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“Are you enjoying yourself?” the Death God asks.

“I suppose so,” I say. Enjoying. Alive, overwhelmed, confused, in disbelief. All of it.

Dawn has broken. The sky is a dreamy roseate shade, the warm, rising flush of day chasing away the moon and the stars around us. Light cascades over the clouds, down the soft slopes of mountains, glancing off the thousands of tiled roofs in the cities below. The Mortal Realm sprawls out like a painting, a complex labyrinth of cobbled paths and open roads, the slanting roofs dusted with snow, smoke billowing from chimneys, the red-painted pillars and faded walls.

I’d never known the Mortal Realm to be so beautiful before.

Then the dragon dips down, my stomach dipping, too, and the details sharpen. If I really focus, I can make out the mortals themselves, dragging their carts of grain behind them, hurrying down the streets, seeking out warmth from restaurants, their children skipping and laughing in courtyards. No bigger than ants from up here—no better, according to the gods. How terrifying, to be so fragile and insignificant. The ultimate curse of powerlessness.

Another turn, the landscape peeling away to the dizzying expanse of the ocean again. The waves are calm today, but my eyes catch on a blotch of darkness by the shores.

It looks like someone has spilled an enormous vat of ink in the waters. As I stare, the darkness spreads like a stain.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing down.

The Death God shifts his body behind me, turning toward it too. “Nothing that should be of concern to you,” he says after a beat.

“It doesn’t seem to be nothing. It seems . . .” Unnatural. Centuries I’ve spent gazing out at the sea, and I have never seen it turn such a shade before. Like rot settling into flesh. Like poison.

“Merely the result of an imbalance,” the Death God says. “The universe has a way of making it known when things do not go the way it wishes.”

“An imbalance? Why?”

But he does not reply, only yanks at the reins, drawing the dragon back in the direction we had come from. And I realize, as the wind rushes through my hair, the clouds parting around us, that this could be my chance to free myself. There are no barriers here; I could leap off the dragon’s back, flee from the Death God. Best do it now.

Except for a split second, I falter. Maybe it is because I can still feel the Death God’s breathing in my hair, or because the world looks beautiful in the dawn light, or because the dragon is as gentle up close as my mother had told me, or because I am here at all, riding on dragon-back as I’d dreamed. Because there is nothing overtly wrong or dangerous with this passing moment; if anything, a strange sense of serenity nestles in my chest . . .

“You’re not thinking of running away, are you?” The Death God’s voice against my ear, his arms tightening almost imperceptibly around my waist.

Cold breaks out over my body. Useless, I curse myself. I should not have hesitated—should not have let myself soften. “No, of course not,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “I know I can never escape you.”

“You cannot,” he says, but for some reason, he doesn’t sound triumphant. More remorseful, as if he wishes things were different as much as I do.

Chapter Nine

A century ago, Crown Prince Junyi unwittingly entered the doors of a brothel.

He knew nobody would have believed him if he’d made the claim. Certainly, there had been signs which he had overlooked: the crimson glow from within the windows, the lilting notes of the guzheng, the provocative lines of poetry written in unruly calligraphy on the walls, the thick haze of alcohol that hung over the building like clouds. But he had not ventured down to the Mortal Realm in years, and he’d never been to a place like this before. He’d assumed he was merely walking into a more lively, well-decorated teahouse, where people liked to wear looser and thinner clothing. It was rather warm indoors for a late autumn evening. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. He tried to step back, but the entrance had already been blocked by new guests, and four women rushed forward, clad in colorful gauze and floral perfumes that reminded him of incense smoke.

“Come in, come in,” they urged, tugging him forward.

“You’re so handsome—how come we haven’t seen you around before?”

“What would you like? A song? A dance? A painting?”

“Oh, you would make such a lovely painting . . .”

Junyi turned from them and cast Fuhuo an accusatory look. “When you said we were going somewhere special,” he said quietly, “I did not realize you meant this.”

The god of fire grinned at him. Unlike Junyi, he looked completely at ease here, with a stranger tucking his hair behind his ear. “But it is special, don’t you think? You wouldn’t be able to find anything like this back where we came from.”

To the performers encircling them, it must have sounded like they were traveling from a remote rural village. The truth was much further away. The Celestial Realm had everything: armor built from the impenetrable scales of real dragons, blankets stuffed with the softest crane down, ponds that magnified the beauty of the onlooker, gardens that magically suffused the air with the scent of your favorite flower, sweet wines stored over centuries that made you drunk but never left you with a headache, and honeyed cakes that lingered on your tongue for the length of a day. But the Celestial Realm did not have brothels. These were primarily mortal inventions, as was true of many other means of indulgence and excess, for the mortals suffered so much that they were compelled to overcompensate with pleasure. Most mortal men would have ventured deep into these alleys looking for an escape, to forget about their lowly status or their lack of gold or their long-lost lovers. Gods like Fuhuo, on the other hand, traveled here out of boredom or restlessness. Now that he came to think of it, Junyi wondered how many of the gods’ supposed missions to the Mortal Realm to research and observe the mortals from up close were really excuses for them to go and entertain themselves when the moon rose.

“Relax, Your Highness,” Fuhuo said, dropping his voice. “It’s not as though this is forbidden.”

The other god was not wrong in that there were no rules surrounding brothels in particular. But even if it was not forbidden for Junyi to be here, it did not feel right either.

“I was expecting an environment more suited for conversation,” he said. He had agreed to Fuhuo’s vague invitation only because he knew what Fuhuo hoped to discuss. There had been a time when being a god of fire meant frequent, devoted worship from mortals shivering in the darkness and damp and cold. But as the centuries passed and civilization matured, the mortals had learned how to start fires on their own. A trip to the market for offerings and then up to the temples in the mountains was far more complicated—not to mention costly—than simply lighting the firewood themselves. And even when the fire burned out of control, it was not to the god of fire that they prayed to, but the god of rain or god of water.