“Àn’ying,” she murmurs, and I startle at the tender way she says my name. “Look at me.”
I obey. One look at her face from this close and I understand the stories of lovesick mortals spending their lives searching for their immortal lovers. She is more radiant than words can describe. Yet the golden glow that thrums within her skin flickers as her brows crease in pain.
She holds out a hand. Her core glows brighter, and strands of light begin to interweave on her palm, condensing into a shimmering, pearl-like object.
The immortal meets my gaze. “For your mother,” she whispers.
The world falls away as my gaze homes in on that small, sparkling speck on her palm, no larger than my pinkie nail. It pulses with spirit energy, with magic, and I know instinctively what it is.
A pill of immortality. The cure for Ma I have sought for nine years.
“Honorable Immortal.” My voice shakes. “I cannot—”
“Take it,” Shi’ya breathes.
“Niáng’qin,” Hào’yáng says quietly, “what are you doing?”
Shi’ya turns her gaze to him. “My spirit energy has withdrawn from my blood to my core in order to heal the wound there. In my current state, only a piece of my core will be strong enough to serve as a pill of immortality.”
Hào’yáng’s brows pull together in confusion. “If you give away a part of your core, you may not reincarnate.”
“Hào’yáng, my son,” she murmurs, and his eyes soften at this. The immortal takes her sword, which has transformed back into a pink lotus flower, and holds it out to him. “You know what this is. You know what to do.”
“Niáng’qin. I need you, for the rebellion.” Hào’yáng’s hands close around his adopted mother’s, but he does not take the lotus.
Shi’ya smiles faintly. “Son of my heart,” she says gently, “I have lived many lifetimes—too many to count, for one who began her life in these realms as a mortal. Mortals desire the eternal life that we immortals are blessed with, yet they never know how much we envy the one lifetime they have. Immortality is long, my son, and it is lonely and cold in these skies. We gaze upon the mortal world, aching for the warmth of a fire and food on the table, for the laughter of a family huddled together, for the burning love of a lifetime that never fades.”
My throat knots, and I recall Yù’chén’s words:Why is it in our natures to want that which we cannot have?
Shi’ya turns to look at me. “I have known one great love in my long life,” she murmurs, and I am suddenly frozen, a slow and impossible realization beginning to grip me. “I am fortunate to have those I care for by my side in these moments. Son of my heart, daughter of my blood, know that my love for you is greater than anything else in these realms. Treasure each other.”
Hào’yáng’s gaze snaps to me, and I see the open shock on his face. His lips part, and he says something, but I can’t hear it.
All of a sudden, the fragmented, broken pieces of my life fall into place. My father’s secrets, the writing on the handkerchief, the reason he chose me, and the reason I am alive today. How I survived that fall into the ocean during the FirstTrial; how my body carried me through the trauma of the Second and Third. My name, Àn’ying, the cherry blossom in the dark, and the very tree that sits in Shi’ya’s courtyard.
Shi’ya presses the gleaming pill of immortality into my hand and closes her fingers around mine. “Know that you have the love of more than one mother: the one who gave birth to you and the one who raised you.” She squeezes my hand. “You can still save her.”
I hold her fingers in my trembling ones as I search for traces of my face in hers. Ma always told me I took after my father when I was growing up, yet now I find in Shi’ya’s countenance the curve of my nose, the shape of my cheeks, the taper to my jaw. My face is less refined, a shadow of hers, the way pond water might wish to capture the full beauty of the stars.
“Àn’ying,” she says softly, my name like song on her lips. Her gaze turns to the cherry tree outside her window, radiant in the darkness, in the moonlight. “The cherry blossom in the dark. You were named for both your mothers, did you know?” She heaves a breath, and when she speaks again, the weight of the past twenty years seems to unspool from her. A story half-forgotten, the missing parts now pieced together. “When your father returned with you to the mortal realm, it was in the thick of winter. It began to snow heavily as he sought shelter from the endless forest.”
As she speaks, it is as though a memory plays in my mind—one Bà and Ma have told me countless times over.It was in the thick of a blizzard, and your father thought he was lost.
“The blizzard was worsening, and the temperature plummeting. Your father was afraid he would lose not only his life but that of his newborn daughter as well.”
Then he saw, in the snow, the bright blossoms.
“That was when he spotted a blossoming tree in the blinding snow. He staggered up to it and found a house. The woman who opened the door was kind. She asked no questions about him, only wrapped his newborn in swathes of beautifully embroidered blankets and fed her warm goat’s milk.” Shi’ya smiles faintly. “What your father thought would be a short stay…turned into a lifetime.”
The answer to my name; the mistake behind the plum tree standing before our house and my name, the cherry blossom.
My eyes heat, because I now understand the sacrifice both women have made for me. Ma, who took me and raised me and loved me as though I were her own. And my birth mother, who has quietly watched over me all these years.
“Why did he leave you?” I whisper.Why did you let me go?
Shi’ya’s lashes flutter. “The Heavenly Order forbade us from remaining together. Your father was given a choice: take the pill of immortality and remain in the Kingdom of Sky forever…or leave, never to return. He was the most honorable man I knew, Àn’ying, and he had come through the trials in order to share his knowledge with practitioners of the mortal realm. He chose his kingdom.” She pauses to draw a labored breath. “Your father and I did not wish you to grow up here, facing a life of ostracism and hostility, so we made the decision that you would be raised far away, in the mortal realm.” A single tear shimmers at the corner of her eye, pooling like a pearl. Slowly, it slides down her cheek. “Know that it was not for a lack of love. I loved your father and you more than I have loved anything else in this long life I have lived.”
There is so much I need to say, yet nothing comes to mind as Shi’ya—my birth mother—moves Hào’yáng’s hand tomine. She presses them together. The glow coming from the open wound in her chest is dimming; the sparks grow sparser.
