Chapter 14 Àn’yīng #2
The last time I went through a demonic passageway, it was formed of his magic. He’d been leading me home.
I never thought I’d miss the sight of the red scorpion lilies.
Cold brushes my shoulders when we step into the narcissus passageway, as though I step through a sheet of frost. I hear whispers and strange chittering in the distance, but when I turn my head sharply, there’s nothing—only walls of pale flowers everywhere, glowing unnaturally.
The passageway branches off, like a great underground tunnel.
The walls are nearly translucent, like smoke screens filtering through light…
and I have the strangest sensation we’re being watched.
Ghostly shapes move on the other side at the corners of my eyes; when I look at them directly, they’re gone in that swirling mass of gray.
As much as I try to resist it, the dark magic affects me. My senses slow, and I catch my attention sliding no matter how I try to focus on observing their magic, deriving any new information from the passageway or finding any weaknesses in their snares.
Yù’chén’s hand tightens around my waist, as though he can sense me slipping. His sword is out, and he walks with a predatory grace, his eyes glinting red as he surveys our surroundings. “Almost there,” he says to me, and suddenly something pounces at us.
I swallow a scream as a hellbeast forms out of the mist, claws and fangs flashing. Yù’chén lashes out; there’s a burst of red, and then we’re standing in a cocoon of scorpion lilies. Their glow lights the dark…and the air begins to shift with the familiar taste of his dark magic.
The hellbeast is gone as quickly as it appeared. The passageway fills with faint, feminine laughter—and I realize this was merely a demon’s illusory trick.
“Come on,” Yù’chén says, and as his scorpion lilies brighten like fire, the passageway releases us.
Wind, stars, sea. We’re plummeting through the night in a whirl of magic and blossoms. Overhead, the tunnel vanishes, replaced by the crescent moon—so close and so bright that I almost reach out, thinking I can skim my fingers along its surface.
Yù’chén’s body is warm, shielding me from the cold of the night, his chest and arms locking me in a hard grip. Great shadows spread like wings beneath us, interlaced with flowers, and Yù’chén rights us.
We slow, and I step onto the ground. The grass is as soft as carpet beneath my bare feet; the air is crisp with the scent of pines, flowers, and water. The dullness in my head induced by the dark magic of the flower passage clears.
I’m in a village or a town—but it’s unlike any I’ve seen in the mortal or immortal realms. We’ve landed in a valley drifting in the night sky, mist woven through its glades and clouds threaded through its gullies.
Pagodas and temples and houses with curved eaves are tucked in between, as though they are part of the landscape; unlike the mortal realm, they have no lanterns.
Sheer drapes flutter in the wind like gossamer wings, and the moonlight pouring down upon them seems to weave into their fabric so that they glow.
It’s eerie and foreign and wild, yet a part of me can’t help but admit that it’s also beautiful.
And all around us, shimmering softly beneath the aurora, are blossoming trees. Even from a distance, I feel their lure: soft pulls, like a lover’s caress, drawing me toward them.
A sharp tug against my wrist. I find Yù’chén frowning at me, and I realize I’ve wandered several steps from him without noticing. As he draws me back to him, I’m reminded of just how much danger pulses beneath the beauty surrounding me.
“This way,” he says, and I follow.
“Where are we?” I ask. The footpaths here are of white stone, tucked into the long grasses.
“One of the many enclaves of this kingdom. Those outside our realm tend to think the Kingdom of Night comprises only our court and the Palace of the Aurora, but they forget there is so much beyond that.”
Yù’chén leads me into an open-air temple perched on a sloping hilltop. Tangled vines of wisteria drape down like curtains, hiding us from sight while framing the landscape beyond.
A glade of silvergrasses stretches beneath us, sprinkled with little white starflowers. At its heart is a lake, reflecting the night sky like a looking glass.
And around it, dancing, are mó unlike any I’ve seen.
They resemble humans, yet unlike those I have come across in the mortal realm, these mó all retain characteristics of their true form: a horn here, a tail here, a glint of scales and a sheen of green skin.
I catch glimpses of liquid black eyes or yellow slits; forked tongues and sharp ears.
Faint, sourceless music echoes as though the wind and grasses and trees sing. Pure and clear, the melody undulates to the rhythm of their steps and the pulses of dark magic weaving around them. Moonlight pours down, intertwining with their hair and flowing into their skin.
“Moonsong.” Yù’chén’s voice startles me; I’d almost forgotten he was there. I find him watching the scene below us with a strange, almost wistful, expression. “Dark magic meeting the energies of the moon creates something akin to music. We call it moonsong.”
I shake off the stir of longing that the music invokes in me. We are close enough for the mó to smell us, to notice our presence—indeed, several close by glance our way between the trees—but none of them appear interested.
“A moonsong is how the mó replenish their energies,” Yù’chén continues.
