Chapter 27 Àn’yīng
àn’yīng
Kingdom of Sky
When I wake, I am back in the chamber where I first arrived.
A gentle breeze gusts in from the windows, stirring the curtains to reveal a view of undulating mountains wrapped in the eerie semidarkness that has befallen this realm.
My limbs are heavy, and my head is even more so; I cannot place the time or the day.
My left arm throbs. When I look down, a sprig of tiny mushrooms twines around my wrist. Their cream-colored umbrella caps rest against my skin, shimmering with energies. I can make out shadows curling just beneath my flesh, but they seem to have gone still for the moment.
“Took you long enough to come back.”
I jump at the voice and turn. Cǎi’hé sits in the middle of the chamber, leaning against a flowering peach tree that seems to have sprung from nowhere.
On their back is their basket of herbs, from which vines and leaves are sprouting; little puffs of clouds encircle them, and blossoms occasionally shower from the peach tree like pink rain.
I suddenly notice that little grasses, flowers, and funguses encircle my bed. The air over my body ripples with their healing energies.
“Thank you,” I croak. “How long was I out?”
“Three days.”
A chill besets me. Three days, when I should have been figuring out how to summon my army and forming a battle plan.
I wonder if Hào’yáng has reached the borders of the Western Province, whether he and Lì’líng have found each other.
Whether he has reunited with everyone—Mā and Méi’zi and all our friends.
I try to sit up, but pain shoots through my arm.
“Dear girl, are you trying to ruin all the work I’ve done over the past few days?” Cǎi’hé says, exasperated. “This is a difficult poison to counter, even for me.”
I lay back down, lifting my hand to study it. “What is it?”
The immortal blinks. “Demonic poison,” they say. “My magical fungus can slow its progress, but I am powerless to stop it. Only one of them can.”
I don’t need to ask whom they are referring to. A chill runs through me. I have a sense of the answer already, but I ask my next question anyway. “And what happens when it finishes spreading?”
“Unclear for an immortal or a halfling. But for a mortal…” Cǎi’hé’s eyes flash. “Death.”
The word hangs in the air between us in the silence. With this revelation, every possibility of a future I’d hoped for turns to ashes.
“How long do I have?” My voice sounds far away to my own ears.
The immortal’s face is impossible to read. “Days, perhaps. Weeks at best. I do not know.”
Days.
Long enough to execute my plan.
Cǎi’hé continues, “In the meantime, drink this and rest.” With a wave of their hand, sprigs of herbs and flower petals and leaves rise from the flower basket and stream into a jade-colored calabash that appears in their other hand. With a flick of the wrist, they send the calabash toward me.
I take it with my good hand. “I need to call on my army,” I say quietly. “I can’t afford to lose any more time.”
“Attempt more magic today and you will reverse all the work I have done,” Cǎi’hé says, pointing an admonishing finger at me.
“Calling upon your spirit energies will put them in direct conflict with the demonic energies spreading through you. That is why you fainted. Drink my herbal medicine, sleep, and your energies will stabilize tomorrow—hopefully enough for you to attempt more magic. Now I’m going to get some rest, and so are you. I shall see you in the morning.”
With that, they snap their fingers, and a warm spring breeze rises through the chamber, sweeping a rain of blossoms around them. When it settles, the chamber is empty, as though the immortal was never there.
—
I sit alone on the bed for a long while, staring out through the shifting gauze drapes.
Death. Cǎi’hé’s voice seems to echo in the silent chamber.
I have to find the way to call on my army, to reunite with Hào’yáng in the mortal realm…and to end this war by closing the gateway from the Kingdom of Night that is swallowing the Kingdom of Rivers day by day.
A blue-tailed magpie waits patiently at my bedside—a spirit messenger that Cǎi’hé left with me. I tell it my message to Hào’yáng and watch it flutter away, disappearing into the falling night.
Then I drink the contents of Cǎi’hé’s calabash in one gulp and let sleep take me.
—
I dream. It’s the same dream I’ve had in the mortal realm, only this time, I am in a realm of night.
The moon hangs high and round overhead, and silvergrasses and white starflowers brush against my feet as I run, chasing someone through trees.
The landscape is hauntingly beautiful and almost familiar, and the wind seems to whisper a ghostly song as it rises around me.
As wisteria petals fall in a shower of violet ahead, a figure appears, turning toward me, and it’s as though time has slowed.
Hair, billowing like swirls of ink.
