Chapter 29 Zizi
Zizi
Zizi stepped into the heart of the First Court, his boots echoing on pale polished stone. It was empty—hauntingly so, as if
the air itself was holding its breath. The throne stood silent, untouched by its ruler. But a single moonflower rested on
the royal seat.
A clue or a warning?
Frowning, he picked it up, twirling it between his fingers. There was only one place in the underworld where moonflowers grew.
The Garden of Tongues.
The sanctuary was in full bloom when Zizi arrived, the perfumed air reminding him of The Reverie’s garden. He recognized Madam
Meng as the Lady of the Pavilion now, albeit in a different form. And he’d grown fond of the old lady and her teas. Still,
he didn’t know why the immortal had taken on the burden of raising him in the mortal realm when he had not made it her duty.
Just as he was unsure of his own origin, he realized he was uncertain of the Lady’s as well. He’d heard a rumor that she had
been mortal once, and her tears and grief over her deceased husband had brought down the great wall of a great nation, exposing
its tyrannical Emperor. It was strange to think of her—or any of the Kings or the underworld’s immortals—as having a past
life before their present existence. But Zizi was realizing that he knew much less about the underworld’s mysteries than he’d
thought.
He tugged at the black silk around his neck, that strange voice he’d heard in the Elder Gods’ palace repeating in his head.
He may have descended from our realm for a reason, but we cannot interfere with things that fate has set in motion. . . .
What had fate supposedly set in motion? And was the owner of the voice implying that Zizi—that Four—hadn’t always been in the underworld? All Zizi remembered of his own birth as the Fourth King was that he’d opened his eyes
one day and felt the wondrous beauty of the world for a single moment. Almost immediately, something had tightened around
his neck and reined him in.
His crown. His collar.
With a vexed sigh, Zizi pulled the moonflower from his lapel and strode to the swing in the middle of the Garden. It wasn’t
a night of convergence, when the realms would align for a few minutes and the Garden hovered between them. The sky above was
dark and empty.
What would you wish for?
To see the stars forever.
To purge his memories of Lei Ying and the pain they’d caused him, he’d brought chaos to a world she had fought to protect.
But Zizi was different now. He’d learned from his mistakes. Love wasn’t possession. It wasn’t a caged bird never spreading
its wings or never feeling the sun on its feathers. Love was the act of freeing the bird without the hope that it would return.
An image of a scowling Rui appeared in his mind, and he laughed to himself. She would hate to be called a bird.
He sobered quickly. The problem with finally understanding love was that he now knew that loss was the inevitable result of having once loved.
The First King arrived a moment later. Their sharply cut green pantsuit blended with the verdant garden, and the dewdrop jewel
hanging from their necklace sparkled like a song.
Zizi waved the moonflower. “I got your message. How’d you know I’d look for you?”
“I assumed you would wake with many questions,” One said, their tone giving nothing away. They looked as serene as ever.
Unbuttoning his cuff and pulling up his sleeve to his elbow, Zizi said, “My memories returned in the cavern, and I remembered I showed you this.” A glowing line rose to the surface of his exposed forearm, starkly red among green-blue veins.
“You knew about the love thread when you summoned me for help that night eighteen years ago. The soul in need, the one that was to be reborn, you knew it was hers, didn’t you?
That’s why you asked me to save her mother. ”
One smiled. “I see you have been piecing things together.”
“Did you know about the second light trail from the dying star?”
“I did.”
“And you assumed I would see it too because it was a night of convergence, and I’d be here in the Garden staring at the sky. What I don’t know
is why you got involved when you knew my actions would destabilize the realms and cause the Nothing to proliferate in ours.”
One’s smile turned enigmatic. “I am merely an instrument of fate. In this case, I acted on the belief that I was playing a
role I was meant to play.”
“Not that crap about fate again,” Zizi muttered.
“What is fate, if not the universe conspiring?” One mused, turning to the gleaming horizon. “As I once told you, Fate connects
us through the past, present, and future. It does not care if you have faith in it or not. It simply is, and we are mere moments
in its timeline.”
