Page 120 of The Blood Orchid

The sands began to swirl around my feet, the sun brightening overhead. I opened my mouth, knowing I should say something, but unsure what.

“Do not say goodbye to me,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Then the sands rose up into a golden cloud, and the last thing I saw was his green eyes.

I was kneeling in the cave once more, the sphere held delicately between my fingers. I set it back down in the water as Wenshu and Yufei converged on me.

“What did you see?” Yufei said, tugging at my sleeve.

“Did it tell you how to bring everyone back?” Wenshu said.

In the doorway behind him, the sands were still and golden once more, no sign of a figure on the horizon.

I shook my head, rocking back on my heels, a piece of paper still clenched in one fist. I closed my hand tighter, hoping they wouldn’t see it.

“It was a lot to take in,” I said quietly, not quite meeting their gaze. “I need time to think about this. I want to be careful, to not make any mistakes.”

It was exactly what Wenshu wanted to hear, so I wasn’t surprised when he nodded and offered me a hand to help me up. “We can always come back tomorrow,” he said.

Yufei seemed reluctant, but her skirt was still filled with pears, so she didn’t protest. “Like I said, the dead won’t get more dead.”

“You just want to go back because there’s no meat here,” Wenshu said.

I tucked the paper in my pocket, and we joined hands around the pool. I closed my eyes, allowing the perfect island to peel away to darkness, soft sand giving way to hard tiles and a cold night.

We sat once more in the empty hallway, surrounded by bread crumbs and fruit peels and night. This world seemed so sharp and unpleasant compared to the gentleness of Penglai, my every footstep so jarringly loud on the tile floors, the night air thick with the smell of smoke and blood.

I told Wenshu and Yufei I was going to sleep and hurried back to my old room in the alchemy compound. I waited another hour, feeding seeds to Durian, then slipped on my old shoes—the reed ones I’d first brought to the palace—and headed for the tunnels.

I emerged onto the streets of Chang’an, my hood pulled low to shield my face.

The city smelled of blood and the faint beginnings of rot. Carts rolled down the streets carrying limp bodies, the wards left open long after sunset so they could pass through. I didn’t know where we could even bury this many bodies at once. Surely the gravediggers were already working day and night.

I thought, wryly, how lucky it would be if I were a míngqì merchant right now, making a fortune on all the funerals.

But this was not the heart of the city’s pain.

I walked toward the western ward, where my cousins and I had stayed when we’d first arrived in the city, too poor to afford to stay anywhere else.

Here, the streets were near deserted.

Of course, the poorest ward was where the Empress would have branded her name onto the most souls in exchange for food or money or empty promises. Wind whispered through the streets, carrying the scent of decay. Doors and windows hung open, revealing shadowed interiors—I’d heard that some families had died all at once, and the cleaners had to break their doors down to remove their bodies before they started to smell.

The streets had a dark tinge to them that I knew all too well as blood, some of it pooling in the drainage ditches, a muddy red soup. I saw my reflection in it, a scarlet contrast to the clear waters of Penglai Island.

I am the Empress, I thought.

Even though this wasn’t solely my fault, it was my responsibility now. Half a city gone, perhaps even half a country gone. Surely Guangzhou looked the same. Even if the souls possessed by the Empress hadn’t been used as an undead army to wipe the city off the map, thirty-five thousand were still dead.

I returned to the throne room and sat down in the Empress’s chair—my chair—and imagined a world where the joy of Penglai Island existed here for everyone, forever.

But that had always been a foolish dream. Penglai Island, the place of no winter or suffering, had been bought in blood. That kind of happiness was never free.

I walked to the room to where my cousins were sleeping and lit a candle. They would be angry at me for waking them, but they would be even angrier if I left without a word.

I shook Yufei first, but I knew at once from the stiffness in her limbs that she was not asleep.

I shook her harder, but she stayed limp and unresponsive. I moved over to Wenshu, but he was the same.

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