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Since we arrived, a question has chewed at the back of my mind: What is the god meant to die of? What could possibly kill a god of her strength? But at last, the answer becomes clear. As the sunlight shifts and falls across her face, I see the gold cracks forming just underneath her skin, each as thin as the edge of a seashell, spreading from below her neck up to her temple. As if she is made of clay, in danger of breaking at any second.

The god finds me staring, and her mouth curves. “You needn’t look so concerned, my dear. I have lived with this poison for almost a century, and frankly, I’d expected it to consume me long before this.”

“What happened?” I ask out of habit. Where does it hurt? How long has it been hurting you? Has this happened before?

“Oh, you know how these things go.” She rolls onto her side, twirling one blade of grass around her finger. Perhaps it is only my imagination, but the cracks seem to widen as I watch, glowing from within like poured flames. “I tricked a prince in a bad mood. A lapse of judgment on my part—my only lapse of judgment, really.”

“A prince?” I repeat. I feel my blood jump in my throat as I remember the haunted look in Yuemo’s eyes, the hesitation with which Hanchen had uttered the name. The last name that had made sense back then; the last name that should be relevant now, and yet—how many princes are there? Could it really be pure coincidence? Or something else? “Do you mean a crown prince?”

“I could tell you, but would you believe me? I have told far more lies in my life than I have truths.” The cracks most definitely grow this time. Her whole face is fragmented, her coy smile split into three, the line of her mouth stretching all the way to her ear. Her left eye winks at me from one shard while her right eye stares out from another, all of it held together by some strong but dwindling magic. “Besides, while this is very entertaining, I am afraid I do not have the time for gossip.”

“Wait,” I say, my heart pounding faster. “What if I try to heal you? What if I could save—”

“You cannot,” the Death God says, glaring over at me, the warning plain in the set of his jaw. “I’m aware that you have this irrational need to cure any breathing thing you come into contact with, but she will most certainly die, no matter what you do.”

“You’re very sweet,” Xinji tells me. “Much sweeter than I deserve. But I have long accepted my fate.”

“But how?” I burst out. “How could you just—just let this happen? Don’t you want to live?”

“I have already lived,” she says simply.

“You are prepared, then?” the Death God asks.

She releases a shuddering breath and closes her eyes. It ought to be a peaceful scene: the grass at her back, the waterfall pouring down in a bluish haze behind her, the fruit swaying in the trees. But she is still smiling her shark’s smile, as though she has one last lie to tell. “Yes.”

There is a horrible splitting sound, like bones shattering apart, and all at once the cracks in her skin burn brighter than ever, engulfing her in a blaze of light so vivid I take a step back, my fingers shielding my face. When I lower them again, all that remains are embers, the scraps of her robes, and her soul. It is not white like the others I have seen the Death God guiding into the underworld, but the deep pink of a thorned rose. Just small enough to be cupped in the Death God’s hands.

I whip around to face him. I feel raw, as if I have just been doused with boiling water, witnessed something I should not. Yet he does not look like he feels any emotion. There is no remorse in those black stone eyes, no regret, no pity. “Why didn’t you let me try?” I demand. “I could have done something. Perhaps—perhaps I could have prevented it, or at least delayed it—”

“I already told you. It would have made no difference. Nobody could have saved her, and unlike you, she was wise enough to know it.”

The curl of anger in my chest leaks into my voice. “Then what about the others I have saved in the past? With that thinking, they would have died long ago—”

“If you were able to save them, they were not meant to die,” the Death God says. The more calmly he speaks, the more I want to crush something. “It wasn’t the right time yet.” He cocks his head, and for the first time, he appears puzzled. Almost disturbed by my reaction. “Why are you so upset? Did you not see the scorpions? She would have happily let them sting you, and then laughed at your expense.”

“You don’t understand.” I blink against the soreness in my eyes. “If what you say is true, and fate cannot be altered, then none of it ever mattered. My parents were punished for nothing. There was never any chance of them convincing the mortals to flee, of saving anyone from the earthquake. It means that their plans were doomed to be futile from the beginning. That their deaths were meaningless. And everything I have done since then, everything I have given up, every person I have helped, every cure I have created—it was all meaningless too.

“I couldn’t have changed anything with my own will. And I simply cannot accept that. I refuse—I refuse to believe that fate is the invisible hand guiding my thoughts and actions, and I am nothing more than some manifestation of the universe’s whims, an actor in a script already written by the stars. That I could work as hard as I am able, but if fate ultimately wants me to fail, then I will, and if fate wants someone else to succeed without trying, then they will. What is the point, then?” I do not intend to yell, but each word reverberates through the air like fists slamming down on the skin of a drum. “What is the point of being a god, if we cannot control our own lives? What is the point of power, if it can be taken from us at any second?”

The Death God stares at me without speaking for a long time. Then, scathingly, he says, “You characterize fate as cruel.”

“Is it not?” I demand. “I can think of few things crueler than a force which shapes our lives as if they’re clay.”

“Have you not considered that it could also be merciful?” he asks in that same cutting tone. I keep searching for some sign, some glimpse of a man beneath Death’s mask, but I can only find darkness as endless as the underworld, as eternal as the sea. “Without fate, if a god came to you, and you could not heal them in time, then you would only have yourself to blame. Or, imagine: If someone good and kind and honest died an early and painful death, and there was no higher power, no guiding light from above, then their loved ones would drive themselves to the brink of madness, questioning why it happened, what they could have done. You say you want control—but is it not exhausting, to always be in control of everything? To think yourself the center of your own universe? Fate can ease that burden for you.”

I will admit: I have not considered it before. It is like having the world tipped around, as disorienting as the clouds swimming beneath the island, the silver waterfall rushing down from the air, the pale shadow of the moon clinging to the same sky as the sun. Then I remember what he is really after, and I recover with a scoff. “You keep trying to talk me into my own death.”

“And you keep trying to talk your way out of it,” he says, his eyes narrowing.

I ignore that. “You cannot convince me. If fate is the only thing you know how to worship, then—”

“Stop talking,” he says sharply, his gaze darting to something I can’t see.

I stop, but not because of him. The island has started trembling. Dust trickles down from the roof of the house, the pillars bending, the wooden doors splitting open. Cracks, similar to the ones that had snaked across Xinji’s skin, travel fast through the dirt, spreading in every direction at once—

Then the ground beneath us gives out, and we tumble straight down.

Chapter Thirteen