Page 20 of The Blood Orchid

“Pearl?” I said hesitantly.

The Moon Alchemist smiled. The expression was so rare on her stony face. “Precisely,” she said. She knelt down beside me, pointing to the next line. “And what about this one?” she said, her fingers hovering over the characters fordragon’s eye.

I sucked in a sharp breath, the memory bleached away by the moonlight that now looked searingly white. Ihadtalked about this with the Moon Alchemist. But trying to remember what came next was like reaching out into a thick wall of fog. I’d never been quite as good at rote memorization as Wenshu or Yufei, had only focused on remembering the most practical information, whatever would save me or help me win.

There were no other alchemists I could ask now, and all of the remaining alchemy scrolls were back in Chang’an, halfway across the country. I ground my teeth together, irrationally angry at the Moon Alchemist for always disappearing when I needed her the most. But of course, this was no one’s fault but my own.

Have you tried asking the Moon Alchemist?

I swallowed, staring up at the canvas-white moon, a blank piece of paper. Maybe some echo of her presence remained at her river, some ghostly remains, anything. Maybe she knew I needed her and had held on. She always knew things, even before I could admit them to myself.

I realized, with a heavy pang in my chest, that I had neverlearned her real name. Would I even be able to find her river?

But this plane was guided by desire, not semantics. She was always my moon, my teacher, the greatest alchemist of all time. She was the Moon Alchemist tome, and maybe that was enough.

I imagined brushstrokes against the papery white canvas of this moon at the bottom of the world, painting her name in the sky. Slowly, I began to walk deeper into the night.

Chapter Four

For a while, there was no pull at all, just the quiet murmurs of the forest, the cracked dirt beneath my bare feet, and the Moon Alchemist’s name bright across the sky.

Please, I thought, tears burning at my eyes, cold as ice in the darkness.I need you.

All at once, the terrain shifted.

The wet dirt along the river turned to sharp rocks and grayed pine needles, spiny fish bones and white chrysanthemums with snapped stems—funeral flowers, soft beneath my feet.

The river expanded on both sides, opening up with a great sigh, wrapping around my ankles with coldness so biting that I stumbled to the side and tripped over pointed rocks. When I clambered back onto the riverbank, my footprints were oily crimson.

This was not what the Moon Alchemist’s river should have looked like. She was long dead, and it should have been a weak stream at best, not a rushing river of grease and blood. Something was very wrong.

I walked along the sharp riverbank, an impenetrable line ofred pines on one side, the glassy river on the other, repeating the Moon Alchemist’s name in my mind. But I couldn’t sense her presence at all. If she had ever been here, she was long gone.

I drew to a stop, the blood on my feet running into the river, red swirling into the frigid water.

A hand closed around my throat.

Before I could react, I was face-first in the freezing water.

My cheek scraped against the sharp riverbed, my mouth flooded with ice, my open eyes searing with cold. I saw flashes of the red dirt walls of the western ward of Chang’an, the moon-bright surface of the alchemy compound, barrels of gold and trays full of blood.

This was the Moon Alchemist’s river, I thought,but whoever is here can’t be the Moon Alchemist. She would never hurt me.

I reached behind me, grabbing at silk robes, but couldn’t break free from the grip that forced me down harder. I tasted the spice of qi, liquid gold on my lips.

I clawed at my assailant’s face and wrenched myself back until I could gasp down a sharp breath of air. I tried to turn around, but their grip was firm, nails sharp against my throat. Another hand clasped my hair and shoved me back under water.

I tasted mud, my next breath knife-sharp as I choked on a mouthful of silt. The qi scalded my skin, a thousand tiny teeth devouring me.Open your eyes, it whispered.

I didn’t like taking orders from disembodied sources of alchemy, but the sensation of cold water knifing up my nose was already fading away. My fingers traced over smooth wood, my feet pressed to solid ground, the smell of parchment and hot beeswax.

I opened my eyes.

I was back in the royal library, and the Moon Alchemist was standing over me, arms crossed. Her shadow contorted againstthe packed shelves full of scrolls behind her. We were in one of the study rooms in the royal library in Chang’an. I knew for a fact that this room had been destroyed by pearl monsters, that this could only be a memory.

“Think, Zilan,” the Moon Alchemist said, jamming a finger into the scroll before me, the characters fordragon’s eye. “We’ve talked about this before.”

I shook my head—even if this was a memory, the Zilan from back then hadn’t known the answer, and I certainly didn’t know it now.