Tian laughed, embarrassed and divine. “You can show it more.” But then she got somber again. As she brooded, Adeline found the courage to blurt out what she’d been thinking about since Genevieve had come by.
“If I had a place to stay, would you stay with me?”
She used to think her mother must have been out of her mind to withdraw from the Butterflies the way she had—give up onfreedom, and the thrill, and sisters, dozens of girls who you’d shared your blood with, for what? A daughter? But now she was tired, and she had realized she could give it all up as long as she had this one girl with her. That was it. The smallest ask. Once she’d only wanted her mother, then she’d wanted to have her run of the city, and now she was being reasonable again.
“What would we do?” Tian asked, taken aback and amused, but hardly dismissive.
“I don’t know. Make it up.”
She could see Tian considering the way she had, seeing the possibilities, a place of their own. Yet a preoccupation distracted her.
“Ji Yen and Ning have asked to leave. I’m taking their tattoos tonight.” At Adeline’s expression, she sighed. “You knew this was coming. Some of them are only here because they needed a place to stay. Without the house, and now they’re scared…”
“We can find somewhere.”
“Where? Yours? How big a house are you planning to buy?”
“Whatever you want.”
Tian looked at her for a long time, really considering now. They would have to manage the goddess somehow, but that was all right. They would figure it out. It was entirely reachable, and suddenly the problem of Su Han was a quickly conquered obstacle, and the Butterflies who’d been arrested mostly wouldn’t be tried as adults, and those who were would take years to get a proper sentence. And if all this had happened in months then years was forever, and they could find something to do about that, too.
“I’m going to have to start calling you landlord,” Tian said. “Or towkay-neo. Or mistress.” She grinned wickedly when Adeline flushed. “We should head back. Pick up something to eat along the way.”
Walking a road back was somehow always shorter than the road out, as though knowing made a world smaller. They bought rice dumplings stuffed with pork and water chestnuts, eating them alongthe way and bringing back a bundle for the others. Jenny’s would have just closed, so the girls would be coming back soon.
They entered through the side door, through the storeroom and into the now familiarly empty atrium. As they started up the stairs, however, Vera came hurtling down them. “Tian! I was just trying to find you!”
Tian snapped alert. “He’s here?” She paused infinitesimally before pushing past Vera and quickening up the stairs.
“No, it’s not your brother, it’s—”
On the second floor, there was a woman studying one of the displays, hands folded. She looked the same, she looked different. She was wearing a cream blouse and jeans, and the lines of her tattoos were faintly visible through the sleeves. Her hair had been braided back, and a loose brown scarf was draped around her neck. Adeline felt her own importance fall away.
“Mun,” Tian said. Her voice cracked. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONETREATY
There was a legend about the Sisters’ Islands off the southern coast, which were a bigger and smaller island separated by a narrow channel of water that was treacherous to boats and swimmers. The legend said that two sisters had been separated when pirates kidnapped the younger sister to marry. Her elder sister swam after the boat, but drowned in a storm—in despair, the younger sister jumped into the sea after her and drowned also. When the storm cleared, there were only two islands left in the water where they had died, and every year on that same day, there would be rain.
Pek Mun said to Tian, “You don’t have to be so angry about it. I’m trying to help.”
“I never ask for your help,” Tian replied.
“Because you’re terrible at asking.”
This one constant: Pek Mun’s impenetrable, condescending pragmatism. It made Adeline furious. How was it, she wondered, that everything else had crumbled to bits, but Pek Mun kept turning up, inscrutable and unscathed? It wasbecauseshe was inscrutable that she was unscathed, Adeline thought; she always managed to find her way above everything because she allowed nothing to stick to her. Those in her care were her responsibility until they became inconvenient or worse, independent, getting in the way of her carefully plotted grand schemes—then they needed to be cut off or maneuvered around, like inserting Henry at the Blackhill house. But surely it was lonely, beinguntethered like that. Henry was dead, if she even knew or cared; she’d betrayed Tian and everyone else who had looked up to her.
“I heard the news. I wanted to make sure you were all right. I couldn’t find out who got caught.”
“Your inspector friend wouldn’t tell you?” Tian smirked, but it was hollow. “We don’t know, either. I mean, I have some idea. But it’s hard to track everyone down.”
If Tian had been afraid for her brother to see her changed, she was bare now because Pek Mun knew her old and new in a way no one else in the world did. That world warped around them. Tian flinched at Pek Mun’s gaze. “You’re going to tell me how much I fucked up?”
“They offered us pardons, you know, for my help. I have a house now and clean money. We could do things, proper things. I want you with me.” Tian looked at Adeline, and Pek Mun scoffed with that familiar derision. But Adeline didn’t feel small this time, only angry at the way the noise made Tian flinch. She became overcome with a heavy realization of her own.
“You shouldn’t be talking here.” Behind, Ji Yen was staring at them. Vera had come back up the stairs, too, hovering at Adeline’s shoulder. Tian could not bear with Pek Mun in front of everyone. More importantly, she couldn’t bear with Pek Mun in front of Adeline. Not simply. Not cleanly. Not without tearing herself in two. She didn’t understand Pek Mun at all—how could you possibly hold this fire and walk away so easily? Couldn’t she see it would eat her alive if it wasn’t in a world more volatile than itself?—but she didn’t matter anymore.
Tian folded her arms tightly. “I don’t have time for this, Mun. Just say your piece and go.”
