Page 67 of The Blood Orchid
But I don’t know the answer.
This moment feels like I’m looking at it through a diamondprism. Zheng Sili’s words are a song I once knew. The morning has a pale tinge, all the colors weak as if stolen by the sun. Everything except the thread that Zheng Sili is holding, bright and brilliant scarlet.
I turn back to the main road, toward the sound of fighting inside the armory. Zheng Sili is speaking again, but the world has narrowed, and I see nothing but the open door. I brush past him like a silk curtain, and he can’t stop me, he never could. I open the door, and there is no one inside, nothing but a wall plastered with flyers.
It is an illustration of a woman hanged from the gates of Chang’an, her bright red robes the same color as the thread in Zheng Sili’s hand.
At the top, in bold black ink:
THE SCARLET ALCHEMIST IS DEAD
Of course she is, I think.Everyone already knows that.
The Scarlet Alchemist died in the throne room, at the feet of the Empress.
I turn around, but Zheng Sili is gone. Night swallows the city, wooden carts and red dirt walls inhaled by a sudden wave of darkness. Trees rise up to the sky, and I am standing at the edge of a riverbank, darkness just behind my heels, bone-white tree trunks and prickly black leaves before me.
There is a red thread tied to the ring finger of my left hand, and it pulls me forward. I am a minnow pierced through with hooks, dragged across the dark ocean of night.
I am lying in the streets of Chang’an, scarlet-red dirt and clay dust and lost dreams, and my mother is screaming.
My face is folded into itself, my teeth caught in my throat, eyes full of blood.
My father is speaking to me in a lost language, words that float away like dandelion parachutes, gone as soon as they leave his lips. Firm hands lift me up, no patience or warmth, cold and hard like the surface of the moon.
“Follow me,” she says, and begins to walk.
I can no longer breathe, my chest seizing, and when I reach broken fingers to my throat, they tangle with bright red thread.
I am at the Empress’s feet, my cheek pressed to a hot tile floor coated in blood, my soul tag on the ground in front of me.
The red thread is tangled and frayed in my fingers. It weaves across the floor, through puddles of blood and spilled pearls, and fastens tight around Hong’s hand, where he lies dead on the floor, translucent skin and purple nails.
I can’t move, can only shift the focus of my gaze from the prince’s corpse to my own soul tag.
Su Zilanis what it’s supposed to say. The merchant’s daughter who was supposed to live and die in Guangzhou. The false name ripped from my spine because it was never who I was.
But that is not the name before me.
There are far too many characters, and when the wall of fire and burning flesh flares bright behind me, echoed in the puddles of blood, I can see the characters clearly.
THE SCARLET ALCHEMIST
I roll over, and I am in the sands of the Borderless Sea, wind pulling golden grains into my eyes, my muscles locked tight from venom, the sun devouring me in bright white overhead.
The Sandstone Alchemist watches me die, the snake curledaround his throat, golden eyes like two tiny suns. The red thread is gone from my fingers, and my brother is dead beside me, and the sun is opening its maw to swallow me whole.
This is just another way I was supposed to die, but I have always poured like sand through death’s fingers, not solid enough for him to hold on to.
The poison courses through me like a river of fire, my hands so tight they’re curled into claws, every muscle clenched so firmly that I can’t even breathe.
The Sandstone Alchemist is supposed to leave me to die alone, but instead he stands over me, his eyes pure gold, his snake curled tight at his throat.
This isn’t right, I think.This isn’t how it happened.
The snake slithers down the Sandstone Alchemist’s arm and lands in the sand, curling smooth patterns into the sea of gold until it’s right in front of my face. It opens its mouth, its fangs bright moonstone.
The serpent’s bite, I think as it draws closer.