Page 91 of The Blood Orchid
“Actually, this tracks,” Zheng Sili said.
I turned to him. “It does?”
He nodded. “A powerful alchemist has been pseudo-resurrecting the Empress into corpses all over the country. The son of another great alchemist is mysteriously dead after stealing a magical alchemy ring, yet there’s no body. Think about it.”
“You think Gaozong is the alchemist helping her?” I said. “The Empress kept him sick for a century. Why would he go back to her?”
Zheng Sili shrugged. “Maybe she’s blackmailing him.”
I didn’t know enough about Gaozong to say if that made sense, but I knew there weren’t many other living alchemists powerful enough to help her. At least not any that she trusted. I remembered the man who had attacked me at the river when I’d been expecting the Empress, eyes bright with life gold. Perhaps that had been Gaozong.
The ropes on both my wrists suddenly tightened, yanking my arms backward. Yufei let out a surprised cry, so I yanked her end of the rope first, then Zheng Sili’s end, drawing them both out from the darkness.
“Could you focus before you rip my arm off?” Zheng Sili said. “That one was definitely your fault.”
I wanted to yell at him, but he was right. I’d been thinking about the Empress, which was dangerous in a place like this. My own mind could deliver me straight to her. Hopefully I hadn’t drawn too close.
I turned back to Gaozong’s forest, but the vibrant trees were suddenly bare and withering, melting into the foggy darkness.
The rope on my left wrist went slack. I turned, expecting Yufei beside me, but instead, a loose length of rope spiraled on the ground, the end cut and frayed.
All tension in my right wrist disappeared, and suddenly I was holding two frayed rope ends in my hands, both my sister and Zheng Sili gone.
The fog swirled around my ankles, so thick it almost felt like cold fingers caressing my skin. Far away, in a swirled haze where the forest should have been, two pinpricks of golden light pierced through the darkness. Slowly, they drew closer, and all I could see were two round, golden eyes.
I took a step back, then another, then turned around and ran. The frayed ropes dragged behind me, rapidly unspooling into wispy white ribbons.
But in the darkness, I’d forgotten where I was. My next step wasn’t met with ground under my feet but the freezing surface of a river that swallowed me whole.
While the river of Taizong’s soul had felt like clinging to driftwood in an empty sea, the river of Gaozong’s soul felt like drowning a thousand times. The entire river seemed to pour into my mouth at once, filling my lungs, stabbing into my ears, silt scraping across my open eyes.
A bright flash of sunlight trapped in the arc of a sword, festering wounds and burning flesh, armor that glints like dragon scales, and thatched roofs that scream with fire. A palace of yawning darkness, rammed dirt walls built higher and higher, deep graves in red dirt, concubines in pink silk, maps of bright blue ocean, kingdoms across the sea, death so far away and dreams so very close.
The images blurred together into a nauseous tide of colors,years spinning by in moments. There was grass under my bare feet and metal scorching my palms and warm lips pressed to my cheek and so many sensations all at once that my skin felt flayed apart.
The ring, I reminded myself, clinging to that one bright thought. That was the only part of Gaozong’s life that mattered to me.
When I exhaled, the whirlwind of sounds evaporated, invisible hands floating away from my skin. The world smelled of flowers and spring mornings.
I opened my eyes.
I was standing in the quiet yard of a convent cast in white stone, cicadas chirping far away, a fountain bubbling softly in the center. In its pure waters, the reflection of a young man stared back at me. I thought at first it was Hong, but the jaw was too broad, the shoulders too square, the gaze too sharp—Hong did not have harsh edges like men who had seen battle—this had to be Gaozong.
A small figure in plain white robes knelt on the ground, praying, facing away from me.
I took a step closer, dead leaves cracking under my feet. The figure went still at the sound, then slowly looked over her shoulder.
Her eyes were a warm brown instead of the gold I remembered, but she had the same comet-bright smile, the same glint of hunger behind her eyes. She turned completely and bowed.
“Don’t,” Gaozong said, kneeling before her, reaching out for her hand. “You will be my empress. You bow to no one.”
Falling in love with Wu Zhao was a bit like falling into open sky.
In palace silks, she was the brightest flower in every garden,and at night her eyes were twin stars. Her words whispered in my ear might as well have been the words of a god, for they carved themselves deep into my heart, became the sacred promise of my soul.
She is that first sharp blade of light that breaks across the morning sky, she is the comet that rakes across the darkness, she is my forever. I will build an eternal world for her.
I recognized, distantly, that I was drowning in Gaozong’s thoughts. They filled my lungs until they burst, stole away every thought that was once mine. She was everywhere and always, her hands the touch of comet tails searing my skin, her dreams like bright new skies.