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My power rushes through me like a current, and when I open my hands and push my arms forward, directing all of it toward the Death God in a shining wave of blue, I feel the change in the air. His body stiffens, then slowly relaxes, his eyes falling closed.

“How do you feel?” I ask, surprised to discover how anxious I am for the answer—and not solely so I can continue proving myself useful.

“Warm,” he says after a beat, with something almost like wonder. “It is an entirely new sensation.”

“Good. That means it’s working.” A bead of sweat drips from my forehead. I can feel my body tiring, my senses slowing. Still, I lift my arms higher to summon more power—

“Stop,” he says. His eyes open, and though they are not any brighter, they appear softer. Or maybe that is just my exhaustion distorting things.

“Why?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

“We can continue this another day. You’re clearly tired; you should rest before you push your body to its limit.”

I feel an unexpected bloom of gratitude in my chest, faint but palpable—until he stands up, his black cloak rippling around him, and adds calmly over his shoulder:

“It is no good if you die before I have the chance to kill you.”

And just as fast, all my gratitude withers. You’re confusing him with the scared boy from the past, the one who answered to Keran, I scold myself. But he is the Death God now. His heart has long been drowned in the Yellow Springs. He is no more capable of sadness or remorse than the frost that freezes peonies, the clouds that cover the sun, the blade that carves through skin. The second he is able, he will take your soul and never give you a second thought again.

You are not some tender-fleshed god, new to the world and its injustices; don’t let yourself be fooled.

Chapter Eleven

Everything happened as Junyi hoped.

It was almost too good. He couldn’t fathom his fortune as he led Ziyan into the courtyard that was now hers—and judging from her uncharacteristic quiet, the way her eyes widened when she took in the plum blossoms and the flat gray tiles that curved up to the front doors, neither could she.

“This is really for me?” she asked.

“For you, and only you,” he said.

She breathed in, then turned to him with an expression he didn’t understand. Not at first, not until she stood on her tiptoes and moved in to kiss him. She was not teasing, as she had been all those times before. She was deliberate, determined. He would have lowered his head and gladly let her crush the distance between them, but in his peripheral vision, he saw that her fists were clenched.

He took an abrupt step back, horrified and enraged at himself for not understanding sooner. She didn’t mean to kiss him as young lovers did, those who could afford a blissful, uncomplicated romance and hold hands in the sun and touch each other’s skin without worrying about the shadows underneath. She kissed him as payment, as a girl who had been taught that life was a trade, and the only currency she knew was in empty, calculated gestures of intimacy. It hurt him, like a dagger drawing along his liver. He hurt for her.

“You don’t need to repay me,” he told her.

The emotions playing across her face were the strangest commingling of guilt and relief. Her fingers unfurled. “I don’t like being indebted to anybody,” she said, very quiet. “I’ve learned that favors tend to come with interest over time, and I would rather settle things now than later.”

“It’s the world that is indebted to you.” He paused. “Consider this as me repaying that debt on the world’s behalf. Now it’s even, and you’re free to do as you wish.”

She laughed, the tension cracking. “On the world’s behalf? What are you, a god?”

He smiled and said nothing. It was too easy to pretend that he wasn’t a god. The longer he spent with her, the more it seemed to him that everything in the Celestial Realm was a brittle fantasy, a butterfly’s dream. That world wasn’t real, not like the world of mortals. Not like her.

“What have you been so busy doing these days?” The Celestial Emperor’s voice was light as the chess piece he set down on the board between them, but Junyi was not fooled. That same black stone had just blocked all visible routes for escape. One more move, and his father would win the match.

He picked up the flat white piece, his right hand hovering over the grid, the stone sliding forward between his two fingers like a crane dipping its head for water. His skull throbbed. The thin margins swam before his vision and seemed to squeeze ruthlessly in toward the center, caging his pieces within them, but he tried to match his father’s tone of indifference. To scrub the fear from his face. “Not too much,” he said. “I’m learning a new melody on the guqin.”

“Is it a very difficult one?” The Celestial Emperor was looking out the window, at the auroral haze of clouds. To the rows of attendants waiting below the dais, it might have appeared like he wasn’t playing at all.

“Somewhat, Your Majesty,” Junyi said. He began moving his hand to the left, then faltered. There was no opening. “The melody is more advanced than ones I’ve played in the past.”

“Well, it seems to be taking up much of your attention.”

Junyi swallowed. He knew he was only delaying his inevitable defeat, but he scanned the board again, desperate, searching for any possible means to reverse his position. “Your Majesty needn’t worry. I haven’t neglected any of my duties.” Though small, the stone felt extraordinarily heavy. He stared down a few moments longer, then, his heart sinking, lowered the white piece beside the black.

The instant he did, the Celestial Emperor placed his piece with a crisp, decisive click. “Perhaps you should waste less time on the guqin, and spend more time working on your strategy,” he said, then looked up for the first time. His eyes were the same pure black as the stones. There was no room for anything else in them; he saw either the entirety of the Heavens, or nothing. “Let’s play another match, shall we?”