Page 19 of The Blood Orchid

He did not kiss me goodbye, only gave me a small, sad wave.

It felt so unfair that I could turn my back on him and return to the land of the living while he stayed trapped in the dark, rotting.

It won’t be like this forever, I told myself, and that was the only way I could bear to leave.I’m going to bring him back.

I walked through the forest, wanting a moment in the stillness of the night before heading back to Wenshu, who I was sure would notice the tears blurring my vision. The branches parted as I strode through them, releasing me into a pale, dark night, the moon a perfect crescent overhead.

I turned my face up to the sky, leaning against a tree. Theclouds parted and a cool wash of moonlight spilled across my face. At times, I imagined the Moon Alchemist reaching up and taking the moon from the dark sky as easily as plucking a soft peach from one of the trees that lined the streets of Chang’an.

Have you asked the Moon Alchemist what she thinks?Hong had said, as if I could simply knock on her door.

Even for a resurrection alchemist, it wasn’t that simple.

I’d dropped by the rivers of the other royal alchemists just long enough to make sure they hadn’t dried up completely, but I hadn’t stopped to talk to anyone but the River Alchemist, too afraid of what they’d say. I could still see the flare of hate in the Paper Alchemist’s eyes when she realized that everyone was dying because of me. Maybe hiding from her now made me a coward, but the next time I saw her, I wanted it to be with the elixir of life in hand, ready to escort her back to the land of the living.

I had never tried to find the Moon Alchemist’s river. She had wanted to die, so she’d probably walked off into the forest the moment she’d set foot here, and I couldn’t bear to see the parched dirt of her riverbed where her life had once been.

“What’s the answer?” I whispered to the brilliant white moon, wishing she could hear me. “You’d know. You knew everything.”

But the silent sky didn’t answer me. She was dead because of me, and she would never answer any of my questions again. The Moon Alchemist was not in the sky, or on the moon, but torn to pieces in a muddy pit. I would have to figure out the transformation on my own.

The dragon’s white eye, I thought, remembering the words scratched in ancient script across the parchment.

The words itched at the back of my mind, like scars of adistant dream carved into my brain. I’d heard them before, but where?

Something tickled my hand, and I looked down at a tiny black orb-weaver, the kind that had always reminded me of the Moon Alchemist and her delicate, perfect sharpness.

She’d never appreciated the comparison.

I remembered studying in the palace, back before everything fell apart, when I’d watched an orb-weaver tickle across the low table covered in scrolls in the royal library, dancing over the beautiful, ancient calligraphy.

The Moon Alchemist’s fist slammed down on top of it.

I lurched back. She wiped her hand clean with a cloth, scowling down at me.

“I left you here to study,” she’d said.

I glanced down at the black stain where the spider had been, just below the character forstar.

“I’ve been studying all day,” I said.

“You were watching that spider for the last five minutes,” the Moon Alchemist said. “I told you to study alchemy, not arachnids.”

“These are all so old,” I said, gesturing to the scrolls. “They don’t make any sense to me. They don’t even mention stones.”

“They mention many stones. You just aren’t reading close enough.” The Moon Alchemist jerked a finger toward the wordswestern guard.

“What guards the west?” she said.

I hesitated. “Soldiers?”

The Moon Alchemist rolled her eyes. “In mythology, Scarlet. Alchemists believed in gods back then.”

Maybe the oldest alchemists had been raised to believe in gods, but in the golden age of alchemy, I certainly hadn’t. Norhad learning about ancient history been a priority for a southern merchant girl. I only knew what I’d managed to glean since I’d come to Chang’an.

“The White Tiger?” I guessed, letting out a breath when the Moon Alchemist nodded.

“The White Tiger is associated with metals, so it’s a white metalstone, such as...”