Page 72 of The Blood Orchid

“We didn’t mean to insult you,” Wenshu said quickly, shooting Zheng Sili a glare.

“No,” the Silver Alchemist said, her glare sharp, silencing him, “you only meant to con me out of something infinitely more valuable than gold.” She turned to me once more. “I am going to ask you a question, and if you lie to me, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

I swallowed, clutching my teacup, and nodded.

“What do you want with Penglai Island?”

Chapter Fourteen

The Silver Alchemist sat perfectly still as she awaited my answer. She wore no alchemy rings, or gloves, or anything that she could have wielded as a weapon. Here she was, completely unarmed, yet threatening to kill me.

This, more than anything, told me exactly how powerful she was. Alchemists did not make idle threats.

“There are people that I need to bring back,” I said at last. Hopefully that was a vague enough answer to stop her from trying to kill us like the Arcane Alchemist, but truthful enough to satisfy her.

The Silver Alchemist stood up, stepping around the table. I drew back against the chair, but her arm on the armrest caged me in, her other hand gently cupping my face as she contemplated my eyes. Up close, her irises glinted with starry flecks of silver.

“There’s someone you love,” she said after a moment, drawing back and crossing her arms. “You would go to all this trouble for a boy?You, an alchemist? How pitiful.”

My face burned. “It’s not just for one person,” I said, shrinking back against the chair.

The Silver Alchemist turned away with a sound of disgust, drawing a jar from one of her shelves. She caressed the side of the glass with the same gentleness that she’d held my face, staring intently into the jar.

“I had fifteen husbands, you know,” she said.

Zheng Sili choked on his tea, spilling half of it down his robes.

“Not all at once, of course,” the Silver Alchemist said, smirking at him. “Life is long.”

“Notthatlong,” Wenshu said, eyes bright and focused, the way he looked when he was studying Confucian texts.

I was sure that what he was thinking, but too polite to say out loud, was that it made little sense for a rich woman to remarry so many times. Once remarried, she would have lost all rights to her late husband’s property. Poorer women often remarried out of necessity, but I’d always thought that the rich valued widow chastity and saw remarriage as something shameful.

“I thought I loved them all,” the Silver Alchemist went on, holding her empty jar up to the light from the window, casting a rainbow prism across the floor. “Love is beautiful when it blooms, but it dies, like everything and everyone else.” She lowered the jar, and the rainbow disappeared, the room pale once more. “There will always be another love,” she said. “To risk everything for something so ephemeral is madness.”

“If saving him is madness, then I lost my mind long ago,” I said, rising to my feet. The chill from the floor had seeped deep into my bones, and I could distantly sense myself shivering even as my blood felt like it was on fire. “If you never would have saved any of your husbands, then you have no idea what love is.”

The Silver Alchemist’s grip tightened on the jar. “Some people cannot be saved,” she said. Then she let out a tense breath, and when she turned back to me, her expression was even once more. “Regardless, there is no way back to Penglai Island,” she said. “It was sealed with blood, and that is how it will remain, forever.”

The Arcane Alchemist had said nearly the same thing, but hearing it from the Silver Alchemist’s lips felt like a door had slammed shut in my face. Maybe the Sandstone Alchemist had truly gone mad and his transformation wouldn’t bring me there at all. Maybe it would rebound and kill me instantly—a trap laid to punish anyone who dared try to find Penglai.

But there was only one thing that didn’t make sense.

“I can’t lie to you, but you can lie to me?” I said.

The Silver Alchemist raised an eyebrow.

“Hùnxie,” Zheng Sili said warningly.

My gaze dropped to the ring on the Silver Alchemist’s hand.

Song of silver, the serpent’s bite.

“You’re wearing my ring,” I said.

“Yourring?” the Silver Alchemist said, jaw clenched.

“The opal,” I amended. “It won’t give you beauty, the Arcane Alchemist said so himself. If it’s not on his hand, then its only use is to unlock Penglai Island. If all you wanted was to stop me from going there, you would have destroyed it or hidden it while I was sleeping. But instead, you’re wearing it.”

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