Page 99 of The Scarlet Alchemist

“I met you for the first time this year,” I said.

The Moon Alchemist shook her head. “It’s unusual that you don’t remember, but then again, your resurrection was also unusual. If I hadn’t known your father, I don’t think I would have tried to bring you back at all. Recalling your soul was a very long and difficult process. Maybe that’s why you don’t remember.”

“What are you talking about?”I said, slamming my fists into the table.

The Moon Alchemist looked at me with something resembling pity. It was the softest expression I’d ever seen on her face.

“Ten years ago, I met a Scotian alchemist here in Chang’an,” she said. “He’d brought his wife and daughter from Guangzhou. They intended to move here so he could study alchemy.”

I wanted to tell her that I’d never been to Chang’an before this year, but the words died on my lips. That strange day when the world went dark, the memory I knew was real but could never place, the certainty that I’d seen the gates of Chang’an before, the dizzy feeling of remembering something I wasn’t supposed to.

“I didn’t need his help,” the Moon Alchemist said, “but he had some interesting ideas, so I let him work with me. Then, one day, the Empress’s horse brigade ran over his daughter in the market.”

I shook my head, remembering the feeling of my body snapping apart, my name being called across an empty expanse. The way that our horses we rode to Chang’an had terrified me in a way Yufei and Wenshu couldn’t understand.

“I’d never heard a mother scream so loudly,” she said. “The thought of resurrecting you didn’t cross my mind at first—you hardly had a face left, and alchemists aren’t supposed to go around resurrecting all their friends. I would have been killed if anyone found out, and why would I take that risk for a family I hardly knew?”

She leaned back, glaring into her empty teacup. “But, in the whole market, no one tried to help. Even when your mother begged for a healer, no one would look at you. They kept selling their beans and porridge and just walked around you, like you didn’t even exist. This was just after the Yangzhou massacre. No one wanted foreigners—or their children—in our markets.”

But I’m not a foreigner, I thought, although I knew what the Moon Alchemist meant.

“No one wants people like us to exist,” she said, her grip so tense around her cup that I thought it might shatter. “So I decided to spit in all their faces and bring you back. I led your parents here through the tunnels and warned them that if I resurrected you, you would drain their qi, and they would be dead within four years if they stayed with you. But they didn’t care. They told me to bring you back, no matter what.”

“Stop,” I said, gripping the edge of the table. Maybe she thought it was kind to tell me how much my parents had loved me, that once I had been wanted more than life itself. But I didn’t want to hear it. Their love didn’t matter now, because it was gone. It was easier to pretend I had always been a Fan, to say I was too young to remember my real parents, to hate my father for leaving us. I couldn’t be Fan Zilan while mourning the life that Su Zilan might have had. I couldn’t think about whether my aunt or uncle would have done the same, would have given up their lives for mine. I was too afraid of the answer.

“I did the best I could with what was left of your face and hands, and somehow, I brought you back,” the Moon Alchemist said. “Your soul was very hard to find, and even when I retethered it, you didn’t wake for several days. But once you did, I told your parents that they could never tell anyone what happened, or else the Empress would chain you up as one of her monsters, and I would be killed as well. Your parents decided to spend their last four years with your mother’s family in Guangzhou, and I thought I’d never see you again.”

This is why my cousins never said anything about it, I thought. They didn’t see me die, had probably been too young to remember me disappearing for a few weeks, and my parents had never spoken of it.

“Your father returned to Chang’an four years later, looking for a cure for your mother,” the Moon Alchemist said. “He was half-dead already, and I told him the same thing—that the only way to live was to stay away from you. He was angry with me, so I sent him off with some gold and never saw him again. My guess is that he died somewhere in the city. He wouldn’t have made it far.”

I stared at my hands in my lap, the long, spidery fingers that Auntie So said were so unlike my mother’s, the alchemy rings on each hand, the dream I’d chased just to spite the man I thought had left me. But maybe he’d wanted to come back and had died in a drainage ditch in Chang’an, ending up in the dungeons like the other bodies, hollowed out and forged into a monster by another alchemist. I’d thought my mother was delusional for saying he’d return, but he’dtried. He hadn’t wanted to leave us, but to save us.

My fists closed tight, alchemy rings biting into my palms. My father had been with me this whole time, the warm and wordless voice ringing in my ears whenever I studied alchemy, and even if I’d long forgotten his language, his presence had pushed me forward until I became a royal alchemist. He’d given everything for me, and in the end, I’d become exactly like him—standing beside the Moon Alchemist, trying to fight death.

“I didn’t mean for them to never tellyou,” the Moon Alchemist said. “That was dangerous. One piece of gold past your lips and you would have turned into a monster like the ones crawling around the palace. You truly never noticed?”

“How could I?” I said, staring at my hands and imagining them cracking apart into a thousand pieces, being sewn back together by the Moon Alchemist.

“Because all of your qi is stolen,” she said. “Every four years, the people closest to you must have died after you drained them. Is that not the case?”

My head throbbed, but I closed my eyes and tried to organize my thoughts. The Moon Alchemist said I’d died ten years ago, when I was seven. My mother died and my father disappeared when I was eleven, four years later. Three and a half years later, Wenshu and Yufei died. Now, two years later, Auntie So and Uncle Fan were sick, though miraculously recovered the moment my cousins and I left for Chang’an.

We were killing them, I realized. Not just Wenshu and Yufei, but all three of us.

I’d been so certain that my cousins hadn’t loved me because they weren’t killing me. But I had no qi for them to steal. I was as hollow inside as them, siphoning qi off Auntie and Uncle. I slumped my shoulders, letting my hair hide my face, finally feeling as dead as I truly was inside. I’d been so cruel to my cousins because I’d believed in a lie.

“You need to be careful,” the Moon Alchemist said, taking my silence for an answer. “One body cannot withstand too much alchemy. I have never been able to resurrect someone twice. This life is your last, Zilan. Do you understand?”

I nodded slowly. “What am I supposed to do now?” I said.

“Do?” The Moon Alchemist frowned. “You continue what you’ve been doing.”

“How can you make it sound so simple?” I said. “I’m dead.”

“You are not dead,” she said. “You died. There’s a difference.”

“How is there a difference?”

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