Dragon,the currents around me whisper.
But there is pressure on my shoulders as though someone is grasping me, and in the spots crowding my vision in the delirium of drowning, I see a face: a young man in a cloak of white, as beautiful as a sea god, long hair sweeping gracefully in the waves. He carries with him the light of the sun, radiant and warm. His expression is gentle, his curved lips mouthing my name as he holds me to him.
Strange that I should dream of someone I don’t know.
The vision swirls away as darkness closes in.
—
I dream of flying on the back of a milk-colored horse with a mane like seawater. I hear that voice saying to me,I am here,as clear as crystal above the rush of tides. Yet in my dream, I still search for the ocean my mother so often spoke of in her stories—an ocean I cannot see.
I am here.The roar of wind and water, fading. Warmth and light and something solid beneath me.Àn’ying, wake up.
Wake up.
My eyes fly open.
I’m lying on a flat outcropping of rock. From beneath me comes the sound of crashing waves, yet this high up, all I can see are gray clouds…and a trail of rocks jutting into the sky like stepping stones.
The Immortals’ Steps.
In the distance, between rolling clouds, are curved golden rooftops and jade pillars, a marble staircase that sweeps up to a grand palace of white stone. The walls are flecked with crystals and inlaid with pearl dust, and when the sun comes out and gilds everything with its rosy, fiery light, I realize that all the depictions of the Kingdom of Sky and the immortal realm were wrong.
It is ten thousand times more splendid than any painting or poem could capture.
I sit, shivering in my drenched silks. My dress has survived, and my crescent blades are still strapped to my sleeves and bodice. I have sustained no injuries or bruises. And somehow, though I remember my body shattering and my lungs filling with water and burning as I drowned…I am alive. Breathing.
Healer lies innocuously by my side, as though something—or someone—placed her there. I slip her back into her sheath, sifting through the pounding in my head for memories of that face in the deep, the voice between the currents. Anything that might tell me how I ended up here, on the first ofthe Immortals’ Steps, when my body should be at the bottom of the ocean.
The sun has swung to the west and is sinking beneaththe clouds. The golden haze of the late afternoon has slowly turned to the fiery corals of dusk.
Impossible. It was just midmorning when I crested Heavens’ Gates.
A warning bell rings in the back of my head. “Sundown by the third day,” I whisper to myself, thinking of the golden invitation tucked away in my bodice. “The First Trial!”
Somewhere in the direction of the palace in the clouds, a gong sounds.
My heartbeat roars in my ears. There will be twelve gongs, I know, each a countdown to the moment the sun sets. Twelve gongs before I must reach the Temple of Dawn.
The Immortals’ Steps zigzag through the skies before me. I count ten more steps—and then I have to get up the marble staircase, through the open-air hallways, and into the Temple of Dawn.
I’m not going to make it.
I’m already moving, positioning myself at the farthest edge of this step. I take off at a run, Fleet and Healer cutting through wind as my arms pump. Three steps to the ledge, and with a burst of spirit energy at my heels, I leap through the air.
I land on the next step as the second gong sounds. The sun sets fire to the skies as it sinks, and my heart pounds each beat against my chest as I take the next leap.
Gong…gong…
Five, six gongs. The clouds are beginning to clear, revealing crystalline skies below and a plunge to the death with a single misstep.
Eight, nine gongs. I can see the temple clearly now, driftingbetween clouds, hundreds of marble stairs glittering in the sunset, leading up to golden doors.
I’m sweating as I land on the tenth step, the highest and last one. My legs shake as I suck in breaths, blinking to gauge the distance to those marble stairs before me.
I back up to the far end of the rock. As the tenth gong sounds, I take off.
I know I’ve misjudged the distance as soon as I jump. My spirit energy flickers and sputters out like a flame, and then I’m falling, the marble stairs just an arm’s length away….
