Five Three, Five Four
One month later
The apartment smelled of ginger rice and steamed chicken. The floor was vacuumed, the shoe rack tidy, and a stack of laundered
clothes rested neatly on an armchair.
Rui fought the urge to pinch herself awake. This was a normal she’d forgotten, but it was the new normal her father had promised.
The sight of her in the hospital, beaten and bruised, had shaken him to his core. He’d said he couldn’t lose her too, and
he’d vowed to clean up his act.
He was busying in the kitchen now, his eyes sober behind his new glasses. “Hmm . . . it’s been a long time since I cooked
this. Think I forgot my secret ingredient.”
Rui said, “More garlic?”
Her father laughed. “Yup.”
The doorbell rang, and they both froze.
“Matthias? Matthias, are you home?” It was only Auntie Chen.
Her father shook his head with a resigned smile. “Bet she needs help with her computer again. You don’t have to do anything.
Sit tight and rest, I’ll be right back, okay?” He’d taken on the tone he’d used on her when she was a little girl, but Rui
didn’t mind.
“It’s not like I can do much anyway,” she said, sticking her hand up. It was still in a cast.
Worry lines deepened on her father’s forehead, but he managed a smile. “You got pretty banged up, kid.” He opened the front
door. “By the way, something arrived from the hospital. It’s in the bedroom. Guess they sent it here instead of the Academy.”
After he left, Rui poured herself a glass of grape juice and shuffled to the bedroom.
A small ziplock bag was on her father’s desk.
They had given her the essentials when she was discharged—a ratty wallet and a broken cell phone.
These must be the other things they’d found in her pockets.
She put her juice down and fiddled with the bag with her good hand.
Old receipts, a gross stick of gum, bobby pins, a jade rabbit, and some bits and bobs she didn’t care about.
Light flashed.
Nikai’s mirror.
Carefully, she slid it out of the bag. There were hairline fractures in the fragile glass.
“Nikai? Seven?” she whispered on impulse. But her heart cried out a different name.
The glass remained dull, and as she held it in her hand, it turned gray and crumbled into ash, leaving behind only a small
shard.
Whatever magic the mirror had was gone.
Rui clutched the remaining piece, remembering the legend Zizi had told her at The Reverie, about the beings who were born
paired, then separated by wrathful gods, doomed to live their lives apart, always seeking to find their matching half. She
thought she understood the story now.
The Tenth King had kept his word. She’d asked for her vengeance, her magic, and Yiran’s life, and she’d gotten it all. Even
her father was coming around. But Yiran was no longer speaking to her, and Zizi was gone, and there was a new hole inside
her to fill.
Sighing, Rui slipped the shard of glass into her pocket. As she picked up her grape juice, she noticed something sticking
out from the corner of her father’s desk drawer.
An old photograph, furled at the corners like it’d been stuffed somewhere, forgotten, then dug up again.
She tugged the photograph out.
A group of teenagers in their Xingshan Academy uniforms with wide grins and messy hair stared back at her. They looked young—third-years,
maybe. Two boys at the back of the group stood out because of their height.
The photograph shook in Rui’s hand, and the juice spilled from its glass when she put it onto the table.
“How . . . what?” she breathed.
There was no mistaking who the bespectacled boy on the left was: a teenage Matthias Lin.
But as far as she knew, her father had ordinary levels of spiritual energy. He’d never told her he’d gone to Exorcist school.
Heart racing, Rui opened the drawer. There was another photograph. It was faded like the other. Her father was older in this
one, in his early twenties. The photographer had caught him in deep conversation with the same tall, handsome young man he’d
stood next to in the other photo, their heads bowed close together.
The longer Rui stared at the handsome young man, the clearer his features became, and in them, she recognized the face of
a boy she once knew.
Song Yiran.
The penthouse lounge in Theo’s condo was getting on Yiran’s nerves. The fireplace was fake, the plush decor screamed nouveau
riche, and the cloying scent from the reed diffusers was giving him a headache. He was dying to get out of here. But he said
nothing, waiting patiently for Nick Cheng to draw a card.
A smile broke on Cheng’s face.
“Got a good one?” Theo nudged.
