Page 22 of The Blood Orchid

“Opal,” I whispered.

The Moon Alchemist smiled. Her arms uncrossed, and in that moment I was certain she saw something more than a poor girl from the south who had stumbled her way into the palace through luck alone. She saw the Scarlet Alchemist, the girl who was supposed to save the kingdom.

“Well done,” she said. “Now get back to work.”

I opened my eyes.

This time, I was lying on my back on the cold floor of our room at the inn, staring up at the cracked ceiling. I clutched my throat as I choked down a sharp breath of hot desert air, melting away the stinging coldness.

I know what the first line means, I thought, regretting that I’d used up my last three opals on something as silly as patching up a coat. But opal was not a difficult stone to find. I might not have a map to Penglai, but at least I was one step closer to uncovering what the Sandstone Alchemist somehow thought was even more valuable.

When the memory of drowning began to fade, I rose to my elbows and looked over to Wenshu, who had fallen asleep.

“Gege,” I said, giving his shoulder a sharp shake, “guess what?”

But he didn’t stir. I grabbed his arm and rolled him onto his back. “Get up, we have to—”

My hands froze. Wenshu’s eyes were open, the whites of his eyes swallowed by black, the night sky of the river plane.

He breathed shallowly, all his muscles slack. I’d only seen one person like this before—the prince’s youngest sister, whose soul I’d failed to rescue from the river plane, leaving her body an empty husk.

I wound back and slapped him hard across the face.

When that didn’t work, I ground my knuckles hard into his sternum, but still, he didn’t respond. Durian had hopped down from the windowsill and was pecking at his fingers, probably hoping for more food.

“Not again,” I mumbled, cracking my neck and standing up.

I should have been grateful this was happening now, rather than when we were crossing the desert, when I would have had to drag him the rest of the way. Or worse, when we were with the Sandstone Alchemist, who surely would have smelled our weakness and used it against us.

At times, Wenshu’s soul simply blinked out of existence, leaving behind a hollow shell of a body. It began as moments in the palace when his spoon would freeze a few inches from his mouth, eyes clouding over before he blinked and continued eating like nothing happened. But then he started collapsing at random, the spells lasting for a few minutes.

I’d done the same, back when my own soul had been bound with the soul tag that said the wrong name. The Moon Alchemisthad said it was because my soul was on too long of a tether, able to wander too far away.

Wenshu’s soul tag was correct, for unlike me, he had only ever had one name. Even if my handwriting was messy, the fact that he was here meant that alchemy understood my intentions. But the body wasn’t his, and surely that had consequences. I worried that one day, his soul would break free from the cage of the prince’s body and never come back.

But not today.

“Get your butt out of the soul plane, you lazy jerk,” I said, yanking off Wenshu’s right sock. “We have way too much to do for you to abandon me now.”

I gathered three firestones and ignited them in my palm, holding the flames up to the sole of his foot.

His knee jolted back. He let out a startled sound and sat upright, scrambling back against the wall.

“What are youdoing?” he said, the darkness draining from his eyes, replaced by their normal deep brown.

“Waking you up,” I said, blowing out the flame in my palm.

“Yes, how dare I get a moment of rest while you make out with your ugly boyfriend inside my brain?” he said, examining the sole of his foot and grimacing. “And stop burning me! It’s not sterile!”

“I wasn’t in your brain, and we weren’t making out,” I said, biting back harsher words. I didn’t want to argue with Wenshu right now, but I hated it when he spoke so dismissively of Hong, whose infinite patience and understanding made me feel rotten in comparison.

Surely, if I’d resurrected Hong and left Wenshu to wait for me by the river, he would not have been nearly as kind about it as Hong. I knew that my brother resented Hong for puttingme in danger when he was alive, but what right did he have to begrudge him now after his death?

“I figured out what the first part of the transformation is supposed to be,” I said before he could complain any more about Hong. “But we’ll have to go somewhere else for opal. I doubt we’ll find it here.”

“You figured it out inside my head?” Wenshu said, raising an eyebrow. “Even when I’m asleep, I’m solving problems for you.” He sat up and stretched, glancing toward the sun through the windows.

“You can go back to sleep,” I said.