Page 121 of The Blood Orchid

I sat between them, feeling the entirety of the world roaring between my ears.

“Wake up,” I whispered, even though I knew no one would hear me. I was eight years old again, alone in my room with their corpses. Last time, Yufei hadn’t woken for nearly a day, and Wenshu’s attacks were getting more frequent. One day, surely, they would never wake up at all, their souls lost somewhere far away like Gao’an’s.

All because I had broken the rules of alchemy, used it to tether them here for myself. Everyone in the world suffered, but I’d thought myself exempt, tried to bend the world to please me, to worm my way out of sacrifice, out of suffering.

Durian lay sleeping above the covers, so I picked him up, pressed a kiss to his head, and set him down on top of Wenshu, where he fell back asleep.

I picked up the rings from the table and slipped one onto my hand, the others onto my siblings’ fingers, then lay down between them like when we were children sharing the same bed. I took their hands in mine and closed my eyes.

This time, I returned to Penglai Island alone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Once again, I stood on the golden shore. The sunlight tried to strip away all the pain I felt, but I clung to it like it was driftwood in a nauseous sea. I replayed the faces of those I loved, imagined their names written in the immaculate sky.

I ascended the mountain, brushing away silky leaves and soft sugar sand until I sat in the cave once more. Its waters flowed silently downhill, through the river where the other alchemists had died, into the vast expanse of sea.

The other four alchemists had made a sacrifice to this water and harnessed the island’s amplified power for their own purposes, then forged it into rings that seemed like miracles, but were only an equivalent exchange. Now it was my turn.

I sank my hands below the surface.

What will you give me?the water whispered, the sound humming through my bones.

The river didn’t wait for my answer. Alchemy could only be controlled with clear intentions. If you didn’t make an offering, it took what it wanted.

The water rose over the edge of the pool, filling the cave withcool, shallow water that soaked my skirt. The glass sphere bobbed on the surface, but remained in the center like a buoy.

What will you give me?it said again.

Have I not given you all of me already?I thought.

Weeks in the Borderless Sea, snake bites and sunburns and a whisper of a dream chased across a country. Days of my finite life spiraling away, blood under my fingernails, my friend lost. But alchemy did not take prepayments or letters of credit like the rich.

I closed my eyes and imagined the rest of my life, the gates of Chang’an rebuilt, standing side by side with Hong as he was crowned emperor, his perfect voice promising a future better than anything his mother could have imagined.

I was sitting in the palace garden while Yufei waded into the pond, splashing clear water at Wenshu, who was trying to read his scroll. Ducks bobbed in the water, and sunlight filled the pond with diamonds. Hong appeared behind me with a head of cabbage under each arm, tearing off pieces for Durian.

The Moon Alchemist held my hand and guided it up to the night sky, helping me wrap my hand around the perfect full moon. I clutched it close to my chest, and its bright light cast the courtyard in white as the River Alchemist and Paper Alchemist watched in awe.

Auntie So and Uncle Fan were sitting in the shade of the courtyard while Yufei served them tea and suspiciously half-eaten cakes, their cheeks flushed red from health.

The western ward of Chang’an roared with the bright lights of a carnival, bread passed out for free, and no one had to beg for scraps when it was over.

And because there was no life gold in this perfect future, I began to age. My hair turned gray, my skin growing thin andtranslucent. But through it all, there was always Hong, standing beside me, believing in me.

This, I thought,is what I’ll give you.

I breathed the alchemy into my bones, and when I opened my eyes, a perfect diamond had appeared in my palms.

My own stone of Penglai Island, like the rings of the other four alchemists. Sure enough, the gem swirled with light, like a raging blizzard of alchemical potential trapped inside.

I’m going to save them all, I’d once said as I set off from Chang’an with my brother. Now I let that determination swell inside me, writing it across the sky of Penglai Island the same way I wrote the names of the dead in the river plane, desire pulling forth the stone’s power.

The walls of the cave fell away like ashes, and the sky opened up in all directions, a brilliant violet light somewhere between a day’s beginning and a night’s end. The dawn breathed above me, pulsing with the beat of my heart.

Then the sky unspooled, and I could see the faces of those I loved in the same perfect clarity that I used to see their names, and that was how I knew my sacrifice had been accepted.

The Paper Alchemist and River Alchemist were caught in the waters of the river plane, tossed along the current. They crashed into a shore that was no longer dark skies and black dirt but golden sand, the firm and imperfect earth of the real world.

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