Page 37 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“There is still danger,” he whispered. “The reason I needed your help hasn’t gone away.”

“You seem to be surviving just fine on your own.”

“As I said, I’ve been traveling,” he said, tugging my sleeve again, pulling me a step closer. “But I have duties here. I can’t avoid Chang’an forever.”

“Well, perhaps you should confide in the Emperor about your certain death, and maybe he would protect you,” I said. “What do you think is going to happen to you inside these gilded walls? Will you be crushed under your piles of gold?”

He grimaced. “My father is too ill to do much of anything,” he said, “and I am the heir to the throne. That is a very good reason for many to dislike me.”

I rolled my eyes. “It must be hard to be the wealthiest boy in the kingdom.”

His expression slid into a frown. He released my sleeve, hand falling limp at his side.

“You told me to speak freely,” I said. “Have you changed your mind?”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why does my wealth matter to you so much? Would you help me if I were poor?”

I let out a sharp laugh. “Iam poor,” I said, “and you never helpedme. Or any of my people.”

“What do you—”

“You cower away from death, like it’s the worst thing that could happen to you, but in Guangzhou, people far younger than you die every day. We live with that fear. We don’t go around begging for help, because we know no one will answer. No one will save us. Least of all the Emperor and his spoiled son.”

I turned and stormed away, and this time, no one tried to stop me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I woke to a high, piercing whistle and shot to my feet before I was even fully awake—Uncle Fan always said that if I heard any unnatural sounds, the first thing I had to do was run to the kiln to make sure nothing was about to explode.

I tripped straight over Wenshu, kicking him in the stomach, and fell onto my hands. Yufei was already sitting up, looking out the window like she wanted to murder the first person she saw outside, and I realized we weren’t in Guangzhou anymore, but in our tiny rented room in a cheap western ward of Chang’an.

Yufei groaned and shoved the window open, sticking her head out.“It’s too early for music!”she shouted, and the sounds cut off with a sharp squeak.

Now that I was waking up, I heard the low rhythm of drums and blurry melodies in the distance.

I didn’t like being woken up any more than Yufei, but it didn’t seem that early—the sun was high in the sky, and most of the street seemed to be awake. We’d been up late studying again for our second-round exams.

“We should probably get up anyway,” I said. “We can mail our letters to Baba and Mama.”

Yufei huffed, slamming the window. “Not like we’re going to get any more sleep with all this noise.”

“I can’t get up. Zilan kicked me to death,” Wenshu said, lying flat on his black.

Yufei lifted a foot to stomp on him and he somehow rolled away even with his eyes closed, turning onto his hands and knees.

“How agile you are for a corpse,” Yufei said.

The joke made my stomach clench, but Yufei and Wenshu didn’t seem perturbed. I’d once asked Yufei how it felt to be revived from death, and she’d said it made her hungrier, which was a very Yufei answer, but I doubted it was that simple. When I asked Wenshu, he’d grown very quiet while he thought over his response.

“I think I remember death,” he’d said at last, “but it feels more like death remembersme. Everywhere I go, it feels a bit like everything I do could be the very last time. Like I’m just a breath away from nothingness. Everything looks beautiful yet terrifying, because I’m so aware of how in just a moment, all of it could disappear.”

Still, Wenshu’s anxiety didn’t sound like a heavy enough price to pay for the kind of alchemy I’d done to bring him back. Whatever debt he and Yufei had, I was sure it was still unpaid.

We dressed quickly and headed out into town to mail our letters and find food. My note was brief, stating that we’d arrived in Chang’an with all our limbs intact and that we’d send money home as soon as we passed our final exams. I hoped Auntie and Uncle would write back soon, because I hated not knowing how they were doing. Guangzhou could have burned down in our absence and we’d have no idea.

As we turned onto the main road, I clenched the letter tight to my chest, breath catching in my throat.

It seemed that Chang’an had exploded into a thousand colors overnight.

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