Page 111 of The Blood Orchid

Yufei was sitting on the floor of one of the main hallways, eating bread. Her hands, normally dirt-stained, were suspiciously clean. She waved for us to sit down and nodded to a basket of breads and fruit on the floor in front of her, probably gathered from the storage cellars. The hall was one of the only parts of the palace with walls still intact, other than the throne room, which none of us wanted to revisit.

The sight of the Empress’s body hunched over a pile of food, cheeks filled with bread, was so undignified that I couldn’t help but laugh. “All the dead are waiting for me, and you want to take a snack break?” I said.

“Dead people can’t get anymoredead,” Yufei said, “but bread will get stale.”

“And you’re about to open a whole new world,” Wenshu said, tossing me an orange. “I think you deserve a snack.”

I smiled even though my face felt stiff, then looked down at the orange and began peeling it so I wouldn’t be expected to say anything else. My stomach felt like it was clenched into a tight fist. I peeled the fruit slowly, letting my hair fall over my lap to hide my trembling hands, and ate even though I could taste nothing but blood.

The hours wore on, and the shadows devoured the hallway. I’d been trying to make the transformation work all evening without so much as a spark. Now the food basket was no more than fruit pits and orange peels, and the hall was so dark we could hardly see each other. Wenshu complained and tried to light the hall torches, but I warned him that if the transformation rebounded, they might set the whole palace on fire.

The only light in the whole room came from the three rings on my right hand.

The dragon’s white eye, the faceless night,

The song of silver, the serpent’s bite,

The child of Heaven, the scarlet-winged tree,

Together at last, the shadow makes three.

This was everything my father had died trying to find. But now that I had all the pieces, I didn’t know what to do.

“If this is gonna take much longer, I’m getting more food,” Yufei said.

I couldn’t blame her for getting impatient. For the last hour, I’d knelt on the floor, trying to clear my mind and think only of Penglai Island, carving the words into the sky of my mind like I did in the river of souls. I could hear the rushing water of myqi somewhere far away, just waiting for me to tap into it, but couldn’t quite bring myself to try.

“You’re stalling,” Wenshu said.

I opened my eyes, glaring at him. “I’m trying my best.”

“No, you’re just sitting there meditating,” he said, crossing his arms.

“And how would you know?”

He rolled his eyes. “Because,” he said, “when you do alchemy, your hands glow and your face pinches in like you’re eating something sour.”

“Pardon me if it’s a little hard to open an entirely new world with two people staring at me,” I said, fists clenching, rings pinching my skin at the tightness. He and Yufei always acted like alchemy was easy, just a simple matter of throwing the right rocks together and watching what happened.

Wenshu sighed dramatically and turned around, staring out the window. “Better?”

“Everything’s better when I don’t have to look at your ugly face.”

“Again, this is not my face,” he said. “You’re still stalling.”

Yufei sighed and turned around, fidgeting with the hem of the Empress’s dress.

I looked down at the rings as if they’d reveal the answer to me, their facets mockingly beautiful and bright.You have the most powerful rings in the world, and you don’t know what to do with them?they whispered.

I closed my fist and looked to the gold ring Hong had given me when he was alive, which I’d moved to my left hand. I twisted the cold metal and tried to think only of what I’d promised him, what I’d promised all the alchemists. But rather than stokingfires of determination, I only felt my stomach hollow out with nausea.

It doesn’t matter if you’re nervous, I thought. I wasn’t Zheng Sili, who had the luxury of performing alchemy under perfect conditions. People were depending on me.

I closed my eyes and focused on the sound of the running river. It rose louder and louder in my ears, devouring all sound. Darkness closed in overhead, the cool golden tiles softening into wet dirt.

I was kneeling once more at the river of my own qi.

Finally, I thought, letting out a tense breath. I pressed my hand with the three rings into the water.

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