“Much like how mortals sustain ourselves through food, mó sustain themselves through night, shadows, and moonlight. Partaking in moonsong together is like sharing a meal. Mó do not understand love as mortals do, just as the immortals and the gods have different views as well in this aspect. But companionship and pleasure are a part of their essence. Many mó are born during moonsong and grow up in their enclaves as one with the land across this realm.”
As he speaks, two mó break away from the lake: a young woman with catlike eyes and talons and a man with golden skin. I hear their laughter as they dart through the flowering trees in a semblance of a dance, she leading and he chasing.
I glance at Yù’chén. “What about you?” The question is open-ended, and I’m not even certain what I’m asking. Whether he partakes in the moonsong. Whether he sustains himself on shadows and moonlight. Whether he shares the essence of the mó.
A wry smile. “Me? I’m too mortal for this. The moon and darkness make me stronger, which is why my magic is more powerful here in this realm. But I need sunlight, food, and water, just like all other humans.”
I start as the darkness between two overhanging wisteria vines melts away to reveal a small figure.
A child, I think incredulously, for it had never occurred to me that the mó had young.
The being stares at us from between the flowers, unnaturally still, eyes glinting.
There is something birdlike to her appearance: Iridescent white feathers sprout from her arms and rustle on her bodice.
Yù’chén’s hand touches my elbow as reassurance, and I don’t pull away. “She won’t harm you,” he says. “Most mó did not grow up feasting on mortals. Not until my mother created a gate between our realms and launched the war.”
The child vanishes in a rustle of flowers and silvergrass.
I realize I’ve been holding my breath. “What do you mean, the mó did not feast on mortals until your mother began the war?” Having spent half my lifetime fearing these creatures that were known to us as monsters who would consume our flesh, blood, and souls, I didn’t know it had ever been otherwise.
“Very long ago,” Yù’chén says, “before the Heavenly Order imposed wards between our realms and banished the mó to the lowest-ranking creatures in all realms, there were occasional humans who wandered into this realm—and met tragic fates. Similarly, some mó crossed into the mortal realm, where they were corrupted by the taste of human blood and flesh.” He gestures at the moonlit figures by the lake.
“This is the natural way of mó. Mortal bodies and souls are not sustenance for them. Merely intense pleasure—like a drug or an addiction. One taste and you’ll be left craving more. ”
His own mother told me as much nearly a decade ago, when she drank my father’s soul. Like honey, like sunlight, like sweet morning dew.
In the cold and dark recesses of my heart, something sparks:
Anger.
They destroyed our home and have been hunting us, hurting us, not out of necessity…but for pleasure.
I turn to Yù’chén. “Is that true for you?”
His jaw tightens. “I’ve only had mortal blood once, and I taste both what humans would as well as what mó would. But I do not crave it.” His smile is dark. “Worrying that I’ll develop a sudden hunger for your flesh in the night?”
My fury grows, and I cut my next words to hurt: “Just trying to understand how much of a monster you are.”
Yù’chén blinks. The teasing vanishes from his expression as he lifts his gaze toward the revelry. “To be honest, àn’yīng,” he says, “I don’t even know.”
My anger dissipates at the rawness of his tone.
He wears a thoughtful expression as he observes the revelry, and again, I wonder if he has ever discussed this with anyone else.
I recall the way Sansiran treated him back in the Kingdom of Sky, the way she hurt him without batting an eyelash… and I think I know the answer.
Yù’chén continues, his tone flat and distant, as though reciting a story: “My mother pushed for me to be raised in the mortal realm, perhaps in hopes that my father would see my value and name me his heir—or at least, legitimize my title and hers.
But my father sent me to a private palace away from the Imperial City, where I saw him once a season, if even then.
I grew up around mortal servants, educated by tutors of the Kingdom of Rivers, but I knew I was different.
“When my father found out about my mother’s true identity—and therefore what I was—Sansiran stole me back into the Kingdom of Night.
Suddenly, my world changed, and everything I’d known was no more.
I was a halfling from a different realm, an aberration to the rest of the mó, needing sunlight and sustenance to survive, physically weaker, my magic stunted by my mortal blood.
I experienced emotions the mó do not, and I craved things they did not understand and could not give me.
“I learned to protect myself, of course; I needed to, to survive. But when my mother sent me back to the mortal realm to find you before the Immortality Trials, it felt like coming home.” Yù’chén draws a deep breath, as though waking from a dream—or perhaps a long nightmare.
His gaze falls on me, and I hear the words he does not speak aloud.
And then we met.
The air between us grows taut. I think of Yù’chén, lonely and cold and deprived of human contact for so long, stepping back into a world of sunlight. Of me, being the first human he’s interacted with in ten long years.
I am in dangerous waters. The last thing I want to feel for him is sympathy; I can’t afford to think of him as anything other than the villain in my world.
I need to think of him only as someone I can use to escape this realm.
“And the gate that your mother created,” I say. “Where is it now?”
But Yù’chén tenses, his gaze flitting to something behind me. “Don’t move,” he says. “We have company.”