Page 126 of The Scarlet Alchemist

I thought I’d earned that right after all I’d done to overthrow the Empress in the first place. The truth was that I’d thought once the Empress was gone, everything would magically repair itself. I would marry Hong, I would keep studying with the Moon Alchemist and playing in the courtyard with the Paper Alchemist and River Alchemist. That future still felt so vivid, so foolish. I often sat in the empty alchemy training grounds and tried to remember all the laughter and games that had once filled it, but now the rustling of leaves and wind humming off the clay walls was the loudest sound in the world.

I spent most of my time in my room, feeding Durian berries and watching him grow bigger.

At the start of a new week about a month after the Empress’s death, the door to my room slammed open.

Durian made a venomous hissing sound at the intruder, but he was still small enough for me to put him back in his box when I saw Wenshu in the doorway carrying an armful of scrolls.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

I stared out the window and didn’t bother denying it.

I’d worried at first that it would be awkward seeing Wenshu in the body of someone I’d wanted to marry, but that wasn’t the problem—Fan Wenshu was nothing at all like Li Hong, and I could see it in everything from his facial expressions to the way he tied back his hair to his choice of swear words.

But that didn’t mean I liked seeing his corpse walking around, speaking words he would never say. It felt like desecration, somehow.

“For what it’s worth, I’m not thrilled by this arrangement either,” Wenshu said.

“Should I have just let you die?” I said.

He set the scrolls down on the floor, avoiding my gaze. “Probably,” he said quietly. “I mean, I would have understood if you had.”

“You would be dead if I had.”

“Zilan,” he said, shoulders drooping, “when you were at the palace, I hardly slept. I worried about you constantly.”

The words were so oddly gentle that he almost sounded like the prince. I sat back, hugging my knees.

“All I wanted was to keep you safe,” he said, “but you kept running off with the prince. You would do whatever he asked and didn’t care what I had to say anymore.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” I said, glaring. “Not with you, of all people.”

He shook his head. “I’m just explaining,” he said, looking pained. “I was so afraid that one day you weren’t going to come back to us, either because the prince got you killed, or because you didn’t need us anymore.”

I frowned, my hands falling to my sides. “What?”

“That was why I said those things to you,” he said. “Because I thought you didn’t want us anyway. I’m sorry, Zilan.”

“That’s what you thought?” I said, grabbing a handful of Durian’s berries and hurling them at Wenshu’s head. “You’re supposed to be the smart sibling!”

“I know,” he said, wincing. “It wasn’t my finest moment. That’s why I’ve brought you these.” He gestured to the pile of scrolls.

“Homework?” I said.

He shot me a glare before unfurling one, but instead of columns of text like I expected, it was a map, the world blooming in strokes of blue and black ink across the page. He pointed to the cove around the Bohai Sea.

“Do you remember when we were in the library and you asked me about Penglai Island?” he said.

“You said it wasn’t real.”

“No, I said it was spoken of in myths, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Frankly, after all the monstrously impossible things you’ve done, I’m not sure I believe alchemy has limits anymore. Penglai Island is the island of the Eight Immortals, where it’s said they have an elixir of immortality.”

“We already had one of those, and Yufei just banned it,” I said.

“Zilan,listen,” Wenshu scolded, unrolling another scroll, this time with words. The writing was in a strange language, and it took me a moment to recognize it.

“How did you get my father’s notes?” I said, shouldering Wenshu aside to get a closer look. These weren’t the ones he’d left in Guangzhou, that was for sure. I’d read those a thousand times over.

“The Moon Alchemist had some in her study,” Wenshu said quietly. “I was just looking. I didn’t throw anything away.”

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