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He made himself stare down at her. Somehow, she had grown even lovelier than he remembered. Her lips were painted a deeper crimson shade, and the shimmery powder around her eyes made them glow in the warm light. He managed to maintain his position for two seconds before the heat spread down to his neck, and he blinked, hard.

“I wanted to hear another story,” he said.

“Another scary story?”

“Yes. Any.”

Her eyes curved. “The last story didn’t seem to scare you much. You looked like you were about to fall asleep.”

“That’s not the story’s fault,” he told her. “It’s hard to scare me.”

“I seem to scare you without much trouble,” she said, brushing a casual hand down his chest, her smile widening when he stiffened. In the same flippant manner, she drew her hand back and straightened the dragonfly pin in her hair. He had the sudden thought that nothing under the Heavens could faze her. That everything was like water, gliding right past her. “Sorry, I’ll stop playing with you.” She didn’t sound sorry at all.

And although nobody else would have dared to make fun of him so shamelessly and relentlessly, although he found his own reactions both deeply mortifying and mystifying, he couldn’t stop himself from visiting Ziyan again, and again, and again. Sometimes he would ascend to the Celestial Realm for only a few minutes before he missed her too much and returned.

“Back again, are we?” All the performers at the brothel now recognized him and knew who to call. They giggled and whispered among themselves as he ascended the stairs. “You must not tire easily.”

“Trust me,” Ziyan said, appearing over the banister, silks looping through her slender arms and falling around her waist. “He doesn’t.”

Junyi didn’t know the exact reason that compelled him to keep coming back, only that the prospect of staying away seemed as difficult as standing still when a gong sounded right next to your ear. Each time he returned, Ziyan asked him the same question:

“A scary story, or a happy one?”

“A scary story, of course.”

She liked those stories best, she told him later. “It’s comforting to know that there are always scarier things than what I’m facing. Makes my own fears feel smaller.”

“You have fears?” he’d asked, surprised.

“Sometimes,” she said quietly, “it feels like I’m made of fears.”

It must have been his twentieth visit within the four mortal years since they’d first met, yet this was the most personal thing she’d shared. They’d reached some kind of silent agreement that they would not ask each other too many questions. There would only be the world within the room, and the passing moment. This should have suited him well; it saved him from having to lie about his entire life. But then there were the nights when he found her in her chambers, her mouth swollen, her eyes distant and bleak, her neck bruised, and he wanted to ask. Needed to.

“I can’t talk about it,” she said, as if sensing the words on his tongue. “Don’t make me remember it.”

He didn’t speak. But he did start planning. He would help her leave. He would pay for it, and find a house for her, one that was private and safe and far enough away from this place. He would be able to accompany her. Perhaps not all the time, but most of the time. He’d managed to slip out of his palace without being caught so far, and an evening down here was barely anything to those in the Celestial Realm; a sip of tea, a quick stroll outside, and he’d be back. It would be difficult, but entirely possible. Even if it wasn’t possible, he thought as he stared at the purple marks above her collarbone, he would have found a way to make it so.

Chapter Ten

If there is any wisdom to be gleaned from the tales I’ve heard my entire life, it is this: You do not want to be indebted to a god.

Most mortals remain ignorant of this truth. Sometimes they are warned, but they are too arrogant to listen, thinking themselves the exception, or too desperate to even imagine the consequences. They flock to the temples with their incense burning the air white, their baskets full of ripe fruit, and bow as low as their spines allow on hard prayer mats, and make their pleas, their bargains, their demands.

The gods do not care for their fruit. We have enough as it is, and the fruits of the Celestial Realm are so much sweeter, so much more filling. But still, the gods may humor those pleading mortals and grant them everything they ask for—or so it appears. The farmer’s crops will miraculously survive the drought. The lovers will welcome their very first son in the fall, soft-cheeked and smart and squealing. The scholar will see his poem chosen by the emperor himself, and his whole family will swell with pride. But then by the next year, the farmer’s house will burn. The child will stumble one step too far and tumble headfirst into a well, and by the time his parents hear the splash and the scream, it will be too late to save him. The scholar’s next poem will be misconstrued at court, and suddenly he is a threat to the throne, a traitor to the empire, and he has no choice but to go into hiding in a distant city, drinking his sorrows away among the peach trees, reciting his poetry to the wind.

And of course, instead of learning their lesson, the mortals will continue to turn to the gods and give too much for too little. Help me rebuild my home. Grant me another child. Let all those who have wronged me suffer a terrible ending. The gods do not care for their fruit, but they care for popularity and power. What is a god, after all, if not worshipped? If not immortalized through paintings and sculptures, tributes and sacrifices? So the mortals find themselves trapped in a cycle of suffering in order to keep the temples warm, and the altars clean, and the gods’ names on their tongues.

I am no helpless mortal, and the Death God may be different from the officials in the Celestial Realm, but the same logic applies: Gods never offer up kindness without a price. And the Death God has been much too kind to me recently, for reasons I still cannot fathom.

By the next morning, I have made up my mind: I will do everything within my power to take away at least some of his pain, and then we will be even, and I can go back to trying to defeat him for good. And if there is a more naive, reckless reason for helping him—something to do with the fire in my chest when he’d held my gaze, the silence that seemed to live between us when I’d leaned back on the bed that night, or the feeling of his arms around my body when the dragon spun through the sky—then that is entirely secondary. I will not give it any room to breathe.

But before I can find him, he comes to find me.

Staggers, more like, one painful stride at a time. He grips the wall of my room on his way inside, like a soldier with a wound in his stomach, one hand rubbing his temple, his eyes weary and tortured. He seems to be holding himself upright through sheer resolve alone, in defiance of what his body is enduring. There are no greetings. No explanations for his sudden appearance, though I suppose none are needed. Only:

“Is it really true?” he rasps out.

“What?”