Page 82

He doesn’t move. “Are you—”

“Go,” I urge him. “We don’t have any time to waste. I can do this on my own, I promise.”

Keran sends me one last look, everything unspoken blazing in his gaze, but listens.

When the shores have been cleared, I stand alone, facing the lake. Morning has arrived in its full splendor, the sky so clear it looks almost white. Slowly, I lower my palms to the waters. Light streams down my wrists and spreads from my fingertips, chasing away the darkness like sunlight washing through smoke. This time, I do not dream of power. I do not dwell on the false promises of the Celestial Realm, the empty chambers and chairs that once might have been mine, the approval of gods who hate me. I turn my mind instead—as a hand would turn a telescope to a brilliant array of stars—to everything I’ve witnessed in this realm. Strangers I’ve walked past and greeted over the counter and glimpsed across a busy street. A little girl braiding her hair, combing through the knots, starting again when she doesn’t get it right. An elderly man unfolding the brown paper around a pastry with shaky hands before holding it out to his smiling wife. A mother instinctively seizing her son’s sleeve when they draw close to the edge of a canal. A noblewoman watching the peonies bloom for the first time from her balcony, waiting for her lover to come back home. A villager marching through the brutal winds of winter and the relief of a warm teacup in his hands, the blaze of a fire. The crowds cheering at a shadow puppet show, weeping over the stories they’ve created, passing faded books and secrets between them. Their capacity to hurt, their capacity to love. Tears of joy and tears of heartache, falling in the snow, filling the pages of their lives like ink. Their white lies, their whispered prayers, their greed and jealousy and wonder. The decades given to them, so breathtakingly short, but so unfathomably rich. All the mortals my parents had seen and sworn to save, even if it cost them their own divinity.

My vision swims before me, and sweat soaks through the back of my underclothes, sticking them to my skin. I cannot see the other end of the lake, but I keep going. It does not matter if my spine aches, if my mouth burns, if my powers are seeping out from me like blood, everything in my body begging for me to stop. A humming noise fills my ears, pulsing in time with my heart. It would be easier, I think, if I were to walk across every mountain in the Mortal Realm on my bare feet. Easier if I were to measure out all the water in the lakes with a single spoon, or if I were to carry the full weight of all the bells in the temples on one hand. Anything would be easier, less tiring, more painless than this. But even when I gasp, when my knees shake, I stay.

Hours crawl past.

An entire day.

I refuse to let my arms fall until the darkness has dissolved completely and the lake glows a pure, pristine blue, and only then do I stagger back and succumb to the crushing wave of exhaustion, letting it drag me into its depths.

I do not know how much time passes, but when I open my eyes again, the Death God is here.

He’s asleep.

His face rests just on the edge of the bed, his hand tucked under his chin for support, his knees on the cold floor, as if he has not moved from my side even once. Amber light drifts lazily over his cheek, following the spill of hair down his back. I can feel him breathing beside me, the slow, steady movement of his chest. He looks so young, so peaceful like this. For a few blissful moments, all I can do is gaze at him, overwhelmed by his closeness.

Then, careful not to disturb him, I blink and take in the room: the familiar, plain furnishings, the candles melted down in the stands, the cloak draped over a single chair, the bowls from the feast emptied and cleared away. We’re back inside Junyi’s house.

Junyi.

The reminder jolts through my thoughts like thunder. Junyi, dying on the shores, blood oozing from his chest. Ziyan, sobbing next to his corpse. We had failed him; I had failed the mission. The crown prince of the Celestial Realm is simply gone, never to be a god again.

Keran stirs slightly, his arm stretching out over the sheets, and that’s when I notice it. The black marks, half hidden under his sleeves.

My heart pounds. I sit upright and grip his wrist, pushing his sleeve all the way up. Horror cuts through my stomach, cold and sharp as the bite of a blade. I’m barely even breathing.

He’s woken now, his features still soft with sleep. “Rujia? What—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demand.

His gaze catches up to mine, taking in the black veins crawling higher and higher up his arm. He pauses for the barest second, and I already know he’s thinking up an excuse, some way to reassure me, to minimize his own pain.

“It’s because of me, isn’t it? It’s because you haven’t killed me,” I say, hardly able to get the words out. I want to slap myself. I should have suspected it earlier, should have prepared for the inevitable consequences. How delusional had I been, to believe that we could simply hide from the Heavens? That nothing terrible would happen? “This—this is the price.” Another possibility strikes me, with the crack of a whip. The room tilts. “Is that . . . why the plague began? Why the lake was contaminated by the Yellow Springs? And all those people killing each other . . .”

Even though I’m still wrapped in blankets, I’m shivering, teeth threatening to crack against each other, my body so cold it feels like no amount of heavenly fire could ever warm me.

“I wanted to tell you after I’d thought of a solution,” Keran says, pushing his sleeve back down. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“How can I not be worried? I can’t—I don’t even know—” The scale of the damage is too great for me to comprehend. It feels like the universe is pressing down on my chest, crushing the air from my lungs.

“We’ll find a way,” he tells me, but there’s a hitch in his voice. “You should rest first. After you collapsed on the shore . . . I was so afraid,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Your face was so pale, your powers so depleted . . . You’ve been asleep for seven days. There were times when I thought you—when I thought you wouldn’t wake again.”

“Did it work?” I ask. It’s quiet outside the window, save the occasional call of herons, but I can’t tell if it’s because the city has returned to normal, or if it’s because its inhabitants have either fled or died.

“It did. Yuemo and Hanchen have been handing out bowls of purified water to every civilian, and the death toll has dropped steeply ever since. We haven’t heard any reports of the plague from other cities either. You saved them.”

“I was the one who harmed them in the first place,” I say, a lump forming in my throat. I bury my head in my hands, squeezing my temples until it hurts. “I know how these things go, Keran. It will only get worse and worse. We have to do something—I have to—”

“I won’t ever hurt you,” Keran says, with such intensity I freeze. It has been a while since I’d remembered to fear the Death God, but the piercing black look he gives me makes my pulse stutter. “Don’t even think about it, Rujia.”

“I don’t want to either,” I say, pleading, my eyes throbbing with tears. The words from the lake return to me, the only observation I had been able to form then: Everything is wrong. I imagine the world turned to red dust, slipping through my fingers while I watch, helpless. “I don’t want any of this to happen . . . I don’t want—I never wanted this. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I know,” he says, and he says it so tenderly that I break open.