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He shook his head. “All I have longed for is in the realm above.”

Together, we dashed outside into a clear morning, the sky a vivid aquamarine, the air glazed with warmth. I summoned a cloud, which we leapt upon, a rush of wind spiraling down to bear us along. Neither of us spoke, our breaths unsteady—the anxiety of the night only just beginning to subside as the shores of the Southern Sea glistened ahead.

Before entering the waters, I cloaked my father in invisibility, just as Liwei had done before. The guards at the palace entrance cast only a cursory glance our way, and we slipped into the Bright Pearl Palace without incident. Yet the farther we walked, the more his steps lagged.

“Father, are you all right?”

His lips lifted into a smile, as bright and fleeting as a shooting star. “It has been a long time since I felt this way.” He brushed a shaking palm over his hair. “How do I look?”

His question surprised me. I almost laughed aloud, suddenly as giddy as he was. “Don’t be nervous. Mother will be overjoyed.”

“I’m not nervous.” The slightest tremor shook his voice. “Does she know about me?”

“I didn’t tell her. I kept my word.”

His fingertips brushed his cheek, as though tracing the lines that had once creased their surface. “My face,” he said haltingly. “A foolish thing to worry about.”

I picked up a silver plate from a table, inlaid with coral along its rim. Wordlessly, I lifted it to him so he might see his reflection—a face more strong than handsome, the one my mother loved still. He stared at it for a long while, though I did not think him vain. There was no pride in his expression, just—wonder.

His eyes darted from the mirror to my face. “I see us, my daughter.”

My heart soared. Now that we were safe, it finally sank in: my father was home.

He rapped his knuckles against my mother’s door. As it swung open, she stood in the entrance, her gaze moving from me—to my father.

No one spoke, no one moved, as though we had been turned to stone. In all my fantasies of reunion, I had not imagined this stillness. And I had dreamed of this day, dreams so secret and burrowed so deep, I had never dared to speak them aloud. There was none of the violent joy I had anticipated—of tears and gasps and loving embraces. Had too much happened? Fifty years to an immortal was gone in a blink, and yet to a mortal it was over a life half-lived. They had spent more time apart than together; perhaps they needed to learn to be with each other again. And though I could not bear to think of it, there lay too, the unspoken rift between my parents, as vast as the skies that had once divided them. My mother’s theft. My father’s anger. His deception in not revealing himself, letting her weep by his grave. The decades of regret, recrimination, and sorrow, which might not be so easily forgotten.

“Houyi?” At last she spoke, the frail whisper rising from her throat. “Is it really you?” Her shock morphed to disbelief, and then … rapture.

“Chang’e, my wife. I have returned at last,” he said quietly, an unreadable expression on his face.

Her cheeks flushed like camellias, her eyes glistened like dew. But then she froze, bending her head. “I’m sorry, Houyi. I took the elixir, your elixir. I was so scared … I thought I was dying, and our child too. The doctors frightened me, and the pains came too early. I was all alone.” Her words tumbled out in fragments. Her anguish as raw as though it had been yesterday.

He did not speak. Was he still angry despite what he had said? Could he forgive her? Perhaps a spark of his rage had remained unquenched, flaring to life when confronted with her. Perhaps he blamed her still, even without knowing it. And a part of me wondered, how could he not?

“I was furious,” he began in a low voice. “Wretched in my grief. Those were my darkest days, worse than any battle I had fought, any loss I had suffered. Betrayal cuts deepest when it stems from those you love. For then you feel twice a fool, broken and hurt—all at once. For then you do not even have the solace you most crave. I tormented myself, wondering if that might have been your scheme all along, that you desired immortality more than me.” He spoke slowly, as though these words were wrenched from him. “And when years passed without a sign from you, a single message—I almost hated you then.”

A strangled sob erupted from my mother, the back of her hand flying to her mouth. I stiffened at my father’s harshness, yet I also wanted to weep for the suffering knotted in his heart all this time. While my mother and I had each other, it was he who had been left alone. And I understood how he felt, his words stirring in me an echo of my own betrayal at Wenzhi’s hands. Yet I had seen my mother’s suffering and anguish, and no matter what my father had gone through, I would not let him hurt her.

Before I could speak, my father took my mother’s hand. “I first saw you at my grave a year ago. I restrained myself from confronting you, for I believed you faithless. A part of me was also ashamed of what I had become, while you remained as luminous as the day we wed. I told myself it was enough to know you were well, that you remembered me. That you wept for me still. At last, I would find peace.”

He paused. “I was wrong. It was then I realized the last of my anger had vanished, and only the sadness remained. I told myself not to go again, for it was a cruel torment—one I could not resist. To feel both relief and disappointment on the days I did not see you, elated and desolate whenever I did.”

“I could not come,” she wept. “I could not leave. And even if I could, I did not know where you had gone. Whether you were alive.”

He reached for her then, embracing her so tightly it was as though they were one. “I am sorry too,” he whispered fiercely into her hair. “For leaving you alone and not listening to you. I was thinking of myself and what I feared and wanted to be true. I would have given the elixir to you. I should have offered it to you before. I would never have let you or our daughter die. You made the choice I was too selfish and afraid to make.”

Silence stretched wide and deep. Lightning could have struck the ground, wild beasts could have rampaged through the corridor—yet nothing could have torn them apart. My mother gazed at him like he was light and warmth. The sun, moon, and stars. As though everything else, including me, had receded into the shadows … and I was glad for it.

I left then, trying not to make a sound. Behind me, no more words were spoken, there was just the creak of the door as it slid shut. This was a moment for my parents alone. I would have my chance later, with the three of us together. For the first time in my life, a profound and unfamiliar sense of oneness filled me—that we would finally have time enough for us to be a family, to know one another as we would have done had we lived in the Mortal Realm without the sunbirds, capricious gods, and enchanted elixirs.

It was early afternoon when I made my way back to my mother’s room. I was reluctant to intrude upon my parents’ reunion, but dared not remain in the Southern Sea any longer. With Liwei’s escape and my part in it known to all, the emperor would be furious. He would retaliate, I had no doubt, my stomach churning at the thought.

Moreover, Ping’er had been laid to rest according to the customs of her people. Just this morning, my mother and I had knelt before her ancestral altar to pay our final respects. A lump had clogged my throat to see the ebony tablet inscribed with Ping’er’s name in gold. While there was a solemn peace in knowing she was among her people again, the ragged cries of her family and friends wrenched my heart.

We no longer had a reason to linger here, beyond the fact we had nowhere to go. As I entered my mother’s room, I found my father sitting by the table, his hair unbound, falling loosely over his shoulders. There was an ease to my mother’s smile, a new lightness to her movements. How strange it was to see my parents together, strange and utterly wonderful. Yet a slight uncertainty edged their interactions as though they were discovering each other again, as indeed they were: the way my father glanced at my mother to assure himself she was still there, the slight widening of her eyes whenever she looked at him. And when their fingers brushed, that moment of hesitation before my mother clasped his hand in hers.

“Daughter, I’m grateful.” My father inclined his head to me. “For your trust, for restoring my life. I had thought it impossible.”