Page 123 of The Blood Orchid

My father’s note fell from my pocket, and I didn’t have to unfold it to recall the words that were now etched across my soul.

I once thought that the greatest act of love was to traverse the lines drawn by fate himself, to hold on tight even as death pulled us apart.

But that is its own kind of selfishness.

I will do something even greater for them.

I will give them a world where suffering makes us stronger but does not destroy us, where pain can be overcome. Because if things continue as they have, then this world will not be worthy of them and all of their light.

I will find the source of alchemy, and I will destroy it.

“I can’t imagine a world without alchemy,” I whispered as the stones settled warmly in my stomach. I tried to imagine it was Auntie So’s congee, that she was here with me.

“It was a better world,” the Moon Alchemist said, taking my hand. “A less exciting one, but a better one.”

“What would you have been, if not an alchemist?” I said.

She looked to the sky, considering her answer. “Perhaps a very strict mother, or a very angry librarian,” she said at last. “And you?”

“No one,” I said. “Isn’t that funny? I was born to be an alchemist. My father only came to China because of alchemy. I was saved once because of alchemy. It was my greatest dream.”

The Moon Alchemist hummed, a sound I knew so well that it brought a smile to my lips. It meantdon’t you dare interrupt me, I am selecting my next words of wisdom.

“Alchemy was always just a tool for you to help others,” shesaid at last. “Alchemists want to rebuild the world around them so badly that they would give anything. In that sense, you are the only true alchemist there ever was.”

She placed a hand on my head, brushing down my hair.

“Stop stalling,” she said. “You know what comes next.”

I nodded, leaning forward and picking up the glass sphere from the water, setting it in my lap. Up close, it looked like an entire universe of lights, colors never before perceived by human eyes, lifetimes and landscapes and dreams.

I held it steady with one hand, then pulled out Durian’s last egg from my pocket. The Silver Alchemist’s ghost hadn’t been able to break it, so I could safely say it was one of the strongest materials I’d ever encountered. Wenshu had said that Durian was evil, and surely his eggs were proof of that—toxic fumes and flesh-eating sludge, and now, the ability to destroy alchemy forever. Did that mean that what I was about to do was evil?

I closed my fist around the cold metal.

You cannot create good without also creating evil, I thought. Likewise, you cannot create evil without also creating good. Durian’s first two eggs had been weapons—undoubtedly evil. But maybe this third one was the good that balanced them out.

Maybe this was a mistake, like so many other mistakes I’d made ever since I became an alchemist. It would help the world, but it would hurt people in the process.

I took a deep breath and decided that this would be my last mistake.

This time not made out of ignorance, or guilt, or regret, but out of a great love for this world and all the people in it.

I swallowed, my hands shaking. “What comes after the river plane?” I said.

The Moon Alchemist shifted closer to me, setting a warmhand on my back. “The end,” she said.

The words should have terrified me, but a strange calmness settled through my bones. Everything had an endpoint. I had always known that. It was only the rich who had gorged themselves on life gold who had been foolish enough to believe otherwise.

“That sounds... perfect,” I said at last.

I raised my arm, my palm sweaty, and brought the egg down on the glass sphere.

I only heard the crisp sound of shattering glass before a blaze of white washed away my vision. The island was breaking apart, blasted away by star fire. All the agony of the world rushed through me, igniting my blood, singing through my bones.

And for one breathless moment, I was sitting on a hill back in Guangzhou, my brother to my right and my sister to my left, a thousand stars above us.

“What if we went to Chang’an as scholars?” I said.

---