Page 85 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“He had red spots all over his face and arms, like beans,” I said. “His mouth was full of sores. He said he felt like his head was full of dragonflies, then he vomited blood.”

The diplomat to the left of the prince let out a strangled sound, while others dropped their brushes, hands stiff, faces stripped of color.Diseasewas a dirty word among the rich, one of the only things they feared. I’d seen the way smallpox ravaged Guangzhou, ripping through the city with no regard for who was poor or wealthy.

“Perhaps we should reconvene another time,” one of the other men said, his voice remarkably steady despite how quickly he bowed, already rising to his feet.

“Yes, we should let you attend to your duties and resume when it’s more convenient for you,” said another, throwing himself down in a bow before following the other man.

“I... Yes, I suppose that’s for the best,” the prince said, watching palely as the rest of the men bowed and hurried for the door. I caught a glimpse of one of them sprinting once he made it outside. I turned to the prince, ready to reassure him that the plague was a lie, but he slammed the door shut and grabbed my hand.

“What’s wrong with my sisters?”

The door to the prince’s room was, mercifully, still sealed when we arrived. I unjammed the jade with the touch of my hand and burst inside, where the closet was still shut.

I should have known from the smell alone that something was wrong. But I told myself it couldn’t be true and slammed a stone against the door, shattering the granite binding and throwing the doors open.

The back wall of the closet gaped outward, as if torn open from behind. The doors to the prince’s room hadn’t mattered at all, because whatever had come through here hadn’t needed a door.

The princesses lay in a pool of syrupy blood, their throats slashed open, windpipes gaping like second mouths, necks snapped at severe angles, papery white faces and glassy eyes with tiny burst veins like bloody fireworks.

The prince fell to his knees with a shattering cry, scooping them up, blood sloshing over his silk robes. My mind felt like it was full of buzzing insects. Only moments ago, they’d been fine. I’d been so sure they were safe.

“Zilan,” the prince moaned, his hands trembling where he gripped his sister’s stiff arms. “Can you fix them?”

I swallowed, thinking of what the Moon Alchemist had told me. That those I brought back weren’t truly human. I still didn’t know if she was right, but could I really inflict that on these little girls?

“Zilan,” the prince said, a bloody hand twisting in my sleeve.“Please.”

“Yes,” I said, before I could think about it more. Maybe it was selfish, but I couldn’t just leave these girls dead. I couldn’t do nothing while the prince cried over their corpses.

But there was another problem. I hadn’t resurrected anyone without my cousins in years. Wenshu hadn’t written to me yet, so I had no idea where they were staying. Would they even come if I asked?

“I need your help,” I said, picking up my abandoned blade from the ground. It was clean—the girls hadn’t even had a chance to fight back.

“Myhelp?” the prince said.

I nodded. “Put her down,” I said, passing him the other knife. Normally, for these resurrections, Yufei was Heaven, I was Earth, and Wenshu was Man. But we were one person short, and the prince looked too shaken to be the stable pillar that I needed. Three legs had to be sturdy to hold up a cauldron. I would have to hold it up myself.

I sliced my palm with the blade and painted ? on my left arm, ? on my right, and ? on my cheek with my fingers.

“Hold her down,” I said, fishing three bloodstones out of my satchel, all of them slick with my blood.

The prince nodded, looking ill as I placed the stones over the girl’s heart meridian and closed my eyes.

The first girl was easy enough, so simple in fact that I was sure I’d done something wrong. Just as I’d walked with her through the tunnels under the palace, I led her easily down the river, her trusting hand in mine until we resurfaced and I carved her name into her inner elbow, telling the prince that she’d need a tattoo before the scar healed.

She woke up clutching her mended throat, coughing as the prince cradled her close. I wiped the sweat from my brow and moved to the next girl, my breathing coming fast and hot, the air a dizzy swirl of iron and salt around me in the tiny closet.

This time, the transformation began to fall apart.

I felt it in my bones, the arm marked with ? pulling away from the arm marked with ?, my cheek burning, an ache blooming in my face like all my teeth were being yanked out. I stood on the riverbank, but the ground swirled and swayed, knocking me into the thin stream, where I choked on murky water.

You cannot create good without also creating evil, my mind said again and again and again until it was the only thought that existed. I’d done unstable transformations before, where I’d tried to sew together pieces of fabric with only two moonstones, or been too exhausted to concentrate properly on the practice pig I was trying to resurrect, and it was always as if the alchemical cauldron in my mind had toppled over and spilled across the floor. The world had turned soft like the earth after a typhoon, wet dirt that slid around and sucked you into it, fallen trees and drowned rats and overturned soil where the sky was supposed to be.

I saw myself walking in flashes down the riverbank, falling to my hands and knees on the rooted basin. There was the girl, curled up in a ball on the ground, and the dam, still dribbling water. I fell against it, my head bashing against stones, and then the waters were breathing me in. Blood filled my lungs and stones pummeled me, but I couldn’t find the girl. My hands reached out in every direction, scraping at frigid red water. My lungs screamed for air and my eyes threatened to close and the roots on the riverbed scratched at me and tugged at my clothes. I crashed into a bed of stone, and the world turned black.

“Zilan!”

The prince was shaking my shoulders, the darkness of the closet sloshing around me. I was slumped across the little girl’s body, my face covered in her blood. Underneath me, she was warm, her breaths slowly rising her chest.

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