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“Why are you still up?” he asked, striding toward me.

“I’m not tired.” My eyes flicked to his hands, streaked with dirt. “Why are you still up?” I repeated his question back to him.

“I needed to inspect our path for tomorrow. To make sure there weren’t any surprises.” He sighed. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow we have a steep climb and a hard fight.”

I left him then, to find my place on the ground. The nights were the hardest. When I lay alone in the dark, the memories I drove away in the light of day came crashing down. Of warm dark eyes and a teasing smile, which wore away at the hard shell around my heart until I wrapped my arms around myself, struggling to breathe through the tightness in my chest. Perhaps it was worse tonight because I was in the Mortal Realm—where my mother and father had met, fallen in love, and been happy. Until the sunbirds. Until me.

Once, I had screwed up the courage to ask my mother how they’d met. If I had not read the book, I would never have been so bold. But it was so with all knowledge, having just a little left you with a greater thirst. And I had found that she did not mind speaking of her mortal past. It was the memories that came after which she shied from. Sometimes I felt there were two parts of her—the mortal and the immortal—of which the former belonged to my father and the latter to me.

She had glowed at my question, a flush rising to her cheeks. “We grew up together in a village by the sea,” she had told me. “He was the clever one, the fastest runner and quickest with a bow. It was no surprise when the soldiers came for him just after he turned seventeen, recruiting him to join them. He did not complain, only hugging his mother as she wept over him. I tried not to cry, too, though we loved each other. Before he left, he promised he would come back for me. For five years, I waited. Sometimes I thought he had forgotten me along his path to greatness. But he did not.”

A cloud had fallen over her face then, as she pressed her trembling lips together. There was no need for her to say aloud what we both knew: that they had parted, more irrevocably than if my father had a change of heart and never returned—with the entire sky between them now.

With a sigh, I stretched out on the cold ground. Everyone else was asleep just as Captain Wenzhi had said. I still ached, though no longer for my loss alone. My parents had been torn apart as a peach twisted into two halves. Their love was intact and yet they could not be together. Was that worse than the inevitable finality of death? I did not know.

I thought bitterly that unlike me, at least my mother had married her love. He had been true to her. And she to him, until the fateful day she had taken the elixir. Was this where all paths to love led? Heartbreak, whether through separation, betrayal, or death? Was the fleeting joy worth the sorrow that came after? I supposed it depended on the strength of the love, the memories made—which seemed enough to sustain my mother through the decades of her lonely vigil. Yet in my lowest moments a darkness had crept over me, whispering hateful things—that I was a fool, a weakling, so easily discarded. It would have eased my gnawing ache had I surrendered to the hate, letting resentment smother my grief, blaming Liwei for the hurt he caused me. It would only have been a brief respite though as what I mourned more than any injured pride was the love we had lost, the future which was no longer ours.

The aching hollow within my chest gaped wider. I instinctively searched the night for the moon, letting its soft light graze my face, the balm to my pain. Closing my eyes, I could almost imagine it were my mother’s touch. My nails dug into my palms. I was more than this ill-fated love; I would not let it define me. I had my family to think of, my own dreams to fulfill . . . and a nine-headed serpent to slay on the morrow.

15

Sunlight set the mountain afire with an ominous glitter. I gritted my teeth as I hauled myself up, just behind Captain Wenzhi as we clambered up the slope. Sweat trickled down my brow, my neck and back, as I dug my fingers into the cold rock, to grip the slippery surface. I glanced down, the ground so far away that my head spun. For the hundredth time I assured myself that a fall in the Mortal Realm was unlikely to kill us, though how I wished I could summon a cloud now.

“We’re here.” Captain Wenzhi climbed onto a ledge.

The rest of us scrambled after him, with Archer Feimao the last to appear—flushed, his shining armor scuffed in places. Had he fallen? Fortunately, he appeared unharmed. At the end of the ledge loomed a dark entrance, high enough for us to walk through, unbowed. Xiangliu had chosen its home well. Not only was it protected from magic, but this rocky terrain with its narrow paths and tight openings made storming in with troops impossible.

Captain Wenzhi waited for us to gather before addressing us in a steady tone. “Be on your guard. Xiangliu is powerful and fast, its fangs are sharper than knives, and its skin is protected by impenetrable scales. With nine heads, little escapes its notice. And whatever you do, don’t look into its eyes.”