Cheng ignored him.
Theo shrugged. He and Sweets had already folded. The game was once again to be decided between Yiran and Cheng.
“My turn.” Yiran swiped a card off the deck and threw it carelessly onto the table. The jack of hearts stared back at him
balefully. “Bust,” he sighed.
Cheng punched the air. “Winning fair and square like a man.”
“I agree in principle but find fault with your gender dichotomy. Good game, Cheng.”
“Give me back my watch, asshole.”
“Easy with the name-calling, babe,” Yiran said without ire. He stuck his wrist out and Cheng unbuckled the watch.
Cheng gave an ironic little bow while flipping them off. “So long, suckers.”
Everyone laughed.
Sweets rolled off the sofa. “I’m heading off.”
“Me too. Time for dinner.” Theo glanced at Yiran. “You’ll let yourself out?”
Yiran nodded.
After they left, he sat there, delaying his return to Song Mansion. The house felt colder these days, and he no longer thought
of it as his home. He couldn’t forget Song Wei’s reaction when he found out Yiran could no longer practice magic. He’d looked
victorious, and it had killed any love Yiran might have had for the old man.
Something flickered against the windows. Snow.
Yiran opened the heavy glass doors and walked out onto the terrace. The air was brisk, and he could hear the faint honking
of the cars from the streets below. He shivered in his thin T-shirt.
It had been weeks since he last saw Rui. She had looked so small and fragile in her hospital gown. He hated her. He missed
her. He knew it wasn’t her fault, but he needed someone to blame. It was too painful to be around her, to be reminded of what
she had done and what he had lost.
He’d heard that the stupid wizard had disappeared. Ash assumed Zizi left the city to hide from the Guild and his punishment.
But Yiran knew Zizi would never abandon Rui. Fuck, Yiran thought when he realized he missed the annoying mage too. He was getting soft.
Something stabbed his palm. The jack of hearts card was crumpled in his tight fist.
“If you’re not careful, you’re going to catch a cold.”
Yiran felt his heart stop.
He recognized the voice. Hated that he recognized it. Hated that his immediate thought was Thank gods he’s not dead. He couldn’t bear to turn around. Couldn’t bear to see that beautiful face and those sad gray eyes again.
“Are you finally here to kill me now that I’m defenseless?” Yiran asked.
“No, silly. I’m here to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
Footsteps coming closer. A soft laugh. A cold breath ghosting against his ear. A voice sending shivers down his spine as it
said:
“Do you want your magic back?”
The darkness was lonelier than expected.
Hell’s dungeon was cold and damp and silent as a graveyard. A graveyard. Zizi almost laughed at that thought. Except laughing would hurt.
He could barely raise his head or move his fingers. It felt like a ton of bricks was sitting on his shoulders, pressing against
his spine. There was a constant pulling in his brain. His mind was fighting with itself—with Four.
Everything was pain, pain, and more pain.
The first few days in the underworld had been bearable. Weirdly ordinary. He had a nice room in one of the Fourth Court’s
villas. It reminded him of a five-star hotel, except room service was a bunch of souls taking care of your every need.
He wasn’t allowed to leave, obviously, but they had kept him well fed with food from the human realm. He spent his time missing
Rui, which was a different kind of torture. To torment himself even more, he’d asked for paper and some charcoal. He sketched
her face endlessly, trying to forget how she’d looked at him the last time he laid eyes on her, wishing he had told her the
real answer to her question.
Everything you said, everything you told me—about me, about us—did you mean it? Was it real? Or were you only drawn to me because you’re . . . you’re him?
No matter what they told him, no matter what they did to him, Zizi knew. His feelings for her belonged to him and him only.
Soon enough, a slow trickle of eager visitors curious about the new Fourth King arrived.
Zizi made his stupid jokes, got a few laughs. Eight was a man who reminded him of one of those finance types in the human
realm. Arrogant and tedious to talk to. Five was extremely shy. Seven was a little girl who sang Zizi a lullaby about spiders
and ate his food. Zizi liked her best.
Zizi never saw Ten. He wondered if the bastard was being punished for his transgressions in the human realm.
