that gleams with jeweled paintings of phoenixes, dragons, deer, and carp amidst magnificent blooms. “Congratulations on completing the first of the Immortality Trials. The Temple of Dawn welcomes you and invites you to continue your participation.”

Claps and cheers sound out from the gathered crowd. I’m moving forward at a limp, dripping water all over the pristine marble floors and the vermilion silk carpet that unfurls through the hall.

“That concludes our roll call for the day—”

“Wait!”

There is a whirl of motion as heads turn, and I feel the immediate gaze of every single pair of eyes in that hall upon me.

“And me,” I croak, raising my hand even as the gem-encrusted ceilings begin to spin. “àn’yīng of the Central Province.”