Chapter 5
The sound was furious and high-pitched, sharp enough to hurt my eardrums. I almost missed the echo of Ren’s frightened cry.
I quickened my footsteps, my lantern swinging wildly from my hand and splattering light over gray trunks and startled mice. I’d had a plan, and I’d assured Ren I could handle it. But despite it all, in that moment, all I could think about was reaching him—and the spirit—before it was too late.
“Your Highness,” I gasped, breaking through a thicket of closely knit trees. “Ren—”
A hand grabbed me by the elbow, and I swung my head around to see Ren pressed up against a tree, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the lantern light.
He tried to tug me closer, to hide me from whatever had terrified him, but he wasn’t fast enough.
My gaze slipped past him and landed on the large oak across the clearing.
A shape dangled from a lower bough. It appeared to be a woman, pale and hazy as the moon against a black sky. She swung from a crude rope wrapped mercilessly around her throat, neck bent at a hard angle. Mud streaked her faded dress, her face blurred beneath a curtain of long, inky hair.
It was eerie how quiet she was, only the branch creaking against her weight.
I blinked, and the woman flickered out of view.
“Perhaps we should leave,” Ren whispered. The fear in his voice was thick. “It doesn’t feel right, this spirit.”
“No.” I clenched the staff to stop my own shaking hand. “We came for her qi, and I won’t leave without it.”
Ignoring his warnings, I crept toward the oak, scanning the darkness for the woman. Suddenly, a cold breath brushed the back of my neck. I spun around—coming face-to-face with the evil spirit.
My heart clenched as a wave of anger smacked into me.
The woman’s eyes were hate-filled voids, the edges cracked, black bleeding down her cheeks. The braided imprint of a rope collared her neck, her head bowed unnaturally toward her shoulder. Dark liquid dripped from her gaping mouth—blood or mud, I couldn’t tell.
Before I could figure it out, a pressure wrapped around my throat, crushing my windpipe. The lantern slipped from my grip.
No, I can’t die here.
Those words branded my brain as I clawed at my throat, only to feel nothing but my own bare skin.
Whatever held me was worse than a branch—I couldn’t touch it.
My back slammed into the rough bark of a tree before being dragged upward, away from the ground and the spirit’s grotesque glare.
I grabbed at the trunk for something to hold on to.
Wood lacerated my exposed flesh, blood burning down my fingers and palms. Stars blinked across my vision.
I wheezed, sucking in every precious gasp of air. But it wasn’t enough.
I can’t die.
I can’t die.
Tears stung the corners of my eyes, blurring the skeletal branches around me.
I can’t die.
Then the voice whispering imminent death in my head changed, the pitch unfamiliar. Not mine.
I’m going to die.
Startling visions rushed through me, the full brunt of the spirit’s emotions breaking through my focus.
In my mind, I saw an infant in my arms, soft and warm against my bare breast. A baby girl, her fist wrapped tightly around my finger.
The child’s flushed cheeks were reminiscent of watercolor strokes on freshly pressed paper.
She blinked dazedly at the world around her, still so new and foreign and full of potential.
But her beauty was dampened by the cruel whispers coming from the doors behind me: A girl. Not a son. What a waste. My heart clenched. I’d failed to give those people the one thing they’d asked of me.
Then the image shifted, and I was kneeling in mud, ice-cold rain pounding my back, soaking my clothes and unbound hair. I dug frantically into the heavy, wet earth, searching, searching, searching. They’d said the child was buried—here? In the flower garden? Or in the forest behind the house?
At the thought of the forest, I was suddenly there, flailing aboveground, surrounded by nothing but trees.
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs burned from lack of air.
The rope—my rope?—was around my neck, the ground so far below.
My kicking slowed, muscles tiring as the last of my hope flickered out.
How the gods had cursed me. How they all had.
The spirit’s memories melted away into reality, and I found myself returned to the forest, to my own body and mind. There was no rain. No rope around my neck.
But I was still choking.
“Mistress Kang!”
With painful effort, I squinted down and saw a light resting on the ground, illuminating the Fu talisman taped to Ren’s face. He shoved it back and met my eyes with his own wide ones. In his hand, he gripped the peach staff I’d dropped.
The peach staff.
My protection, my weapon.