The pendant on One’s necklace twinkled distractingly as they spoke. As Zizi stared at the jewel, he thought he saw a myriad
of worlds. Of possibilities and impossibilities, of the past and the present, and threads crossing and uncrossing on a weaver’s
loom. A peculiar sensation came over him, as if he was floating in emptiness. As if he was, as One said, an inconsequential
flicker in the vastness of space and time.
“There were other things that convinced me that something larger was at work,” One said, their voice pulling Zizi from his
trance. “The twin vessels appearing so conveniently, the car accident, the fact that you had in your possession that very special relic . . . But the most important sign was this.”
They took Zizi’s arm. The love thread rose once again. It lingered this time, forming a shimmering circle around his wrist
like the red string he used to wear as a mage.
“Even after Lei Ying’s death, your love thread remained. That night on the rooftop in the mortal realm, you said something that troubled me. You said you made a promise to her.” One stared at him steadily. “What is a promise, Brother?”
Zizi’s lips parted to answer, but no words came out.
In all the worlds and all lifetimes, our souls are bound together. Wherever you go, to the ends of this world or the next,
I will follow.
Always?
Always.
What was a promise between a King of Hell and a mortal?
Zizi’s chest seized violently. Light flashed as his fist connected with the metal scaffold of the swing, the force of his
strike reverberating through the Garden, rustling the leaves and grass and shaking the ground.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. What had he done?
“I made a deal with her, didn’t I?” he whispered hoarsely, utterly distraught. Their love threads might have forged their bond in the beginning,
but he’d tied Lei Ying—tied Rui and himself to something worse than fate.
“It seems the most likely explanation as to why your love thread remained after Lei Ying died,” One said. “You were still
tied to her somehow, which meant the condition of the deal was not fulfilled—”
“And all deals are binding across lifetimes,” Zizi finished. One placed a soothing hand on his arm, but he jerked away as
if he’d been burned.
“Words do matter, especially for Kings,” One said, “and we are not normally careless with them. But your feelings might have
swayed you. Even if you did not mean to make a deal, it is not inconceivable that, unconsciously, your power took your desire
and distorted it. Do not be so hard on yourself.”
But One’s words did nothing to calm him. Zizi was furious, and he didn’t think he could ever forgive himself for what he’d
done. “The cycle repeated,” he said bitterly. “I ran away, but our paths still crossed in this lifetime, and the condition
remains unfulfilled.” He crushed the moonflower in his hand. “But I can’t follow her; I can’t be in her world.”
His prolonged presence would destabilize everything again. Always did not exist for them.
“There is the other way,” One said. “If her soul is here with you—”
“No! Rui’s death cannot be the solution.” One’s suggestion was so vile it cleared Zizi’s head immediately.
One reasoned, “That is probably why she died the first time—to fulfill the condition.”
“But she never made it to the underworld!” Zizi shouted. He wasn’t sure before, but it was plain as daylight to him now. “Lei Ying’s soul
never made it to the underworld. I searched for her in the Nothing because the mortal Emperor forced her to take her own life.
I even used my relic, but Nikai appeared instead. Where was her soul all those years before she was reborn? Why would—”
He cried out, clutching his head. That indescribable pain was back. Agony pulsed between his eyes, blurring the edges of his
vision. The sound of tiles crashing together grated against his ears and he reeled backward. He could feel a cold floor at
his knees, the silken touch of robes over his body. Hear his own voice speaking.
I must save her from the Nothing. I do not care about the consequences—I want to make a deal.
“What is wrong?” Zizi heard One say.
The pain left as suddenly as it came. Zizi pressed his fingers to his temple, confused by what had just happened. It didn’t
feel like a migraine.
It felt like he had dipped into his past.
“Tell me who sits at the table with the Elder Gods,” he demanded, gripping One’s arm. “Who are the other two players?”
One seemed taken aback. “Why do you ask?” they said in hushed tones.
Zizi eyed them shrewdly. “So you do know.”
