Page 68 of The Blood Orchid
My stones are spilled in the sand, my numb fingertips brushing across them, but I can’t recognize them by touch alone like usual. They’re just vacant rocks, no alchemy to be found.
The snake sinks its teeth into my throat.
My fingers close reflexively around the nearest stones. With my other hand, I grab the snake by its tail and wrench it away from me. Its fangs rip open my throat, a deep wound that bleeds hot and fast, soaking my dress in scarlet, pulsing loud in my ears.
I cast the serpent to the side and rise to my feet, my shadow eclipsing the golden sands. I unclench my left fist, and in it there are two bright red stones like drops of blood, like fang marks. The firestone that had once destroyed venom from inside of me, ripped it from my veins.
Red zircon.
I close my fingers around them like a promise, then look out across the desert. On the white horizon, a figure stands backlit by the sun, robes shivering in the breeze.
I woke to darkness.
Sensation came back to me in pieces—my feet numb and ankles tangled in blankets, an ache behind my eyes, a cool breeze shuddering down my spine. At the sound of breathing beside me, I jolted upward, smashing my forehead against something firm.
“What iswrongwith you?” Wenshu said, along with a few more colorful words, one hand clamped over his eye. “Literally the first thing you do when you wake up is fracture my skull?”
I looked down at my clean robes—blue ones I’d never seen before. I tentatively touched my stomach, the memory of the spear still lightning-sharp. But the skin beneath my palms was smooth and unbroken, cool to the touch.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I looked around at the small room—shelves packed with scrolls, windows dark with shadows of crooked branches that rapped against them, a futon laid out beneath me, a desk piled with jars of alchemy stones, glistening in the whisper of sunlight.
A thin wooden panel stood a few feet back from the door, blocking the light from the hallway but letting air pass through. The base was dark wood, but the center was a painted landscape of a ship far out at sea, mountains piercing through clouds in the distance. It was a yingbì—a spirit screen, that some people used to keep out ghosts, who supposedly couldn’t move around corners. Most people built stone yingbì at the gates to their courtyards—I had never seen one in an interior room like this.Whoever owned this house must have been very superstitious.
I turned back to Wenshu, who was watching me intently. “What happened?” I said.
Wenshu crossed his arms. “You got yourself skewered.”
“Yes, I remember that part,” I said, trying to untangle my ankles from the blankets. “And after that?”
“Zheng Sili stopped the bleeding, but you wouldn’t wake up,” Wenshu said, not quite meeting my gaze. “No one in Zhongwei wanted to risk helping an alchemist, so we followed the river until we reached Wuzhong and found you a healer who hadn’t seen youdoing alchemy in broad daylight.”
I winced. That certainly hadn’t been my brightest idea. Why had I even bothered? A memory itched at the back of my mind, but the moments leading up to being stabbed had faded away into a white fog.
“We tried two different healers,” Wenshu went on, “but since Zheng Sili had sealed the wound, neither of them knew what to do for you. But there was one alchemist who saw us in the town center and agreed to help. We had no other options, so we brought you to her home.”
It sounded like a stroke of luck, but I could tell from the uneasy grimace on Wenshu’s face that it wasn’t all good news.
“What’s wrong?” I said, clutching my abdomen. “Did she destroy my organs or something?”
“Do you feel like your organs have been destroyed?” Wenshu said, raising an eyebrow.
I hugged a pillow close to my stomach, shaking my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Her alchemy isn’t the issue,” Wenshu said. “It’s the payment.”
“What did you give her?” I said, hands clutching the pillowtight. Alchemists could be oddly pedantic about fair trades, and I knew Wenshu would have promised anything, even himself. “Gege—”
“All she wanted,” Wenshu said, “was the ring.”
My gaze snapped down to my left hand. I still wore my remaining iron rings, plus the gold ring the prince had given me the day he died, but the opal ring was gone.
“And you just gave it to her?” I said, so loudly that Wenshu shushed me, glancing over his shoulder.
“You would have died if I hadn’t,” Wenshu said flatly.
I groaned and flopped back down across the futon, my fingers twitching as if remembering the ghost sensation of the opal ring. I should have just kept it in my bag rather than worn it on my hand. Even someone with no knowledge of alchemy stones could tell at a glance that it was by far the most valuable thing we carried. It glimmered like a stolen piece of the moon, and the swirling inside the gem spoke to its great alchemical power. This healer alchemist probably thought she could sell it and buy a new house. It was a safer purchase than asking us for gold, because its value wouldn’t fluctuate.
There was only one good thing about this situation: we’d found another powerful alchemist up north.