“Why?” I asked, already dreading his answer.

“It can paralyze you.”

A tense silence fell over us, punctured by the shuffling of feet. It was of little surprise that this creature had evaded death for so long, even after earning the Celestial Emperor’s ire.

He continued, speaking slower now, “Focus your attacks on its underbelly, its most vulnerable part. That won’t kill it, but will cause it pain. Our aim is to distract and threaten it, until it unleashes its acid. That’s when our target will be exposed, that’s when the archers will strike. At my signal, we’ll attack in two groups, flanking and driving it toward the entrance where the archers will station themselves.” His gaze shifted to Archer Feimao and me. “Don’t engage it unless you have to. Keep your arrows drawn, ready for the moment to strike. We won’t get many chances. Stay steady, aim well, fight together.”

As one, we bowed, our palms wrapped over our fists. When we rose again, we stood a little straighter. I was wound tight with tension as I glanced at the somber faces around me. This was no practice session that I could repeat whenever I wished. The slightest lapse would tilt the scales between life and death, and not just for me alone.

We left the safety of the sundrenched ledge, slipping into the cave. It was enormous, stretching so high I could not see the ceiling through the dark. I stood with my back to the light, as did Archer Feimao a little farther away. I inhaled deeply, almost gagging as the damp air hit my lungs—laced with salt, earth, and the stench of rotting flesh. Just ahead, Captain Wenzhi’s hand shot up in warning. He gestured toward the center of the cave, submerged in inky water. The soldiers followed his lead, moving to the side, stepping over the bones that were scattered with an almost cruel abandon.

I squinted, making out a large silhouette huddled in the water, so still there was barely a ripple around it. Was the creature asleep? I wiped my palms, damp with sweat, before drawing an arrow. I had shot countless targets of metal, wood, and stone—though never a creature of flesh and blood. Swallowing hard, my eyes met Captain Wenzhi’s. I nodded, as did Archer Feimao, signaling our readiness. As the captain’s low whistle pierced the silence, the soldiers charged forward, their feet pounding the ground.

Red lights flickered to life like fireflies dancing over the water. Except these were embedded in heads which reared up as Xiangliu uncoiled to its full height, almost that of a young cypress. Nine heads sprang from its barrel-like body, each plucked from a nightmare, each darting with a life of its own. Eight were covered in black scales with flaming eyes and bone-white fangs, glistening with a foaming liquid. One had the skin of a fair immortal, except for the dark lines spread across like cracked porcelain. Lips parted, showing graying teeth, and where its eyes should have been were smooth hollows—like holes in the ground, not filled all the way through. It gave me the eerie sensation of an immortal’s face which had been peeled off and draped over the serpent’s like a glove.

Ice slid down my spine as I clutched my bow tighter. Soldiers dashed into the water, raising their swords. The creature’s jaws snapped ferociously as it wrapped its spiked tail around those nearest, flinging them against the rock wall. They collapsed with a crash, their cries ringing in my ears. As one of Xiangliu’s heads lunged down, its fangs sank into a soldier’s neck. He screamed in agony, slashing his blade across the serpent’s scaly face.

“No!” Captain Wenzhi shouted.

It was too late, Xiangliu’s heads swarming to form a shield around its core, like the petals of a flower closed into a bud. The serpent leapt out of the water with surprising agility, drops spattering all around. Cold and reeking of death.

The soldiers pressed on. One thrust her sword into the creature’s stomach. Xiangliu shrieked, a feral sound, as it slithered toward the entrance—rising higher until it towered over Archer Feimao and me. Against the sunlight streaming in, its scales gleamed like onyx.

Fear cut my heart, not the insidious prickle of the unknown, but stabbing terror for my survival. A primitive instinct took over, my ears deaf to Captain Wenzhi’s warnings, my fingers releasing the bowstring as the arrow sprang free. Even as it struck, I cursed myself for not staying hidden as instructed. For drawing the serpent’s attention instead of emerging at the opportune moment to strike.

One of Xiangliu’s heads bent to rip out my arrow, tossing it aside almost contemptuously. The rest fanned out around me, those glowing eyes boring into mine. I froze, only now noticing the tiny, pearlescent scales covering the eye sockets of its core, barely perceptible in the dark.

“Look away!” Archer Feimao yelled, gesturing wildly at me.