“Eat him,” my eldest sister says firmly. “Eat him and we can be together again.”
I stare at her in confusion, saliva nearly dripping from the corners of my lips. “?‘Together again’?”
“That’s our question for you,” Su says. “Do you want to stay with us forever?”
“Everything can go back to the way it was,” Ahn adds. “All you have to do is eat him.”
There’s a pounding ache behind my eyes, the pressure threatening to make my skull shatter. Why wouldn’t I want to be with my sisters?
The soldier screams something around his gag, managing to shove it partially out of the way with the tip of his tongue. “—temptation! Don’t fall for it, Fox!” His voice sounds strange,not quite synced with the movement of his lips. It sounds as though someone is calling to me from behind, not from the soldier himself.
I stare at him, dazed. Temptation? What is he on about?
“Don’t you want to stay with us forever?” my sisters ask again, this time in chorus. “Please say you’ll stay.”
My blood runs cold. My skin is suddenly feverish. A direct question requires a direct answer. I need to tell the truth. Of course I want to stay with them, but…
The Court of Temptation.
I look back at the man. Sonam. He watches with bloodshot eyes as he struggles against his bindings. This whole affair has been a test, some magical spell twisting my reality and making a mockery of my sisters’ memories.
Unforgivable.
“No,” I reply, ignoring the way my voice falters. My sisters’ expressions fall, a mix of betrayal and sorrow. “This isn’t real.”
“It could be,” Qin says. “We can make it real.”
“I’m sorry, but… you’re all gone.”
Something shifts between us. The tension in the air so heavy that it’s suffocating.
“And whose fault is that?” Jiayi hisses, her demeanor changing before my very eyes.
“If only you’d done what you were told,” Su growls. “If only you’d done what the Maskmaker wanted, we would still be alive!”
I shrink back, guilt weighing heavily on my shoulders. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I just—I couldn’t harm the boy.”
My sisters circle me, flashing their fangs and tensing their shoulders as they prepare to pounce. They snarl and scream at me all at once, any semblance of sisterly affection melting away to reveal what they truly are. Monsters. Sonam used the term so often when referring to me, but I can understand now.
It horrifies me to see them this way, their faces warped in disgust and anger. How dare the star god use them against me. How dare he take what precious little I already had left of them and poison it.
“I’ve given you my answer,” I say, loud and clear. “You’ve failed to tempt me.”
My eldest sister, Qin, steps forward from the pack. She doesn’t look at me, but the captain. “Are you sure, Yue? This is your only chance.”
I remain perfectly still, waiting for any sign of movement. “As I said, I won’t be tempted.”
Where Sooah, Wen, and Sonam’s illusions filtered away, the ghosts of my sisters don’t leave in nearly as peaceful a manner. I watch, wide-eyed and slack-jawed as their thick fur catches flame.
The heat is so intense that it dries my eyes and burns the air in my lungs. I scream until my throat is raw and shredded. My sisters melt away to nothing more than bone and then dust while our surroundings trickle away like rain, returning me once more to the extravagant garden courtyard of the Jade Palace. There was never any jungle. None of this was real. Even the illusion of Captain Sonam fades away into nothing.
I can feel my pulse in the tips of my fingers, in my throat, my teeth. My legs are seconds from giving out. Sonam, Wen, and Sooah stand a few feet away, watching with expressions I can’t hope to decipher. Shame and embarrassment heat my cheeks. They must have witnessed that whole sordid affair, as I did with their trials. With a shallow, shaking exhale, I pull on my mask, hating how naked I feel without it.
Exposed. I wish they’d stop bloodystaring.
“Most entertaining!”
The voice of the star god reaches my ears. I look up to find himcasually striding down the pathway, the winding vines and cutting leaves unfurling themselves to give him space. He claps his hands together with an amused laugh, clearly pleased with the grand finale of this wicked show.