Eyes, flashing like golden embers.
The phantom of a smile on his face as his gaze lifts to meet mine—
—
I wake. It is the middle of the night; shadows race across the ceiling, the clouds dancing past a hidden moon. A strong breeze lifts the gauze drapes to the pavilion outside, sweeping fallen leaves and flower petals into my chamber.
As I rise to search for shutters or doors to close, movement from the garden catches my attention.
I still, my two remaining crescent blades instantly in my hands. I reach for the edges of the sliding rosewood doors, intending to shut them against the weather—then pause.
A single black feather drifts from the sky, landing at my feet.
I freeze, instinct kicking my adrenaline into high. And as I raise my crescent blades, a shift of the shadows pulls my gaze up.
He’s there. Impossibly, he’s there in my chambers: His tall, elegant form is silhouetted against the curtains, cast in monochrome by the dim moonlight. His hair and cloak are still, in spite of the wind, and I catch a flash of those crimson eyes.
For a moment, we gaze at each other, and I wonder if he, too, is thinking of when I turned back to look at him from across the gateway in the Kingdom of Night.
But more than that, I’m remembering the last time we were alone like this: on his balcony beneath the stars, his hand in mine.
When I traced the lines of destiny on his palms and everything between us seemed possible.
A sharp ache rises in my chest, but I tamp it down.
I angle my blades at him. “You can’t be here,” I say quietly.
Maybe this moment will be the one where I end it all. Maybe taking his life now to defend the safety of the immortal realm will hurt less.
“I’m not,” Yù’chén replies. “I am a figment of dark magic cast from my shadowcrane. The feathers don’t simply show illusions of the past, àn’yīng.”
Moonlight spills over the edges of his figure—but there is a fainter quality to the lines of his form, almost as if the night pours through him.
Despite my better judgment, I find myself approaching him. The pain in my chest tightens with each step until I’m close enough to touch him.
Yù’chén makes no move to back away. He only watches me, that red gaze burning into my heart.
“You can try to drive that blade through my throat if it pleases you,” he says, “though it won’t work.”
Slowly, I lift Fleet to the curve of his neck. Press it forward, the tip touching his clavicle.
It falls through. He wasn’t lying—he is an illusion.
As I pull my blade back, Yù’chén makes as though to grab my wrist. His fingers skim over the skin of my hand, and though I know it isn’t possible, I feel a phantom twinge where we touch.
“A scorpion, through and through,” he says softly.
“You knew what I was the first time we met,” I reply, my voice uneven. “You deceived me, you used me, and you broke me first.”
He’s silent for several heartbeats. “I broke you first,” he says softly, tasting the words. It’s impossible to read his expression; his face is turned away from the light.
“Have you brought your army, then?” I glance out at the night beyond, so black it’s impossible to make out anything. “Are you here to flaunt your victory?”
He gives a shake of his head. “Contrary to your worst assumptions of me, there is no army. No one is coming, and no one knows I’m here.”
“You can’t betray your kingdom. You can’t defy your mother’s will.” I exhale sharply. “You’re bound by the covenant with her.”
“My mother broke her end of the covenant with me when she drowned you. Unbeknownst to her, I am no longer bound to her. She believes the covenant still holds between us because you lived—but you didn’t.
You were brought back to life because of the immortality in your blood.
I asked her to spare your life in return for my loyalty, but she killed you that night. ”
I stare at him, my heartbeats growing uneven. What he is saying makes sense; I felt it that night, the cold call of death, the rushing waters of the Nine Fountains as death had tried to sweep away my soul…but my core had snapped, unlocking the immortal part of me inherited from my birth mother.
“How did you find me?” I ask, stalling as I think of a way I might contact the immortals. I am weakened greatly by the poison spreading through my veins, but surely if I scream, someone will come—a guard posted nearby, a soldier out on the sparring field…
Yù’chén’s eyes lower to my left arm. “That was my spell on the wards that you triggered. My mother asked me to weave a talisman that would activate with any movement through it, meant to greatly weaken trespassers. I detected your presence and found you here.”
Demonic poison, Cǎi’hé had said of the shadows that writhed just beneath my skin. My throat tightens as I realize I’m going to die by Yù’chén’s hand after all.
Perhaps I deserve it. Wouldn’t I do the same if I were in his shoes?
Yù’chén splays his hands, as though my poisoning is a mere inconvenience. “I told you once, àn’yīng: The brightest and most beautiful flowers are the most poisonous.”