For all his time in the underworld, he had always felt that the other Kings were privy to information he did not have. He’d chalked it up to the fact that he was the youngest, the last of them to gain consciousness. But maybe
there was more to it.
“One of the two players spoke just before I passed out at the palace,” he said. “They seemed to be aware of some condition I had to fulfill, and they said something else about me—that I descended from their realm. What does that mean?”
One hesitated, looking conflicted.
Zizi’s instincts pushed him. “Tell me—please. I need to know.”
Finally, One nodded. “It was never my decision to keep it hidden from you, but I was overruled. In the beginning, there were
only Nine Courts.”
Zizi jolted. “How could there not be a Fourth Court? I’m standing right here.”
“Four. Si. It is synonymous with death—”
“I know this—”
“But life and death are symbiotic,” One continued smoothly, as if he hadn’t interjected. “Life would lose its vibrancy without
death, and death has no weight without life. In a way, they are one and the same. It was feared that the Fourth King would be so powerful they could change the rules of life and death itself and throw the Divine into disarray. Because
of this, the seat and the throne were empty for a long time.” There was kindness in One’s eyes as they reached out and touched
his cheek gently. “But you are special, Brother. You are different.”
Zizi swallowed thickly. The Kings were a dysfunctional family, but they were still family. “Are you saying I don’t belong
here with the rest of you?”
“You are one of us, but you are so much more. You came from above.”
“Above?”
“The celestial realm is hidden from both the mortal realm and the underworld, but it does exist. The three realms—the trifecta
that is the Divine.”
“That’s impossible,” Zizi said at once. “I would know if another realm exists.”
“How would anyone know, if the Celestials are determined to hide their presence from us? The humans in the mortal realm do
not think we exist. We are myths to them. Who do you think visits our Elder Gods in that palace in Youdu? Who do you think the other two players are?”
Zizi slumped onto the grass, his back against the swing, clinging to his disbelief like a shield.
“You must have realized that there were things you can do that we cannot,” One said. “You were able to discover and use relics
from the underworld that were lost to time. You were able to stay in the mortal realm with Lei Ying, and you were able live
undetected as a mortal boy for so many years. And did you not crack the Obsidian Cavern’s walls when you woke? Those are not
feats that the rest of the Kings are capable of—you are different.”
“I thought I was just . . . determined,” Zizi said weakly, struggling to absorb everything.
“The Kings are darkness, but you also possess light,” One said. “You are brighter than the Nine—the one who fell from the
heavens, the Celestial who made the sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?”
One nodded. “It was decided that only an immortal from the celestial realm could take on the mantle of the Fourth King—to
act as a bridge among the three realms. It was the only way to make sure that the power of the Fourth Court would never be
misused. But it meant that the Celestial could never return to their own realm again, and that was not something to be taken
lightly. In the end, it was the brightest star, the son of Celestial Elders, who descended to the underworld.”
“If what you say is true, then they chose wrong. I have jeopardized everything time and again,” Zizi said, eyes downcast.
He had fallen in love when love was impossible, and he had risked not just himself but everyone else for it.
“I would not be too hasty to judge if it was the right or wrong decision. The mantle of the Fourth King must be taken up voluntarily,
and the decision to leave your original realm was one that you made. Do not think for a second you did not have a choice in all this.”
“How do you know all this? And why wasn’t I told earlier?”
A shadow fell upon One’s face. “I know because I was the one who put the crown on you.”
Zizi grabbed at the choker around his neck, scrambling to his feet and running to the edge of the Garden. His mind refused
to let the truth settle. He was a King, then a mortal, and then he’d thought he was a King again. But if what One said was
true, he was something else altogether. . . . It was all too much.
The vast expanse of the underworld with its twinkling lights reflected up at him, mirroring the night sky on nights of the
convergence. Zizi raised his head. That same deep-seated feeling of loss returning to his being as the dark and empty sky
stared back at him.
One moved next to him. “The convergence happens with all three realms. Why do you think you have always been so drawn to the stars, Brother? What is it you are truly longing for?”
Zizi’s vision turned dim and water-colored, his cheeks awash with tears as he whispered a single word.
“Home.”