“Why?”
“In large part, because of your father. Most immortals view mortals as…fleeting. At best, mortals resemble cherry blossoms: beautiful when they bloom, yet ephemeral—there one season, gone the next. Why bother caring or fighting for anything when your lives are so short, when at the end of everything, all falls to dust and ashes for you?”
“It isbecauseour lives are so fleeting that we have to fight,” I reply. A stinging ache has arisen in my throat, and a flameresembling anger curls in my belly. “We have only this short life, this one life. If there is something we want, something we desire, we must fight for it.”
Shi’ya is watching me with bright eyes. “That is almost exactly what Zhàn’fei said to me,” she says softly, and for some reason, my breath hitches at the way she says my father’s name. “Eternity makes us cruel, does it not? Why care when you have all the time in the realms?” Shi’ya’s lips part, then curl at the corners. “I digress. I came to speak with you on a topic Hào’yáng tells me he broached with you.”
“The revolution,” I whisper.
Shi’ya nods.
“Why me?” I ask. It is the question that has been burning inside me since I arrived, since the day she vouched for me. “Is it because of my father? Is that why you saved me?”
“So much has to do with your father, Àn’ying,” Shi’ya says quietly. “When he won the trials and rejected our pill of immortality, he set a great wheel in motion. He asked us to save his place in this kingdom should he one day have need. A place that almost went to you. A place that, instead, went to Hào’yáng.”
Everything in me falls very still. The jade pendant is warm against my collarbone. Throughout these long years, I have always wondered at the reason my guardian in the jade—Hào’yáng—has watched over me.
Now I know.
It is because my father gave him a life of safety, of shelter, of security, away from our own dying realm. A life that should have gone to me. Or Méi’zi. Or Ma.
I did not know your father,Hào’yáng told me.But I owe him.
“Why?” I whisper. I would not wish for a place in theKingdom of Sky should it be handed to me, for I need to be home to protect my family. But the place could have gone to Méi’zi, then barely a child of five. Or Ma, whose soul might have been healed here. I’m breathing hard as I think of Hào’yáng, strong and healthy and radiant and everything that my mother or my sister might have been.
“Because,” Shi’ya says, “Hào’yáng is the sole surviving heir to the emperor of the Kingdom of Rivers.”
My breath catches.
“Your father and I corresponded when the Kingdom of Night first invaded. I begged him to bring you and your sister here; I told him I would face any ramifications and break any rules to help. He agreed—until the day he showed up with a young boy instead.”
All the pieces are now falling into place. How my father was away at war, leading the army from the Southern Province during the initial resistance the emperor led. How he returned months later, somehow changed, and began to focus on fortifying our town.
So he had gone to the Imperial Palace and he had found the emperor’s last child and brought him to safety here.
He had planted the seeds of a future resistance against the Kingdom of Night, long before anyone had thought past the first war.
All this time, my father was thinking of the greater cause, yet now, a small, selfish voice inside me can’t help but cry,What about me? What about Ma and Méi’zi?
“Over the years, Hào’yáng and I have been forming alliances with those who believe in fighting back against the Kingdom of Night,” Shi’ya continues. “The pieces are nearly in place, Àn’ying. All we needed was someone familiar withthe mortal realm to join us, and to help him once he decides to return to the Kingdom of Rivers and gather an army. I wished to…place that burden on you, on account of the work your father did to make this possible in the first place.
“I know it is a heavy weight to carry, and I would ask for your forgiveness and preface my request with this: I understand that you have obligations, to win the trials and to heal your mother’s soul. My respect for you and Hào’yáng’s affections for you will not change should you decline; you will not lose our support for the remainder of the trials. And I need no answer today. I simply thought it was time you knew the truth.”
She turns to leave, and I have the acute feeling, in that moment, that my fate, my destiny, everything my life has been building up to, will slip away with her if I do not seize it.
I am tired. I amexhausted.Deeply, down to my bones, I do not wish to fight any longer. Nine years I have been alone, taking care of my mother and my sister, dedicating my life to protecting theirs, ensuring our survival. I close my eyes briefly and lean back against the rosewood frame. A memory finds me: Méi’zi, four years old, running to me in a blooming courtyard of spring, her laughter piercing through the bleating of goats and the squawking of chickens. I recall the flashes of her hair, warmed by the sun, as she ran through the ripe fruit trees in our village. I think back further, to Ma sitting on the small, creaky wooden stool in our yard, beneath the shade of the flowering plum tree, Méi’zi curled on her knees and watching as she sewed.
Winning the trials might cure Ma, but the mortal realm will continue to sink into the Kingdom of Night, mó will continue to threaten our village, and we will continue to die out.
How could I live with myself if I had the chance to turn that all around and let I it go? How could I knowingly walk away from the chance to fight for that sunlit afternoon beneath plum blossoms for Ma and Méi’zi?
I settle on the image of sunset, red and blazing against Fú’yí’s weathered face.You let those bastards in the Kingdom of Sky know. You let them know we are still here. You let them know we are still alive. You show them how strong you are. And when you have learned the arts, just as your father did, you come back and win this war against the Kingdom of Night.
My eyes fly open. My tea trembles in my hand, once.
“I’ll do it,” I say. “Please tell Hào’yáng I’ll do it.”
Shi’ya half turns to me as she opens the fretwork doors. The sun haloes her, outlining her side profile and the smile that lights her lips. “You may wish to tell him yourself,” she replies, and then she is gone, as though she has simply vanished into the wind and the flurry of blossom petals outside.
