1
Àn’ying
Xi’lín Village, Central Province, Kingdom of Rivers
My mother always told me the sunrises were the most beautiful part of our realm. A sky on fire in shades of rose and persimmon, clouds streaked with flame, and the breath of a world waking to the light.
I remember Ma’s words as I move through the pine forest on velvet tread. I hold a bow and arrow—but my crescent blades are tucked in the bodice and sleeves of my black gauze dress, like quiet companions in the predawn silence.
This morning, I am hunting.
Dew from pine needles wets my sleeves as I slip past, a trailing shadow. I hear a slight rustling, and a speckle-coated hare darts through the brush.
I squint through the foliage, following glimpses of the hare’s coat as it skitters through the browning leaves, unaware of my pursuit. Méi’zi will cry that I’ve killed a rabbit, but Ma needs the nutrients as her body returns to full health.
Autumn has arrived, bringing a crisp bite to the morning air. The flowers are beginning to lose their bloom; soon, winter’s snows will cover everything in white, and my realm will be made anew with the turn of a year. Yet ever since I’ve returned here to the mortal realm, its colors have seemed duller, the landscapes imperfect, compared with the ethereal beauty of the immortal realm.
Real, a voice in the back of my mind whispers.It’s real.
The hare leaps into a small clearing and stops, nose twitching, as though scenting for danger. I, too, stop in my tracks. It’s a long shot from here, but I might make it.
As I raise my bow and arrow and take aim, a sudden gust of wind stirs, shifting the clouds overhead. The clearing fills with the warm glow of dawn, and my mind conjures a dreamlike memory.
He stands in the clearing, turning toward me as though time has slowed.
Hair, billowing like swirls of ink.
Eyes, flashing like golden embers.
The phantom of a smile on his face as his gaze lifts to meet mine—
I take a swift step back. Blink and the vision’s gone—there’s only an empty clearing, leaves falling like the wings of dying butterflies.
The hare starts at my movement and shoots off into the brush again.
My heart is in my throat. I have the strangest feeling that I’m dreaming and that I’ve had this dream before. The setting changes: Sometimes it’s a bamboo forest, sometimes a field of flowering cherry trees, other times a vast mountaintop…but the person I’m chasing is always the same.
The clearing before me blurs.
I hate him.
I miss him.
I hate myself for missing him.
Yù’chén is the son of the Kingdom of Night’s demon queen, Sansiran—and the mortal emperor, as I found out a few days past. Half mó and half mortal, he tricked the wards of the immortal realm, sneaking in to compete in the Immortality Trials in the guise of a mortal…and enabling the Kingdom of Night’s demonic army to cross into the previously impenetrable Kingdom of Sky.
He is also the man who saved my life more times than I can count.
And the man I thought myself in love with.
No.I release an arrow into the brush where the hare disappeared, imagining it to be Yù’chén’s heart instead. “I hate him,” I mutter, as though speaking the words aloud will render them true. “And I’ll kill him.”
“Admirable attitude, but your bow-handling skills leave much to be desired.”
I whirl around. Hào’yáng strides toward me between the pines. He’s shed the golden armor that once marked him a captain of the guard of the Kingdom of Sky, but light still wraps around him, teasing out the gold-stitched patterns on his pale shift. It catches on the silver hilt at his waist—the longsword named Azure Tide, gifted to his lineage by the dragons in a time long past.
Hào’yáng, my boy in the jade. Rightful heir to our realm, the Kingdom of Rivers.
