Page 88 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“I’m doing whatIwant!” I said. “You’re just mad because it’s not whatyouwant!”

“I want to live!”Wenshu said, hurling a bowl against the wall. It shattered in a burst of soup, pooling at his feet. “I’ve already met death once, Zilan. I’m not doing it again. If you want to die so badly, then go do it alone.”

I turned to Yufei, who flinched away from my glare. “Jiejie, say something!” I cried.

She took a long moment to finish chewing, gaze darting around the dishes on the table like she didn’t want to look at either of us. Yufei was good at calming Wenshu down, or at least distracting him. She would convince him—

“Zilan,” she said, and the heaviness in her tone made my stomach drop. “You’re good at alchemy. That can make you money, even if it’s not in Chang’an. I can only be a scholar or a wife, and I don’t want to be a wife. I don’t want to die, or lose what we have right now.”

I shook my head, wishing I could dissolve into the wallpaper. “Why are you both so sure I’m going to fail?”

“Why is that something you’re even willing to risk?” Wenshu said.

“Why?”I echoed, the question so absurd, so unexpected, that it took my breath away.

Because when I closed my eyes, I saw corpses stacked in wet dungeons and their crying families with one hundred gold in their palms instead of a proper funeral. I thought of the girl in the pink dress burning, the leathery smell of her charred flesh, her screams that could rend the world in half. I saw the old man begging me for fabric in the streets, and my dead cousins in the fields, and little princesses shredded like cuts of meat, and the empty chairs where all the prince’s brothers and sisters used to sit. And above it all, like the resounding light of daybreak, was the Empress, lips painted with gold, laughing at the dead. If she was the ruler Heaven had chosen, then I would gladly burn through every layer of hell.

“Someone has to,” I said, but the words came out too weak, my eyes burning with tears because I knew Wenshu hadn’t seen what I’d seen, that he couldn’t understand.

“And that someone has to be you?” he said.

I nodded, a single tear racing down my face. I wiped it away, but Wenshu had already seen it. He sighed, crossing his arms.

“Fine,” he said.

I looked up. “Fine?”

“Do what you have to do,” he said. “But stop coming here.”

I froze, my heart stopping at his words. “What?”

“Stop visiting us,” he said. “Tell your secret guards—yes, I’ve noticed them—to stop watching us. Stop talking about us. And stop calling yourself a Fan.”

“Iama Fan,” I said, but I didn’t sound certain anymore. All the blood in my body was pooling in my feet.

Wenshu shook his head. “That’s the name our mother gave you when she thought you wanted to be part of our family.”

I didn’t realize I was backing away until my spine pressed against the wall and there was nowhere for me to go.

“Gege—”

“Stop calling me that,” Wenshu said.

“Gege,”Yufei said, frowning. But she didn’t argue with him. Didn’t defend me. “He just means it’s safer for us if we’re not associated—”

“I know what he meant,” I said. He meant that “sister” had never been something that I was, but a name he’d let me borrow. A familiar feeling began to fester in my stomach, and after a moment I remembered the last time I’d felt this way—the day they’d died, leaving me alone in the world.

They would be dead without me, and yet they were casting me aside. It was clear that they couldn’t love me. If I had ever needed any proof that the Moon Alchemist was right, this was it. They had cut me off like a dead petal off a flower.

I clenched my fists and turned to the doorway so they couldn’t see me cry.

“When you died, I should have let them bury you,” I said. “I wish I’d let you both rot.”

Before I could take it back, I grabbed my coat and ran into the night, slamming the door behind me.

Of course, there was the matter of how we were going to kill the Empress.

Physically attacking her seemed impossible with four burly guards constantly at her side, not to mention that it would be hard to hide our identities if we failed. Poisoning would be difficult because she ate nothing but gold and drank nothing but tea, both of which were sampled by a servant before she touched them. The prince only recalled one poisoning attempt during her reign, after which every servant and their families had been executed.

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