He’s silent at this, looking at a spot on the wall instead of atme.
“Please don’t hurt them,” I say into the silence after a while. “Please. I’ll do anything you want.”
Yù’chén sighs and drags a hand down his face. “How swiftly you forget that I once risked my life to save your sister,” he says. His eyes glint through the spaces between his fingers. “Did that mean nothing to you, Àn’ying?”
I’m quiet, if only because I remember all too clearly, and it had meanteverythingto me then, and I will never tell him thatnow.
Seeing that I won’t speak, Yù’chén continues: “I have no reason to hurt your family. You assume many illogical things about my actions, Àn’ying, merely based on what I am.”
“Then why are you keeping me here?” I ask instead. “Why not just kill me?”
Yù’chén folds his arms and straightens, turning to me. “Àn’ying. Please have some tea. Your body won’t last long without sustenance.”
“Why do you care?” I demand, but he’s already calling upon his magic. The chamber lightens and warms. Scorpion lilies blossom on the bedposts, heat pouring from them, and I realize that I was shivering.
Yù’chén approaches with a tray laden with a teapot, a teacup, and several platters of delicacies. He stops a few steps away. “Will you throw this at me again?”
The question is so incongruously innocent that I have the urge to laugh. Seeing my family alive and well has filled me with hope, fury, and, most of all, renewed resolve.
I don’t wish to feel anything anymore, I once wrote Hào’yáng through my jade pendant, when my father died.If this is how much it hurts to love and lose someone, I never wish to love again.
Love is the most powerful magic in our realms, he replied.Takewhat you feel and hone it into a blade. Even when all else fails, you will have love to guide you.
My mind sharpens. Yù’chén is the only resource I have access to in the Kingdom of Night—which means I can start by finding out information from him.
I accept the tray, aware of his gaze upon me as I drink the tea. It warms me instantly, and I find myself reaching for more. After several refills, I pause to study the cup. It is different from the artistic style of the Kingdom of Night: obsidian inlaid with bursts of silver with bright glazing. This one is also porcelain, but with butterflies soaring amidst peonies and willows, reminiscent of the motifs and art style of the Eastern Province.
“This is from the mortal realm,” I observe, running a thumb over the little blue glazings.
He nods. “My father gifted it to me when I was a child. I always had a pot of hot water or tea on my desk as I studied with the mortal tutors. When my father destroyed the private residence he had built for my mother and me, this is one of the few pieces I managed to salvage.”
I focus on the cup, imagining Yù’chén as a young child being cast away and hunted for the circumstances of his birth. I imagine the emperor—his father of flesh and blood—speaking the command for his and Sansiran’s heads.
I set the cup down with a loudthunk. “So, do the mó keep mortals here for food or pleasure?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrows but offers me an answer anyway. “Both. But mortals don’t last long here. There’s no sun or heat. The makeup of mó is very different. They—we—derive our energy from the night, from the darkness.”
“What about you?” I’m making conversation, hoping foranything he might let slip that could be useful to me—yet with this question, I’m genuinely curious, too.
Yù’chén studies the destiny lines on his palms. “I need both,” he says at last. “My vision in the dark isn’t as good as the mó’s, and I need heat to survive. But I gain power from both darkness and light.”
He sounds almost hesitant. It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps no one has ever asked him this question. I recall the brutal way his mother treated him that night in the immortal realm, and I suddenly wonder what his childhood was like.
I wonder if he cared for me because I was the first person in this world to treat him like a human being.
“How did I end up here?” I crane my neck at the starlit ceiling, the flowers blooming softly against dark walls. “I have no memory of it.”
“Oleander nectar. In the future, should anyone offer it to you, donotaccept.”
Oleander nectar.The words don’t trigger any memories, yet bile rises on my tongue, tasting of honey. “You fed it to me?”
Yù’chén glances at me. “No.”
“And what exactly does it do? Make you lose your memory?”
“It makes you forget who you are. It makes you pliant. Drink enough of it, and you’ll do anything to please whomever you happen upon.” He says all this as though through a recitation. “It works like our magic; it’s how the mó lure mortals into their traps.”
My heart is beating faster and faster in my chest. The black hole of the past day—night—however long I’ve been here—expands into a new fear as I brush a hand against the bodice of my new nightgown. “And you changed me into this?”
