Page 89 of The Blood Orchid

I turned to Zheng Sili, but his expression was hard to discernin the colorless light. He let out a sigh and wound more of the rope around his hand.

“Your brother will blame me if I come back with a corpse on the other end of this rope, you know,” he said.

“I know this is hard to believe,” I said, dangling my legs over the edge, “but there are things in this world that I fear more than my brother.”

Then, before I could change my mind, I dropped down into the darkness.

For a moment, it was like falling into a dream, my limbs wrapped in velvet darkness, sparkling drops of water like whispered stars around me. My feet landed on soft ground, but the rope on my wrists remained loose, even though I could no longer see Yufei or Zheng Sili above me, a world away.

Slowly, Taizong’s memories came to me.

I was sixteen, a boy who lived in a house of gold but would never be the emperor. I sat outside the hall where my brothers studied, watching the shadows from the lattice windows carve diamonds onto the gold tiles. At high noon the diamonds filled with sunlight, and I tried to hold the bright reflections in my hands but never could. Instead, I lay on top of them and let the sun carve into me as well, make me golden, make me bright and perfect. But it would never work, because second sons are safeguards, and third sons are shadows, and I only existed where the light could not reach.

I was twenty, and a woman with silver hair pressed golden lips against my throat. She was a song of silver, her words honey that dripped down my collarbone, her promises congealing into hope. She whispered to me about a world that did not yet exist, but maybe one day could. I stayed up late imagining, and for awhile, I kept that dream secret and perfect inside of myself. No one saw me, so no one noticed the universe I carried inside my ribs.

I was twenty-eight, and the world was paved with gold. There was stinging sunlight and parched dirt and armor with the weight of a thousand kingdoms on my back, the gates of Chang’an open wide before me. The sky was white and the horizon red, phoenix trees the color of blood shivering around me, shedding their crimson leaves like bloody rain.The scarlet-winged trees.

That was the day the world changed.

I was high in the scarlet trees, hidden among the bloody leaves, and my brothers were on the ground, approaching the gates.

I clutched the bow slung over my shoulder, the arrow meant to kill my brothers. Both of them were here, but neither of them saw me tangled amongst the red leaves, because they had never really seen me, not even once.

This was how they were supposed to end. If they died, I would be the crown prince, for there was no one else left. It was a simple choice that would change everything, something I’d long decided, and yet...

My hand trembled and the arrow fell, stuck in the branches below me, lost.

I thought of the woman with silver hair, the world we found, the ring we made together. It sat on my finger then, burning.

I dropped down from the tree. My brothers drew their swords, then lowered them when they realized it was only me. They would not raise a sword to someone they did not fear. After all, I was unarmed. I was small. I was so very close to being forgotten forever.

They spoke to me, but I did not hear. I pressed my hands to the earth, and everything began to bleed.

Alchemy rushed into the ground. It devoured the roots of nearby trees, squeezed scarlet sap from their trunks, wilted their branches to ashes. Groundwater rushed up from deep beneath the soil, pulling apart the tiled pathway. Flowers abandoned their petals, walls shivered into sand, the burning iron of earth metals drew up as if purged, and the world was red and red and red forever.

My brothers fell to their knees, and the tiled ground unlatched like a jaw full of jagged golden teeth, devouring them. And at last there was silence across the shattered courtyard, and what remained of the broken world belonged to me alone.

I was thirty-five, a commander at war, and the world trembled beneath my palms, for it feared me at long last. The fields before me were sharp with bones, the sky shattered with screams.I am the Son of Heaven, I am Tengeri Qaghan, I am the Earthquake Alchemist.

I was fifty-one, and the world was gray, and the light was gone, and my son was standing over me. He reached for my hand, and that was how I knew that all things were coming to an end. I thought he was there to say goodbye, but instead he slid the ring from my finger, the one that a woman with silver hair had forged with me long ago. I reached out for him, but all I could see were golden diamonds, sunlight I could never touch, bright red leaves falling down and down and down into darkness.

The ropes yanked me up. I splashed into mud, its coldness shocking me awake. Yufei and Zheng Sili looked down at me, both talking over each other so loudly I couldn’t make out their words.

My body no longer felt like my own, my skin borrowed andloose, my bones shuddering even though I didn’t feel cold. Yufei took my hand and rubbed it between hers, a burning warmth spreading through my fingers. I sat up and the world spun, so I latched on to Zheng Sili’s sleeve to stay upright.

“Are you all right?” Yufei said.

“She’s not dead, at least,” Zheng Sili said.

That much was true, but I didn’t know how to answer Yufei’s question. My whole body was still too numb.

Taizong was an alchemist, I thought. Even Hong hadn’t known, which meant the royal family had kept it a secret even amongst themselves. The House of Li had always spoken of Taizong as one of the greatest emperors China had ever seen, and now I knew why.

He had a ring, just like the Arcane Alchemist and the Silver Alchemist.

Come to think of it, the woman in Taizong’s memories was definitely the Silver Alchemist, though she’d looked younger than I remembered. Somehow, they had known each other when Taizong was alive.

I managed to pull myself upright, letting go of Zheng Sili’s sleeve.

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