Unable to speak, I waved my arm, praying Ren would understand. Miraculously, he did. He yelled, “Catch!” and, with incredible aim, tossed the staff into the air. My fingers brushed the wood—then felt it slip past my skin.
I can’t die!
Fighting against my invisible captor, I strained my arm as far as it would go and snatched the end of the staff as it tumbled downward. I swung it up and thumped the opposite end against my own throat, the iron bells clanging loudly.
A scream tore at my eardrums. The force dissipated, and my body fell.
Branches and leaves whipped my face, shoulders, legs. I crashed into Ren’s outstretched arms, knocking us both to the forest floor. My ribs ached in protest, my throat raw from being crushed. But I was alive and I could breathe—albeit in sharp, burning gasps.
“You weigh more than you appear,” Ren muttered.
“And you—are weaker—than you appear,” I rasped, patting his arm with one hand. My other still held tightly to the peach staff.
“Are you all right?” he said more gently as he helped me up. “Breathe slowly. Deeply.”
I coughed and sucked in a long, stuttered breath. Then I panted, “You were supposed to be bait, not me.”
He had the decency to look ashamed. “I—”
The woman materialized beside us, letting out a scream piercing enough to fling me back to the ground.
I stumbled to my feet with a groan. Every part of me cried in pain.
My lantern had been blown out by the spirit’s wail.
I heard a grunt and squinted at the dimness.
My eyes barely glimpsed the outline of Ren hovering three feet in the air, his hands grasping at his throat.
I half ran, half hobbled forward, staff positioned like a spear before me.
But before the wood could make contact, his body was yanked sideways, out of reach.
My arms flapped to regain my body’s equilibrium. Then I turned to find Ren’s thrashing form again. A dark aura encased him, wrapping around his limbs like vines and tightening where his bones met. I wondered what the spirit was doing—
A horrible crack hit my ears as Ren’s joints snapped out of place. The angles of his shoulders, elbows, knees, even fingers—it was all wrong.
But the worst was Ren’s scream.
It shot straight from my head to my toes, pinning me to the earth.
“Release him!” I shouted, the strength of my cry tearing at my sore throat.
The spirit’s wails ricocheted, formlessly, around the clearing. Ren’s agonized howls easily met their volume. I didn’t need to see his face to guess the torment twisting his features.
Suddenly, his sobs cut off. The quietest wheezes and whines escaped his throat as he was choked by invisible hands.
I gritted my teeth, struggling to calm my thoughts.
If I couldn’t see the spirit, how was I to exorcise it?
I could blindly slap a purification talisman on Ren, assuming the spirit was strangling him like she had me.
But I wasn’t sure what the talisman would do to an undead corpse. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something.
Ren’s whimpers were fading, his broken limbs hardly twitching against his captor’s grip.
I didn’t have a choice. I drew out a handful of purification talismans and threw them in a fan across the clearing. A gust of wind blew the yellow papers away from Ren. One landed on a protruding tree root, and the spirit shrieked again—this time in pain.
My body moved before my brain could register what had happened. I shook my staff, the bells ringing softly. My lips parted to recite the incantations.
“Stop!” a male voice yelled, shattering my concentration.
There was no time to brace myself against the brutal force that struck my face and smacked me to the ground. My brain seemed to slosh against the walls of my skull. Iron bled across my tongue. I spat dirt and blood from my mouth, cheek throbbing.
As I pushed myself up, a hand clamped around my arm.
I felt myself being pulled away from the clearing, away from the evil spirit.
Still dizzy, I could do nothing but struggle to stay on my feet, knees bumping into unknown surfaces, pulse thundering in my ears.
It was impossible to tell whether it was my body or the forest that trembled uncontrollably.
At last, the grip on my arm loosened. My eyes peeled open. I no longer stood in the woods, the trees behind me like a fortress and a dark field spread out before me. The sky was still overcast, but I knew the main road was somewhere on the other side of the field.
I looked to my right, expecting to see Ren.
But standing next to me was an older man, a stranger.
When he spoke, I recognized his voice as the one that had stopped me from purifying the spirit.
I blinked blearily, struggling to make sense of his words.
My skull was still aching, my vision wobbly.
He seemed to be asking me to follow him.
“I … can’t,” I managed to say, twisting toward the forest. The movement made me want to vomit. “Ren…”