Page 78 of The Blood Orchid
“She’s got the place surrounded with ghosts,” Zheng Sili said, grimacing. “How are we supposed to escape?”
“Her ring,” I said, thinking back to the ghosts of the Silver Alchemist’s friends.
“Is now really the time to be pickpocketing?” he said. “I know you’re poor, but—”
“It’s where she gets her power, you moron,” I said. “These aren’t actually ghosts, they’re alchemical creations. If we can take her ring, I think they’ll go away.”
“I hope you’re willing to stake your life on that theory,” Zheng Sili said as the Silver Alchemist stormed into the room.
“Got any silver in your body at the moment?” I said to Zheng Sili as I backed up, trying to put the kitchen table between us like a barrier.
“Not that I’m aware of,” he said, tossing a few firestones in the air and catching them in his other hand. “Besides.” He turned back to the Silver Alchemist. “Silver is a soft metal. I would never want to be named after something so weak.”
The Silver Alchemist lunged forward, but Zheng Sili cast the firestones to the ground and a wall of flame scorched itself into the floor, encircling her. I remembered when we’d sparred in the courtyard back in Chang’an, when he’d drawn the same wall in moments and I’d despised him for it.
But the Silver Alchemist only cast a few waterstones to the ground, and with a flash of silver, the fire turned into a hissing curtain of smoke.
“Okay, new plan,” Zheng Sili said, grabbing an iron pan off the stove and hurling it at the Silver Alchemist. It hit her nose with a wet crunch and sent her tumbling to the floor.
“Aren’t you supposed to be good at sparring?” I said, grabbing a cleaver from the counter.
“She has more stones than us! It’s a waste!” Zheng Sili said, sending a flurry of spoons raining down on the Silver Alchemist.
“You’re being a cheapskatenow, of all times?”
“Do you have a better idea,Miss Royal Alchemist?”
The Silver Alchemist tore off a section of her silvery robes and transformed them with a brilliant flash, a long whip appearing in her right hand. She struck out at Zheng Sili, who tumbled back into me with a startled yelp, both of us crushed against the window. The ghosts outside the window tugged eagerly at my hair, fingers and tongues lashing through the lattice. I yanked my hair out of their grasp, slamming a fist against the window and breaking a few fingers.
We didn’t stand a chance as long as she was wearing the red zircon ring. One way or another, I had to take it.
“I need you to hold her down,” I said to Zheng Sili in Guangzhou dialect. “I’m going for the ring.”
He sighed, clutching a couple stones in his palm before I could see them. “If I lose any more teeth because of you, I’m sending you a bill,” he said.
Then he dove for the iron pan on the floor. Blue light flashed, and when he rose again, he clutched an iron spear in both hands. Dodging the next strike of the whip, he stabbed the Silver Alchemist through the stomach. He planted his foot on the table and leaned his body weight into the spear until it crunched, pinning her firmly to the table.
“Now or never, hùnxie!” he shouted.
I didn’t waste a second more, grabbing the Silver Alchemist’s wrist as she twisted and writhed. I tried to yank the ring from her finger, but it stayed fastened tight as if part of her body.
“It’smyring,” she said, coughing out sparks of blood. “You can’t take it.”
I clenched my jaw, remembering Hong, the Moon Alchemist, the life that I’d had before I’d ruined it, the life that I could have again.
“Want to bet?” I said, picking up the cleaver and, in one clean motion, slicing all her fingers off.
She screamed, a river of blood rushing hot and fast across the table. Zheng Sili flinched at the sound, and the moment he backed away, she yanked the spear from her stomach, a burst of blood spraying across both of us as she fell to her hands.
I shuddered as I picked up her severed fingers, slid the rings off the broken ends, and slipped the bloody metal rings onto my own hand. As her burning blood raced down my wrist, a strange calm settled through my bones, the blood suddenly cool, the hum of powerful alchemy rising inside me once more. The sounds of scraping outside the windows grew silent, the fingers retreating from the lattice.
The Silver Alchemist slumped to the floor, clutching the wound in her stomach. She glared at me and opened her mouth as if to speak, but a torrent of blood rushed from between her lips, and she fell forward into it. She reached for the hem of my skirt, but I stepped back and her hand splashed against the tiles, leaving a bloody palm print. Her face was bloodless, lips blue.
I picked up the cleaver with numb fingers before I really understood what I was doing. This was the part where I was supposed to finish her off—she was dying anyway, and rage was still boiling through my veins, my heartbeat pounding all the way up to my skull, breath fast from adrenaline. She’d tried to keep me away from Hong, from the royal alchemists, from my siblings’ real bodies.
But she’d also saved me.
Someone grabbed my sleeve. I nearly jumped out of my skin,but it was only Wenshu. “Let’s go,” he whispered. “Now.”