Page 2 of The Blood Orchid

And at every turn, my sister, Yufei, was there, wearing the Empress’s face.

She asked me about dinner and scolded my brother in the same voice that had once told me, unflinchingly, that she’d burned my siblings alive.

Even though Wenshu was borrowing the Crown Prince’s body, I never once forgot that he was Wenshu. But for some reason, the Empress’s golden eyes haunted me, even though I knew Yufei was the one behind them.

Maybe it was because I’d killed the Empress, sacrificed my body and my betrothed to make sure she was dead, and yet she was still strolling around the palace asking for roasted chicken at all hours of the night.

The Empress’s death, of course, had become one of the palace’s many secrets. As long as her body was walking around, she was alive as far as the public was concerned. In many ways, it was like I had never killed her at all. Maybe that was the problem.

I hadn’t truly felt like I could breathe until I’d left the palace with Wenshu and the gates of Chang’an were a tiny golden sparkle on the distant horizon. The city that was once my greatest dream had swiftly become my nightmare.

Wenshu had found us thin white cloaks with wide hoods to protect us from the sun, so the two of us swept across the desert like ghosts, our footprints quickly erased by the constant song of shifting sand around us, as if we’d never really existed.

There was someone out here who could help us, but he didn’t like to be found.

“Quit kicking up sandstorms behind you with your giant feet,” Wenshu said.

If there was one thing my brother was good at, it was reminding me that no matter whose face he wore, this was absolutely not the sweet and gentle prince Li Hong anymore.

“Then keep up,” I said, not even glancing over my shoulder.

“Not all of us have legs the length of the Yellow River.”

I groaned, tugging my hood down in a futile attempt to cover my face with more shade. “Please don’t talk about water right now.”

“Are you dizzy?” Wenshu said, suddenly beside me. It was a habit from when we were kids, when he had to worry about me passing out in the heat. But those days were long gone, the name—my real name—carved into my forearm a reminder of all that had changed.

My mentor, the Moon Alchemist, had preferred death to living as an undead abomination like me. But I had too much todo before I could die again. My soul was safely tethered to my body, my dead heart once again beating, draining colors from the world around me, pulling light and life and qi from anyone I loved.

But almost no one I loved was alive anymore. I’d made sure of that.

My brother and sister were just as dead as me, my parents long gone, my betrothed waiting for me at the river of souls, his body loaned out to Wenshu like an extra coat. My aunt and uncle who had raised me were still alive and well in Guangzhou, but we could never see them again. Being near us would kill them, our presence lapping up their qi like a wet rag until there was nothing left.

“I’m not dizzy, I’mthirsty,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

Wenshu winced as a hot breeze blew his hood back, spraying his eyes with sand. “Why are you complaining instead of getting us more water, then?”

“Do you have heatstroke already?” I said. “We’ve only been out here a few hours. There’s no water in sand.”

“Notinthe sand.Belowit,” Wenshu said, rolling his eyes. “There’s groundwater somewhere down there. How do you think cacti survive out here?”

“I don’t know, rain?”

“Rain,” he echoed, giving the searing sky a pointed glance.

I would have kept walking just to deprive him of the satisfaction of being right, but my mouth was papery dry, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and we still had hours to go before nightfall.

I knelt down in the sand, a warm bath of gold around my legs, and reached into my satchel.

Durian, my alchemy duck, popped his head out of my largerbag. My hands were a bit sweaty, but I managed to pull three waterstones out of my satchel and press them into the sand.

Alchemy rushed like lightning into the ground. It cascaded down the path of desert crystals too small for the eye to see, reaching for the image of water, thinner and quieter as it burrowed deeper into the ground. My palms began to sting as if sunburned, the alchemy aching through my veins, loosening my fingernails, cracking my skin with dryness. I guided the current around the long-buried bones of rodents and abandoned snake skin and, finally, the tangled web of cactus roots somewhere far away. I traced them down and down until at last, my hands grew cool.

Water burst up from the sand, a thin stream that caught the light in its transparent brilliance. It arced high, then sloped back down and clocked Wenshu between the eyes, sending him onto his back in the sand.

“Fan Zilan!” he said, moving out of the way as I caught the next arc in my water sack.

“You asked for water,” I said.