Page 60 of The Blood Orchid

The Arcane Alchemist clawed his fingernails into my forearm, yanking me forward as he fell backward over the edge. The valley yawned open beneath me as the balance shifted, my stomach dropping.

Then arms closed around my waist, pulling me back so sharply that it knocked the breath from my lungs. Zheng Sili was grabbing my arm, tearing it away from the Arcane Alchemist while I fell back against Wenshu. The Arcane Alchemist’s sweaty fingers slid down my wrist, our fingertips brushing for a moment, qi bright and sparkling in his palm.

Then he slipped over the edge, into the darkness.

I couldn’t hear the sound of him hitting the ground over the roar of the wind, but I could sense as his alchemy fizzled out, a candle extinguished in a single breath.

Zheng Sili released me and peered over the edge, grimacing. “Oh, he’s definitely dead,” he said.

I sat up stiffly, leaning toward the edge.

“You actually want tolook?” Wenshu said, tugging my sleeve, face curled with disgust.

“I have to,” I said, pulling away.

Far below, where the desert bled into the rocks, the Arcane Alchemist lay crooked on the sand, his head a bright burst of scarlet. An odd warmth spread through my chest, my heartbeat loud in my ears, and for a moment I thought I might cry. I had wanted this man’s ring, not his life.

Ever since I came to the palace, I’d only wanted to save everyone, and yet innocent people died every day because of what I’d done. How had this become my legacy?The Scarlet Alchemisthadonce meant that I’d given my own blood for a dream of peace. Now it was the name of someone who walked through a kingdom drenched in red, the crimson of her robes hiding every bloodstain, devourer of all those who stood in her way.

I had made too many mistakes to be the hero that I’d once wanted to be. Maybe it was time that I stopped seeing myself as anything but a curse. Alchemists had to destroy in order to rebuild, after all. I would save them all in time, but my hands hadn’t been clean for ages, and I might as well stop pretending they were.

I looked back at the ring, which hummed within my closed fist, like I’d grabbed hold of a shooting star. I opened my palm and held it up to the moonlight to get a better look.

The opal swirled just beneath the surface, like a snowstorm encased in glass. In the darkness, it shone brighter than the moon overhead, casting a circle of light and warmth around the three of us.

The dragon’s white eye, the faceless night.I’d been a fool to think that any old opal would be the key to Penglai. Here, with this stone singing alchemy through my bones, I was certain that this was the first piece of the puzzle. And if the Sandstone Alchemist’s transformation was correct, then there were two more pieces.

The dragon’s white eye, the faceless night,

The song of silver, the serpent’s bite,

The child of Heaven, the scarlet-winged tree,

Together at last, the shadow makes three.

The first stone had been forged in the waters of Penglai, carried by one of the Eight Immortals who had found it, so perhaps the other stones were the same. It seemed we were no longer looking only for loose stones, but for the immortals who carried them.

I slipped the ring onto my middle finger. The alchemy echoed through my bones, and all at once I felt as if I were a fallen comet, a ball of brilliant white fire. I closed my fist, and the feeling settled, energy whispering beneath my skin, waiting.

“Let’s go,” I said, looking back toward Zhongwei in the distance, so far away and small beneath the endless sky.

Chapter Twelve

Wenshu didn’t even make it back to the city gates.

We’d only walked a few minutes through the watermelon fields when he wordlessly passed me the bag where Durian was sleeping.

“I have to be the brawnandthe pack mule?” I said, taking the bag anyway. Wenshu had stopped walking, staring off into the distance.

Zheng Sili realized what was happening a moment before I did. He grabbed Wenshu’s arm just as he fell forward, managing to slow his descent and lower him gently onto his back.

“Come on, don’t do this right now,” I said, kneeling in the gravel beside him and shaking his shoulder.

“This is becoming more frequent,” Zheng Sili said, as if that wasn’t already painfully obvious. I ignored him, hooking Wenshu’s arm around my neck and trying to stand up.

My shoulder flared with white-hot pain. I clenched my jaw so I wouldn’t make a humiliating sound and quickly knelt back down, my hand trembling with the effort not to drop Wenshu flat on his face.

“That’s what you get for riding a horse with someone who turns into a corpse at random,” Zheng Sili said, frowning down at me. Then he squatted down beside Wenshu. “Put him on my back.”