Page 96 of The Blood Orchid

“You’ve always done that.”

“You’ve always done that,Empress,” I corrected him.

“Gross,” Zheng Sili said, wrinkling his nose. “I refuse to call you that.”

“I suppose you could call me Zilan,” I said. “You know, my name?”

“Zilan,” he echoed. He let out a dry laugh. “The girl with a servant’s name is the Empress,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. “Who would have guessed?”

“Not me,” I said, turning my face to the moon.

“I guess you could call me Sili Ge, if you wanted.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“Right,” he said quickly, nodding. “Of course.” Then he straightened his shoulders. “When all this is over and Wu is dead, I expect you to fulfill your promise and make me a royal alchemist.”

“I don’t think I ever actually promised that,” I said, smirking. “You just assumed that I’d agreed.”

It was nice, for only a moment, to imagine a way this ended in which all of us got what we wanted, everyone alive and happy, every dream fulfilled.

“It was implied,” Zheng Sili said.

“How optimistic of you, to think that you’ll actually have a job at the end of all this.”

“I mean, we only have one more ring to find, and we’re going to its most likely location,” he said. “From there, it’s a straight shot to Penglai, eternal salvation, all problems solved, right?”

I laughed sharply to hide the nervous clench in my stomach. “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

“And what are you going to do about the last line?”

I frowned. “The last line?”

“Together at last, the shadow makes three,” Zheng Sili said. “Please tell me we don’t need to wait for a full moon or something.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “There’s three stones. Isn’t that all that last line means?”

Zheng Sili sighed heavily, rolling his eyes. “Sorry, I forgot you never went to school. It’s a reference to a Li Bai poem, obviously.”

“Obviously?” I said. “What kind of alchemist studies poetry?”

“A well-rounded one?” he said. “It’s a poem about a man drinking under the moon, all sad and lonely.”

“Like you?”

He shot me a withering glare. “But he’s not actually alone,” he went on. “He has the moon and his shadow.”

“Those hardly count as people,” I said.

Zheng Sili opened his mouth to respond, but someone shouted behind us.

I looked over my shoulder, tugging on the horse’s reins. Zheng Sili pulled his horse to a stop easily, but I struggled to make mine slow down. Behind us, I could see the horses pacing, Wenshu struggling to dismount, Yufei crumpled on the ground.

Zheng Sili reached them first, hopping to the ground and turning Yufei on her back. I all but fell off my horse while trying to dismount, catching myself on my hands in the dirt.

Zheng Sili looked up at me as I approached, Wenshu’s foot still caught in the stirrup. “I think this is the same thing that happened to your brother,” he said, his expression tight.

I tried all my usual tricks to wake Yufei, but no matter how much I shook her, she remained stubbornly limp.