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She lives.

She lives, even though she should not—and if she continues to, he shudders to think of what awaits them both.

Chapter Sixteen

“Watch where you’re going.”

I stumble back just in time to avoid being trampled by the horse cart as it clatters down the narrow street. The bearded driver twists around to shoot me a glare, a whip gripped roughly in one hand, the reins gripped in the other.

“Are you trying to get killed?” he shouts, his voice one of thousands, half lost to the chatter filling the streets, the calls of vendors and crush of hooves, the slamming of doors to teahouses and inns and shops—but still loud enough for me to hear. “Use your fucking eyes next time.”

A few onlookers pause to stare and snicker at my expense, but most move ahead with the surging crowd, too preoccupied to pay me any attention.

I blink back my shock and do my best to reorient myself in the shade of a windmill palm, safe from any passing carriages. The city of Nanjing is somehow even busier than I’d expected, a place teeming with merchants and scholars, mortals carrying thread-bound books or bolts of silk, stalls selling glazed porcelains and roasted meats. Everywhere the eye sweeps is evidence of its inhabitants: boats floating over glistening green canals, fishermen’s poles pushing through the reeds; mud-brick houses built so close together they appear to be stacked atop one another; wooden causeways cluttered with mules straining under the weight of fresh produce and officials straining under the weight of their duties.

Such changes are fastidiously recorded in our libraries, with countless volumes dedicated to the Liao and Jin and Yuan, but they are still astounding to witness in real life. The last time I had visited the Mortal Realm, it had been in search of an herb that grows only in their east-central provinces. These streets had been little more than paths of yellow-tinted dust and blood-rusted dirt, with far more trees than houses. Since then, entire dynasties have collapsed, divided, survived, and flourished.

I gather my tumbling hair into a low bun—to mimic the mortal fashion, and to let the sweat cool on the nape of my neck. I had failed to recall the severity of the seasons in this realm. The air ripples like a mirage with the harsh, pressing heat of summer, the stone-paved ground baked into cracks beneath my feet. Girls hide from the midday sun under the shadow of their silk fans; men wipe brusquely at their faces with the wide hem of their sleeves, their complexions burned and greased with sweat.

Mortals are born into mud and misery. They cannot even dream up the Celestial Realm’s beauty, they had told us when we were young. And they were right, in some senses. The Celestial Realm has always been beautiful in the way of eternal gold, of blank, white, shining marble. The kind created by perfect symmetry, the absence of any visible faults. In the Mortal Realm, faults run through everything, but everything is brighter, richer, too, closer to the breath of the earth than the air of the clouds. The salt-and-oil scent of smoke from the wok, carried forth by hot gusts of wind, mixing with the overt sweetness of the noblewomen’s perfumes. The ripe smell of wildflowers bursting through the worn fences. Even the colors are more intense: the ceramics painted copper red and cobalt blue; the startling purple blooms of hollyhock; the torn, cream-yellow paper of an overhanging lantern.

I cannot imagine the crown prince growing up in a place like this.

I cannot imagine him as a mortal, living through the same punishment as my parents.

Find him. The Celestial Emperor’s words grind against my skull like the crushing heel of a boot. Twenty-three days. It has been that long since Keran destroyed the palaces of the Celestial Realm and diverted the course of history. That long since I last saw him. I do not know if he had meant to spare me when he disappeared, or if he was merely being a coward, fleeing from the consequences of his actions, leaving me to face the wrath of the other gods alone. Twenty-three grueling, unbearable, gut-crushing days, guarded at every waking moment by officials who so stubbornly believed I had conspired with the Death God I could not even reason with them. The equivalent of twenty-three years down here, enough time for the crown prince to grow from that squawking infant in the vision to an adult, primed to face his first great tribulation. Enough time also for me to have scorched into my memory the lines of his life, the two events that will either break him completely or remake him for godhood, distilled into two sharp spikes.

A scholar, filled with envy, drags him to the lake to take his ranking.

A lover, filled with grief, drives a blade through him to take his memories.

That is all I can see, the Celestial Emperor had told me, pressing Junyi’s jade pendant into my palm before I’d departed. How it will happen, precisely, is up to you to find out.

The pendant warms inside my robe pocket as I push into the heaving crowds again. When I step closer to where all the stalls and rock gardens are, the warmth fades. Frowning, I pause and turn in the other direction, where the street leads across a bridge to a distant, dusty hill. The instant I do, the pendant trembles to life once more. Strange. The crown prince should not be found over there; there is nothing except a few shabby houses scattered around the hill’s base. I test the pendant a few more times, dimly aware of how bizarre I must look, moving around in confused circles while all those jostling by elbow me and curse at me.

Maybe there is something wrong with the enchantment, I decide as I approach the oldest of the houses, increasingly convinced that it will be a dead end. Maybe it has confused somebody else for the crown prince, or maybe the pendant itself is a fake. He couldn’t possibly live here. The thin rice paper meant to cover the windows has been ripped so thoroughly the windows might as well be left wide open, allowing dust and flies to gather inside. The thatched roof is crumbling, the beams splitting open and sticking out the sides like toothpicks. The single brushwood fence swings back easily when I push it. A near empty yard greets me, with piles of dried corn swept off to the side.

The jade grows so hot it burns my skin through the fabric.

“Really?” I murmur out loud, hesitating at the entrance. “Here? You’re certain?”

As if in answer, a hacking cough sounds from within.

I peer through the window. The young man hunched over the table inside is not Junyi—that is my initial thought. The enchantment had misled me after all. Yet my second assessment of him corrects my first. He is in a peasant’s simple tunic, with broad sleeves and a round collar that hangs too loose around his slight frame, and his skin looks sickly, as though he has been deprived of proper nutrients. His face, though, bears an unmistakable likeness to his immortal self, in shape if not in expression: the slope of his jaw and the space between his dark, straight brows.

But before I can recover from my surprise, a figure steps out from behind the house. And all at once, my body burns until I can barely feel the pendant. Everything is on fire: My vision. My lungs. The tender skin on my palms.

Next to the other gods, he had been distinct with his cold, merciless beauty, the raw power spilling from him like shadows. Here, he doesn’t even look real. Half of his hair has been tied up, leaving oil-black strands at the front that fall elegantly around his face. He’s swapped his billowing cloak and midnight robes for something more in the style of the Mortal Realm: layers of blood-red silk, held together with ornate circular buttons of jade and silver. Only minutes earlier, I had seen a young man of what appeared to be great esteem wearing similar clothes, with a similar hairstyle, yet the difference between the two is like that between the Heavens and the abyss. He can hide his identity, but he cannot hide his divine grace, his immaculate posture, the exquisite cut of his features. He stands out so starkly against the weathered walls and withered grass that my eyes go straight to him, the rest of the world fading like a dream.

“Hello,” the Death God says with the barest smile. “I thought you might be here.”

Last time, I had missed my chance to strike. I will not miss it again.

My body moves so quickly, so fluidly across the yard that it does not even seem to be guided by conscious thought. My heart drums against my bones, my vision whittling down into a single target.

Him.

I slam him back into the wall with one arm, the impact sending dust trickling down from the fissures in the roof. I lift my other arm, power crackling from my fingers, bare inches from his face. My own success shocks me. He doesn’t retaliate or even struggle under my grip. He simply gazes up at me with perfect calm. He is still smiling. The obscene sight of it rekindles all the anger that has been smoldering inside me these past twenty-three days. My power flares higher like a rising flame, the heat pouring between us.