Page 102 of The Blood Orchid

“It is difficult to stop loving someone, even if they hurt you,” he said quietly, the gentle words breathed across the pale skin of my wrist.

“She killed all your children.”

He sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he said, his thumb rubbing softly across my scar. “Royalty survives because we love our kingdom above all else. My father killed his brothers to become emperor, and in turn, he was the best ruler our country has ever seen. None of our hands are clean. A clear conscience is a privilege of people who do not have power. If you have a soft heart, you lose everything, and the country falls to someone far worse than you.”

“She killed all your children,” I said again.

Gaozong shook his head, drawing a blade from his pocket. “If your plan was to talk me out of this, it won’t work.”

“And what will she do with you when she’s empress?” I said, leaning away from the crisp gleam of his knife in the sunlight.“She already tried to dispose of you once.”

“That was when I wasn’t useful to her,” he said. “I can hardly blame her for that.”

He held my wrist, his grip suddenly bone-crushing. “Here is what you must understand, Fan Zilan. You can stand beside greatness, or you can be crushed beneath it. We have both made our choices, and we will live—or die—by them.”

Then he sank the knife into my skin.

I flinched, reflexively trying to pull away, but he held me tight as, stroke by stroke, he carvedWu Zhaointo my right arm, a fresh crimson mark compared to the wrinkled purple scar of my own name on the other arm. Blood ran down the armrest of the throne, pooling on the floor.

“Thank you for looking after Hong,” Gaozong said quietly, releasing my wrist. He grabbed my other arm, the one that saidFan Zilan. “Please give him my regards.”

Before I could answer, he drew a clean line straight through my soul tag.

I tensed, fists clenching, toes curling, jaw clenched. I went limp in the chair, breathing shallowly, gaze locked on the ceiling.

That was what was supposed to happen when you damaged someone’s soul tag.

That was what Gaozong, who had performed so many thousands of resurrections, would expect to see.

That was what would have happened, if he’d actually cut through my soul tag.

But there was another, carved cleanly between my shoulder blades, courtesy of Wenshu, activated by Zheng Sili that morning.

I stayed still and limp while I heard Gaozong shuffling through a bag of stones. I didn’t even flinch when he pressed a warm, disgusting kiss to my parted lips.

“We’re almost there, darling,” he whispered. Then he pressed three stones to the new soul tag, and my whole body filled with light.

Both soul tags flared up in white-hot agony, the new one on my left wrist glowing as if my blood was full of light. My vision fractured, one eye fixed on the dark rushing river, the other staring back at Gaozong’s expectant face.

Stay grounded, I thought, clenching my teeth against the burn. I folded forward, and Gaozong caught me, lowering me to the floor with reverence. The new name on my wrist burned brighter, and my bones seized up, joints locked tight. Deep in the labyrinth of my mind, someone was pounding their fist against a door, and it took all of my strength to keep it shut.

I hadn’t known exactly how this part of my plan would unfold. Wenshu had described the sensation of sharing a body astrying to peel off your own face, though I suspected the Empress’s soul would be much harder to extract from a body than Hong’s.

I had once clung to my body with no soul tag at all, fought for it with all my strength. It was too tall and wiry and looked not enough like my siblings, but it wasmybody, not a puppet for the Empress to possess.

I opened my eyes, and I was standing on the river, the Empress on the other side, the scarlet current rushing between us, sparks of blood splashing into the air. She met my gaze, her eyes filled with so much raw hate that it scorched me to the bone.

Then the Empress was behind me, one hand yanking my hair, the other hand clawing at my face, trying to unpeel me like a fruit. Sharp nails caught on my lips, cold fingers in my mouth, rings clinking across my teeth.

Get out.

The words hummed through my bones, a chill that made all my muscles seize up in agony. I caught a flash of Gaozong’s concerned gaze, then there was only darkness and mud, silt and bones between my teeth, the Empress’s hand on the nape of my neck.

I threw a hand back and raked my nails across the Empress’s face, leaving three red scratches across her skin, smearing her lipstick down one half of her face like a lopsided snarl.

I turned my head to the sky and tried to trace the characters for my own name into the air, to cling to nothing else but that.

I am Fan Zilan, I thought, again and again and again.

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