The Kings who did show up were excited to meet Zizi, until they realized he wasn’t some death god brother coming back into
their fold. He didn’t remember anything apart from the few memories that returned in the tunnel. He didn’t understand the
things they were saying to him. It felt like he’d failed a test he didn’t know he had to study for.
Eventually, an old crone dressed in tattered gray robes appeared, her wizened face half hidden by a hood. She was the Second
King, and she’d asked to see his hands. He’d given them to her, palms faced up, and she held them in her withered ones.
“His soul is still asleep.”
“Well, that sounds ominous,” Zizi said, with a humor he didn’t feel. “What does that mean?”
“You are here to keep the balance of the Ten.”
“So I’ve been told.” A safer human realm meant Rui would be safer. It was the only thing keeping him sane.
“But as of now, the balance is still tipped,” said the crone. “First, you must remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Everything.”
“You’re not being helpful,” Zizi scolded lightly.
The old crone leaned her head back. Her hood fell, revealing a skeletal face. Where her eyes should be, two black holes stared
back at Zizi.
He’d shuddered, but he couldn’t look away.
“Time is running out,” she’d said. “You house the soul of a god, but this body is that of a boy. It is human and mortal, a vulnerable vessel that will age and turn to dust. In our realm, this body cannot survive. You must not fight the change; you must let it happen.”
“What if I don’t want to change? Can’t you pull Four’s soul out of me and send me back to where I belong? I’m human, not a god.”
“Alas, we cannot extract Four’s soul from its vessel, not when his power now resides there too. They are fusing, even as we
speak. It is too dangerous to separate them. Further chaos across the realms may ensue.”
“How lovely.”
“You are afraid,” Two murmured. When Zizi stared defiantly back at her, she whispered, “Wake up, sweet prince.”
After she left, Zizi looked in the mirror and saw that a lock of hair on his head had turned silvery white.
That very night, the black collar around his neck started to burn. It made his skin itch, and he’d tried to rip it off. Two
men in expensive-looking suits appeared the next day. One was built like an ox, the other had a long face that reminded Zizi
of a horse. They removed him from the Fourth Court and brought him to a dank cell and clamped thick manacles around his ankles
and wrists.
“For security,” Ox-Head had said.
Zizi laughed bitterly. “Afraid I’ll escape again? Why can’t I stay in the villa? You can chain me up there.”
Horse-Face gave a snort that sounded more like a neigh. “This is the deepest part of Hell. There are ancient forces alive
in here; it will help you remember.”
A while after, a visitor arrived. A young man, barely older than Zizi. He had large, haunted eyes, like he’d seen the worst
of the world and beyond. The red candle shook in his hand as he held it up to his face.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
“No,” Zizi replied.
“I am Nikai, a Reaper from the Fourth Court.” The young man hesitated. “They released me so I could come here to jog your
memory.”
“I don’t know you.”
Nikai looked wounded by Zizi’s words. “You’re not him,” he whispered, a catch in his voice.
As Nikai retreated into the shadows, Zizi couldn’t resist calling out, “What was Four like?”
He heard a small, strangled sound from Nikai.
“He was my friend.”
The silence that followed told Zizi that he was, once again, alone in the dark.
Soon the tug-of-war in his mind began again. In between wretched sleep and wakefulness, he writhed in endless pain.
Then, dreams started.
Laughter. The starburst scent of wildflowers. The taste of something sweet like honey. A young woman’s voice. Stars. Blood
on snow. The young woman, with her back turned to him.
Delirious and lost, Zizi whispered to the dark, “Who are you?”
But the dream only repeated.
Laughter.
The starburst scent of wildflowers.
The taste of something sweet like honey on his tongue.
Her voice.
Stars.
The woman.
Blood on snow. A body, cold.
Then one day, it changed.
The young woman was standing by an ancient wisteria tree that reminded Zizi of his own back in his shophouse. Her purple hanfu
flowed to the ground, black hair cascading down her back.
Turn around, please, Zizi said in his dreams. Let me see who you are.
He asked again and again, until his voice was hoarse.
Finally, she did.
Do you remember me? said the woman, who was wearing Rui’s face.