Page 39 of The Blood Orchid

“I suppose I must shoulder some of the blame,” said the man holding me, “for allowing you into my palace in the first place.”

“And to think Hong would have made you empress,” said the woman who’d held a knife to my throat.

Everyone in the pub laughed in unison—a cruel, hollow sound, with no joy in their eyes.

“Don’t talk about him!” I said, managing to elbow the man behind me in the nose. But the moment I broke away, more hands seized me.

“Oh, a sensitive subject?” the barman said, leaning on his elbow over the counter. “I suppose that’s fair. I might be a bit touchy too if my beloved had died because of my incompetence.”

“Zilan—” Wenshu tried to speak, but the man slammed him once more against the table and he let out a winded cough.

I ground my teeth together, my pulse pounding in my ears as I scanned the room for some sort of exit. I was decent enough at sparring, but fighting off an entire room of full-grown men and women was something else entirely. How could I incapacitate allthese people? I could turn the floor to a sheet of ice, or release a smoke bomb, or set the walls on fire, but none of that was a good idea when I was trapped in the pub along with them. What would the Moon Alchemist have done?

She wouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place, I thought grimly.

The man adjusted his grip on my arm, his sleeve sliding down to reveal his soul tag, the bright red scar tissue that spelledWu Zhao. The same tight, precise script written on Junyi’s arm.

Fighting off this many people at once was futile. I needed to take down the Empress, not her three dozen puppets.

But, luckily, I knew where I could find her.

I hesitated, glancing to Wenshu where he was trying to elbow a burly man back into the door.

“Can you carry me?” I shouted.

“What?” he said, wincing as a man bent his wrist back at a harsh angle.

“If you can’t carry me, then drag me,” I said. “I think I can give you about thirty seconds.”

“What are you talking about?” he said, struggling against the barkeeper.

But if I said much more, then the Empress might start to understand as well.

I seized a knife from the table and raked it across the throat of the man behind me.

Hot blood sprayed across my face, salt stinging my lips. For a moment, I was in the throne room once more, clutching the Empress in my pearl-white hands, her pulse racing beneath my teeth.

The man fell forward and crushed me into the table, bowlsand bottles shattering beneath my spine, his blood spilling hot and fast across my chest.

A dozen other hands reached for me, but before they could tear me away, I grabbed the man’s wrist and pressed three firestones to the soul tag on his forearm.

His blood rushed faster at my touch, a river soaking through my dress, rising up to devour the floor, drowning me in salt and crimson darkness. The table dissolved, the heavy weight lifted from my chest, and then I was falling into the silky night of the river plane.

Before I could even land on my feet, the landscape shifted beneath me, the river ripped away, dry land flashing past me as if I’d jumped out of a moving wagon. Desire guided you in this plane, and my desire was burning hot, lancing through my bones, cracking me open like scorched clay.

Wu Zhao, I thought.Come find me.

I crashed into wet earth and rolled down a steep incline, falling deeper and deeper into the woods. I sank my fingers into the freezing mud as I slid down, trying to slow my descent, but it parted like cream, and I only fell faster.

You want to find Wu Zhao?the world whispered through my bones.Then fall.

I crashed into flat ground, breath slammed from my lungs, mud on my lips. I rolled onto my back and gasped for air, the dark cage of the sky the same shade as the sludge beneath me, the whole world made of night.

Wu Zhao, I thought, the words as clear in my mind as the bright white coin of the moon overhead,come out here and face me.

But the Empress never took orders from anyone.

I didn’t know if she could control other people’s bodies while her consciousness was busy in the river of souls, but at the very least, I hoped I was making it difficult for her. After all, she was not some omniscient god, but a mortal clinging to the living plane through alchemy. The longer I could distract her, the more time I gave Wenshu to get us both out of there.

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