Page 60 of The Scarlet Alchemist

I was distantly aware of the other alchemists peeking out from behind tables, guards making sure the Empress was unharmed, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the wreckage before me and the crushing feeling that I’d failed. I had no other ideas, and I definitely didn’t have enough blood to try again.

The Empress let out a choked cry of anger, and I realized that sludge was dripping down her hair and face, the front of her dress stained black.

“She’s finished!” the Empress said. “Guards?”

But then my hands brushed over something firm and sharp within the mud, making me jerk back in surprise. A guard yanked my arm, but I pulled away, scooping up the object and wiping away the sludge on my ruined dress. A white eye blinked up at me.

Two more guards grabbed me and I lost my footing, still clutching the object in my hands. It was moving, stirring in my palms.

“Wait!” I said, when the guards tried to drag me to my feet. “Wait, wait, I did it!”

The Empress held up a hand and the guards dropped me to the ground, the other alchemists hovering closer. I tucked the small, squirming creature against my chest and scrubbed it with my sleeves, sloughing off the black sludge. But my hands trembled too much, and the creature rolled off my lap onto the dirt, twitching as it spread its matted wings to steady itself. My throat clenched. What kind of abomination had I made from my experiment?You cannot create good without creating evil.Life was the greatest good, so whatever this was must be pure evil. It shook itself, shrugging off more mud, revealing yellow fur.

“Is that aduck?” Zheng Sili said.

The creature toddled forward a few steps, then turned around and looked at me, tilting its head to the side. It was a baby duck, hardly the size of my palm.

I let out a sharp, delirious laugh. The prince would never let me live this down.

I cupped my palms and the duck toddled back into my hands, resting there happily. My legs felt like paper, but I managed to stumble down the rest of the courtyard and kneel before the Empress, holding out my creation to her.

For what felt like a lifetime, the Empress watched the creature in my hands. I was dizzy, caked in my own blood and alchemical sludge, and before the Empress’s glowing presence I felt like a monster who had crawled her way up from hell.

“I have heard much about you,” the Empress said at last, her voice glass-sharp, like every word was supposed to be an insult. “You intrigue me, Fan Zilan. But being unique cannot make up for skill, education, or talent.”

My heart sank. I lowered the duck, who nuzzled into my palm.

“I have a sense for greatness,” the Empress said. “That is how I became the Empress. That is how I knew which alchemists to trust in my search for eternal life, and why I’m not dead like the Emperors before me. I sensed something in you from the moment I saw you in my city. But my advisers told me you were uneducated, that you were too brash and unrefined, that you would be a disappointment.”

The Empress rose to her feet, and I couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. As her shadow fell over me, I dropped into a bow that I wasn’t sure I could get up from, each cruel word crushing me deeper into the ground. I clutched the duck to my chest and waited for my fate.

“It is clear that you are uneducated,” she said, “and you are indeed brash and unrefined. Yet, somehow, I am not disappointed.”

My fingers tensed in the dirt, my whole body shuddering as I started to rise from my bow.

“I cannot say that I’ve ever seen an alchemist lay their life on the line as you have, or paint my courtyard red with their blood. That is why, as of tomorrow, the name Fan Zilan will no longer be allowed in my court.”

I dared to lift my head, peering up at the Empress, backlit by the sun, like every part of her was made of gold.

“From now on, you will be known as the Scarlet Alchemist.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I left the courtyard in a daze, the duck stuffed into my pocket, feeling like I was stumbling through a dream. The floor tilted at sharp angles and spilled me against walls, my vision bursting with sun flashes that were almost definitely from the blood loss, but I pushed myself toward home with one goal in mind:

Paper.

The first thing I would do as a royal alchemist would be to tear out a sheet of scroll paper, slam it onto my desk, stab my brush into an inkstone, and write the words I’d dreamed of telling Auntie and Uncle for years.

I did it.

I pictured Auntie opening the letter and yelling for Uncle, shaking him awake. They’d tell all their friends about their daughter, the royal alchemist. And when I sent them enough money to move to a street that didn’t bleed, all the neighbors would watch them pack their things onto a carriage while they bragged that theirdaughterbought them a new house, they didn’t have to work anymore, didn’t have to worry about anything. Anything they wanted, they could have it.

Wenshu’s success had always been a given. Yufei always managed to worm her way into whatever she wanted. I was supposed to be the purple weed destined for nothingness, and now I would stand beside the alchemists who had created eternity.

For the rest of my life, there would be no more cowering before blue-robed officials, pretending to be weaker than my brother. Never again would I hide my face and say I was someone’s bride for safety. I could no longer be purchased, because I belonged to the House of Li. I stared down at my trembling hands, blood painted into the creases, and even with my body in this state, I felt as though I could rend marble apart, tear down handfuls of the sky, shove mountains out of my way. The name that my spineless father had cursed me with was gone, wiped away by the Empress herself. I had become a great alchemist without him.

I’d left the courtyard before I saw what became of the other alchemists, but I heard Zheng Sili shouting at the guards from the other side of the wall. I felt a twinge of guilt, but I knew for certain that none of them would have tried to save me if I’d lost. If they wanted to live, they could save themselves. I wouldn’t waste my sympathy on the rich.

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