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“I hope you know that acting chivalrous will not win you any special treatment from me,” she said stiffly.

When he allowed himself to open his eyes again, he was glad to find that she’d dropped the fake smile. He had been smiled at all his life, and rarely was it ever sincere. “I told you,” he said. “I’ve no interest in the things most men seek out here.”

She pursed her lips. “Then what are you interested in?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He considered leaving and dragging Fuhuo away, but he feared the other god was currently engaged, and though he had already seen plenty in his four hundred years, there were certain scenes he would most rather not witness. And as for Ziyan . . . If he left so soon, without a better explanation, would the owners of the brothel blame her for failing to keep a customer? That hardly seemed fair. “Perhaps you can tell me a story,” he said.

“A story? All right,” she said, tilting her head. “A scary one, or a happy one?”

“A scary one,” he said.

She appeared to approve of his choice, which sparked inside his chest a pleasant, warm feeling he associated with wine. “You’ll want to sit down,” she told him, lowering herself on the bed.

When he hesitated, she grinned at him, a change from the mild, closed-mouth smile she’d given him before. One of her teeth was sharper and slightly crooked. It suits her well, he caught himself thinking.

“Come closer,” she chided. “I’m not going to eat you.”

He flipped out the back of his robes and sat but made sure to keep his distance from her.

“Have you heard the tale of the Death God?” she asked him.

Which one? he wanted to respond. In every realm, the Death God remained one of the most popular subjects, perhaps because he was the only figure everyone—whether mortal or immortal, good or wicked, wealthy or poor—was guaranteed to meet at some point. Junyi had seen the Death God a few times before, when they were both children, but they’d never spoken. Of course, he couldn’t say any of this to Ziyan without revealing his own identity.

“I have not,” he replied. “You will have to tell it to me.”

“Well,” she said, lowering her voice into a dark whisper, the candles flickering around her, “the first thing you must know is that the Death God has horns and fangs and claws that can cut the body into clean halves . . .”

He never intended to return to the brothel again.

But he had just suffered through a painfully dull session with the god of festivities, who had spent much of it complaining about how the god of marriage kept stealing his worshippers, and now Junyi wanted two contradictory things: peace, and someone to talk to. Three days ago, before he’d met Ziyan, he was certain that peace was only possible when he was alone. Nobody to charm and convince, nobody to demand more of him, nobody to watch his every move. Yet that one strange night, listening to her recount tales he’d already heard by the melting, moon-white candles, he had felt his breathing slow, and his heartbeat steady, and his thoughts dissolve. For once, there was no angry ringing inside his head, no cacophony of criticism. Everything seemed to go quiet until all he could hear was her voice. He wanted to wrap the feeling up like a sweet scent in a perfume pouch, tie it to his belt, and take it everywhere with him, but since he could not, he sought out the feeling at its source.

In the Celestial Realm, only three days had passed.

But in the Mortal Realm, it had been three years.

He had worried that she would not remember him, or that she would not be there at all, but she’d been heading down the stairs when he walked in. Her footsteps slowed on the final step, and she grinned.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she said.

“I didn’t think so either,” he confessed.

She cocked her head, studying him more closely, and her smile faltered for only a moment. “You have not changed at all.”

He stilled, his heart thudding, and tried to react as if it were a compliment, rather than an accusation. “I’ve tried my best to avoid visibly aging. I’m glad it is working.”

She stared at him a second longer before her smile returned. “You must tell me your secret.”

“You hardly need it,” he said.

“Oh, I take it back—you have changed. Your mouth is sweeter than it was before.” She fanned herself without haste, then turned on the stairs without breaking eye contact. “Well, come up, and we can do everything we did last time. I recall that you had very unique interests . . .” This last part, she said loudly enough for the other customers to turn and laugh at his visible embarrassment. The heat in his cheeks had not retreated by the time she pulled him into the room, laughing at him too. “You’re still so shy,” she said.

He coughed and looked away. “I am not.”

“You can’t even look at me.” Her voice was low, teasing.

“Untrue.”

“Really?”