Footsteps sound from behind us. The entire hall turns to look—and I feel a crash of relief followed by dread.
A pair of immortal guards hold Yù’chén by his arms, marching him forward. His golden bracelet flashes on his left wrist; he passed the Second Trial.
Perpetrator.My breathing grows uneven; the hall seems to fade, blending into the memory of candidate Number One lying amidst the peonies and orchids and chrysanthemums with her heart and guts torn out.
And you’ve come to ask me if I killed her, ate her heart, and drank her soul like the wicked demon I am?As I sift through our conversation in my mind, I realize he’s never outright denied that he killed her. And I, fool that I am, believed him innocent.
My skin is cold, my blood turned to ice. I cannot reconcile the possibility of Yù’chén as a killer with the man who held me in the forest earlier.
I don’t look away as he passes me. Murmurs rise from the candidates around me: whispers of “murderer” and “killer.” Yù’chén keeps his eyes straight ahead, unblinking, unflinching, as the guards lead him before the dais. They force him to kneel.
Dòng’bin takes a seat; Jing’xiù stands, his bamboo scepter unfurling into a scroll. “Candidate, you are to receive divine punishment for breaking rule seventeen of the Temple of Dawn’s Precepts. For the crime of theft, you are to receive ten lashes from the Thrasher of the Gods.”
Theft?Is Yù’chén not being tried for murder?
One of the guards steps forward. A whip uncoils from hispalm, crackling with divine energy. I know of this whip from the legends: it’s said the Jade Emperor once used it to punish his enemies, and that one of its lashes is equal to a hundred by the hands of a mortal. Ten is nearly unthinkable. What could he have stolen to deserve this?
Yù’chén stares stoically at a spot above all our heads.
“Begin.”
The whip streaks through the air like lightning, and the first lash echoes in the temple. Yù’chén pitches forward slightly from the impact; a muscle feathers in his jaw, but after several beats, he straightens his shoulders and resumes his stony stare at the back wall.
The second lash prompts a sharp exhale of breath from him. By the fifth, his clothing has peeled from his back. By the seventh, blood spots the marble floors of the Hall of Radiant Sun.
When they finish with him, Yù’chén’s eyes are closed. A lock of his hair falls in his face, pale and sweat-slicked. Blood darkens his back, dripping from his ruined clothes and blooming on the floor like red petals. When the guards step away from him, he falls, catching himself on his hands and knees. He’s too exhausted to lift his head, but his hands twitch, as though reaching out for something, anything to hold on to—but there is nothing near him, no one there to help him stand.
I find my own hands fisted so tightly my nails dig crescents into my palms.
“Let this be a reminder,” Jing’xiù says gravely, looking up at the crowd of candidates gathered before the dais in silence, “of the consequences of disrupting order.”
—
Back in my chambers, I scrub my skin with my washcloth until it is raw, until the images of the huà’pí as Méi’zi and Ma and Bà fade. I focus on my true memories of my sister instead.
I wonder if she has received my gloves. I miss her so much it hurts. And there is only one person who can tell me if my message has gotten through to her.
An image flits in my mind’s eye: Yù’chén kneeling alone at the front of the Hall of Radiant Sun, blood puddling on the floor from his back, too tired to lift his head. The twitch of his hands as he searched for something to hold on to.
I swallow and splash my bathwater, as though that will disperse the image. He’ll be fine. He’s a mó, and I’ve seen how quickly he heals. And even if he isn’t fine, it’s none of my business.
I turn my thoughts away, but the one image I cannot shake is the huà’pí’s illusion as Méi’zi. Irrational as it is, I am set on edge by the possibility that anything has happened to my baby sister.
I look out at the courtyard through the slits of my shutters. There’s a subdued air to this place tonight. Half the dorms’ lanterns are extinguished. I register the numbers engraved on their doors, and I try not to think of the faces I learned to associate with those numbers. I wasn’t close to any of them, but we still lived together, passed each other in the long walkways beneath the willows, ate at the same banquet terrace. We were human, together.
Now seventeen of us are gone. Seventeen mortal practitioners who might have had families to feed and villages to protect, just like me.
Suddenly, I think of the immortals lounging on theirthrones, surrounded by guards and plum wines served in porcelain cups and food brought out on silver platters. My heart clenches. I’m not here to disrupt the order; I’ve just witnessed with my own eyes what happens to those who do. I’m only here to win that pill of immortality for my mother, so things can go back to how they were. So Méi’zi can be happy.
I fasten my white dress, brushing my fingers along the new seams of seasilk. I strap on my crescent blades. Armed to the teeth, I set out.
I need to find Yù’chén—to ask him if my gloves reached Méi’zi. And then I’m going to check on the gate with my own eyes. None of this, I tell myself, am I doing because I want reassurance that he’s healing himself with his dark magic—or because I’m curious what was so important for him to steal that he’d risk his life.
The rain and mist of Péng’lái Island seem to have crept into the Temple of Dawn. Candidates are clustered in small groups by the water and by their doorsteps, their quiet murmurs drifting through the night. Across the water from my chambers, the lanterns in Yù’chén’s are extinguished, the shutters dark.
A few high-ranking candidates I recognize but who have never paid attention to me are seated at a pavilion overlooking the pond. I catch drifts of their conversation as I pass by.
“…must have gone to the Spring of Healing Essence,” a girl is saying. I recognize her as one of the girls who hung around Yù’chén during training. She’s Number Five and has the classic beauty the poets and painters of old would have rendered in song and ink. I find myself wondering if Yù’chén is close to her.
