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Everything had ended a hundred years ago, the day he lost her, and life continued to end for him now, like a slow, excruciating death he could neither outrun nor undo. There was no future, only the past and his memories suspended inside it, playing over and over and over again.

Blood dripped from the gash in his heart. He set the knife in his hand down and leaned farther over the flowers, his knees digging into the cold stone. The blood-smeared petals stretched and smoothed out, emitting a golden light from their core as they grew. The light flowed along their slender stems, into the roots wound around Ziyan’s arms and neck and legs, and just like the flowers, her skin turned softer, the blue shadows under her eyes disappearing, all the signs of decay erasing themselves. She could have been sleeping, except for how still she was.

“Ziyan,” he whispered, bowing his head. “You know I hate it when you ignore me.”

She didn’t respond. She would never respond, never speak, never smile, never open her eyes to look at him.

“Of course, you have every reason to,” he continued. “You must be furious with me still.” He tucked the gold ribbon behind her ear and blinked back the prickling sensation in his eyes. “Do you remember that night when you asked me what I’d wish to be in another life? I didn’t get to answer you at the time—not because I didn’t want to. I was . . . I was nervous, and taken aback, and I wanted to give an answer that you liked. But I’ve had much longer to think about it, and I realize it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if I end up reincarnated as a dragonfly or a fallen soldier or a struggling scholar in the Mortal Realm. I’d only hope that I would be able to meet you again. Even if you’re the fox who crushes the dragonfly’s wings, the general who leads the soldiers to their defeat, the noblewoman who leads the scholar to his death . . . I would be happy with that life. I wouldn’t ever ask for anything else. I swear. Ziyan, did you hear me? Can you—” His voice broke. His lips trembled as he tried for a smile. “Can you please say something? If you’re angry . . . you can yell at me. You can hit me. I won’t complain. If you could only— If you could just . . . There’s nothing I’d complain about again.”

Silence. Stillness.

He was only vaguely aware that his heart was bleeding, the muscles under his rib cage spasming with wave after wave of agony. The world was a gray blur. He drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and curling into himself the way he used to when he was a child. But not even as a child had he felt so powerless, so useless, so awfully alone.

Tears fell to the flowers, following the same trails down the petals as his blood.

His shoulders convulsed with sobs. “Ziyan.” His hands were shaking, too, reaching for the air around her, his fingers curling around nothing. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked hoarsely. “Answer me. Please. What am I supposed to do from here? Where do I go? What do I do when I—when I want to tell you something? I only had you for a few years, and now I have an eternity. It’s too long, it’s not supposed to . . . And I can’t—I can’t change it. I tried. I really, really tried, you have to believe me, Ziyan—”

He snapped his head up, his lashes still wet, his gaze sharpening as he stared out through the palace windows.

There had been a disturbance in the barrier. He’d felt it. He wiped his face and clenched his fist. Nobody was meant to come here. Nobody could discover her.

He cast Ziyan one last look, then stepped into empty space, reappearing outside the palace grounds. He searched the gaps between the trees, listened for footsteps through the roaring in his ears. There was no further movement. But his eyes caught on a strange spot of color on the leaves.

Blood, still fresh.

Chapter Twelve

Time is running out.

I am terribly aware of this, yet I cannot stop it as a mortal cannot stop water with their hands. My life goes on within the Night Realm, a life that feels at once bizarre and also increasingly familiar as I grow used to the shadows and snow. Every day now, the Death God returns to my room. Sometimes he is silent, severe, determined not to engage in unnecessary chatter. Sometimes he brings delicacies from the Mortal Realm, which he presents without flair and insists are to help me work faster: red dates as sweet as honey, grown in the remote mountains and fed by spring water; hard candy made from crushed sesame; chestnut cakes fried gold at the edges. The questions will come as I eat, slipping from his lips, surprising me with how innocuous they are: Why live by the ocean? What do you do when you are not healing others? Are you happier in the summer? Do you paint? What other kind of god would you be, if you could choose again?

Other times he is in such pain that he could not speak even if he wanted to, though these instances become less frequent the longer we spend together. I sit with him in the cold. He offers me his past, the fissures running through his heart, and I offer him warmth. At the end of it all, I am so exhausted that I fall into a heavy, dreamless sleep, too deep for Yuemo or Hanchen or anyone else to reach me.

One month. They are the last words I hear before I close my eyes every night, the first words I recall when I wake. I had bargained for one month, and now it is almost up. My best chance is to flee when the Death God is gone, but his trips to the Mortal Realm are always far too short, and, perhaps sensing my plans, he leaves the ghosts trailing the corridors. They are too frightened to hurt me after facing the Death God’s wrath, but they keep their blank white eyes pinned on me, tracking my movements. And when at last he is to travel somewhere far, he takes me with him.

“Where to?” I ask.

“You will see” is all he replies before taking my wrist. Between breaths, one word and the next, pitch-black and then blazing light, we have already arrived. “Here.”

Here is a lone island, floating above the clouds. The entire world is on display below us, the thickets of trees and curving rivers and mortal cities coming together like colors on a painting, too distant to be distinct. Above us, the sky; a clear, piercing blue, so blue it makes me want to cry. A waterfall that seems to begin from nowhere, half hidden in mist, streams down in one great, shimmering sheet before flowing over the sides. In one direction, the moon has not quite faded yet, its silhouette a shade paler than the surrounding air. And in the other direction there is the sun, which I have not met in what feels like decades. Warmth on my face, the top of my head. I hold my hand up, letting the light stream in through my fingers, such a brilliant gold it’s almost pure white.

Then I look around us. The island itself is small enough that I can make out the other end of it from where I stand, yet there is everything a god could need: a house with crimson glazed tiles and shining wooden columns and a garden filled with fruit from every season, smooth plums and heavy peaches and little clusters of lychees. All the doors are shut, the windows closed, the only movement the breeze rustling the long wild grass in the front yard. There appears to be nobody else except us.

“What do you plan to do?” I ask. I am speaking too quietly, afraid to disturb the strange peace of the place. Yet, I have an even stranger feeling that I am being listened to. The hair on my exposed neck prickles.

“Collect a soul,” the Death God replies.

I stare at him. I know how he looks when he has finished collecting souls for the day: tired, almost bored, ready to be done. But right now he looks different. Alert. His eyes scanning the perimeters, his shoulders rigid.

“An ancient god’s soul,” he says, perhaps sensing my gaze. “They are always trickier. Most gods prefer to make some sort of futile statement before they go.”

“Because of fate?” I can’t help asking. “Fate deciding that they should die?” Just like those mortals my parents had wanted to save. Just like me.

“Yes, exactly. Fate.” He turns back toward me, eyebrows raised in challenge. “The balance of the universe. The will of the Heavens. The tides of time. Forces bigger than any of us.” He pauses, his lips tightening into a firm line. “Now, be careful. The god isn’t dead yet. I cannot be sure what she will do in her last moments, and I do not want you interfering.”

“Why did you even bring me here, then?” I ask. I had wanted it to sound more like a complaint, an accusation, but I cannot muster the indignation when the sun is this bright, the air this clean.

“I thought you’d like a change of scenery,” he says stiffly. “And of course, I couldn’t have you running away while I was gone.”