Page 34 of The Blood Orchid

I swore and rolled Wenshu over, slapping him hard across the face. When that didn’t work, I rubbed my knuckles across his collarbone and yanked at his hair, but he still wouldn’t wake.

“Is he dead?” Zheng Sili said from behind me, not sounding particularly concerned.

“Shut up,” I said. “He’s clearly not.”

“Nothing is ever clear with you.”

I sighed, trying to bite back tears because the absolute last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Zheng Sili. I was so exhausted that I would have slept right there on the muddy ground if not for the incoming cold that would surely kill me. Now I had to drag my brother to the next town.

“Where were you headed?” Zheng Sili said.

“Baiyin,” I said quietly, afraid he would hear the way my voice trembled if I said any more.

“Sounds like a good place to restock on stones,” he said. Then he squatted down, yanked Wenshu’s arm around his shoulder, and hauled his limp body up, looking to me expectantly. “Are you going to help me or not?”

Stunned, I quickly tucked Durian into my bag and grabbed Wenshu’s other arm.

“Why are you—”

“Zheng Sili, best alchemist in Lingnan, leaves the Crown Prince unconscious to freeze to death with his poor, helpless concubine,” he said. “That doesn’t sound very heroic, does it? I would never find work again.”

“He’s not the Crown Prince,” I said, tugging Wenshu’s arm to force Zheng Sili to walk forward. “And I’m not helpless.”

“Look, I know you think you’re smarter than me, but I know the Crown Prince when I see him,” Zheng Sili said.

I sighed. I supposed it didn’t matter if Zheng Sili knew at this point. Who would believe him anyway?

“It’s the Crown Prince’s face but my brother’s soul,” I said.

Zheng Sili stopped walking. “And you were hisconcubine?” he said, expression twisted with disgust.

“He wasn’t my brother until a few weeks ago!” I said, my face burning. “There wasn’t exactly a wide array of corpses to choose from after the Empress’s monsters ravaged the palace!”

“Corpses,” Zheng Sili echoed. “So the prince is dead?”

I didn’t answer, staring at my footprints in the mud. I hated saying it out loud. But Zheng Sili was perceptive, and my silence stretched on long enough that it became its own answer.

“Wow,” Zheng Sili said. “And I thoughtmyfamily was complicated.”

I bit my tongue, too exhausted to keep arguing with someone with the emotional intelligence of a brick. I focused all my energy into putting one foot in front of the other as we headed down the incline alongside the river, following the current where it would have carried our boat had the private armies not overturned it.

“You’re trying to get him back, aren’t you?” Zheng Sili said after we’d walked in silence for a while longer.

I said nothing, staring at the rocky riverbank. Maybe if I ignored him, he would take a hint and stop talking. The sun was sinking lower, and we were losing light fast. I shivered, shaking hair out of my face.

“You seem the type,” he said, when I didn’t answer.

“The type?” I echoed tiredly.

He shrugged as best as he could with Wenshu’s arm on one shoulder. “The type who doesn’t leave anyone behind.” He said it like an insult, lip curling. He turned his face to the sky, hefting Wenshu higher on his shoulder. “I suppose I could make time to help you.”

“Help me?” I said, nearly dropping Wenshu. “Who said I needed your help?”

“Youdidn’t. Your brother who spontaneously turns into a limp sack of potatoes certainly implied it,” he said, nodding to Wenshu. “You don’t seem surprised by this, which means it happens a lot. You already told me you stuffed your brother’s soul into the wrong body, I’m guessing with some very high-level alchemy that you yourself don’t even fully understand, which means you did a shoddy job and something went wrong, so this is going to keep happening. What would you have done if I wasn’t here? Or if this happened when you were fighting someone?”

I grimaced, biting back a thousand sharp words that would take more energy than I had to spare. I forgot, at times, that just because Zheng Sili was rude, it didn’t mean he was a fool.

“Why would you ever help me?” I said. “You hate me.”

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