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“It’s all wrong,” I choke out, the tears spilling fast, splotching the intricate needlework of his robes as he pulls me to him, his arms wrapping tight around my body. The solidity of him—of his skin, his fingers stroking my hair—feels like an anchor against the unreality of everything else. I cling to him, burying my face in the curve of his neck, shameless, inconsolable, and sob like a child, like I haven’t since my parents were banished. “It’s all—wrong,” I repeat through harsh, heaving gasps. “Junyi’s dead—so many people are dead. It shouldn’t be this way. It’s not—it’s not fair.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just holds me tighter, so tight I can feel his heart thudding against mine. The Death God has no heart, they all said. There grows only ice and stone under his rib cage.

“Fate is malleable,” he says eventually. “I will change it for you. The Heavens cannot decide for us.”

He sounds so confident that I almost believe him. I want to believe him. “You . . . you really think that?”

“I do. You said you wanted to do something, right?” Keran asks. “Why don’t we do something together? We can resist. Push back against the forces of the universe. Look at what you did to the lake—you purified it and you stopped the curse from spreading.”

“But what if there’s another Killing Plague?”

“Then we’ll stop that. We’ll solve it.” He tucks my hair gently behind my ear before resting his hand on the back of my head, as if I’m a child in need of consolation. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, Rujia, but I am rather powerful. There are countless badly written sonnets out there that say so.”

I choke out a laugh, even through my tears.

“And you are quite the formidable god yourself,” he tells me, his voice so soft, yet so certain. “Why should we fear the Heavens? The Heavens should be afraid of us.”

“Then . . . what? We fight it?” I ask.

“Are you not the same god who kept trying to poison me and flee from under my nose?” he says.

“I know. It’s just—I’m used to fighting alone,” I say.

“Well, you don’t have to do it alone anymore,” he says quietly, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “We’ll think of a way forward. How does that sound?”

Difficult. Almost impossible. But . . . hopeful too. I draw in a shuddering breath. “That sounds like a plan.”

He eases back a little to gaze at me and brushes the tears from my cheeks one by one with his thumb. His smile looks like it hurts him, but he smiles at me still, with all the patience of someone who has lived through the history of every realm.

“I’ll go make breakfast for you,” he says. “Rest here, all right?”

I manage a nod, watching him until he has disappeared out the door. Then I wipe my swollen eyes, let the blankets drop from my chest, and rise gingerly from the bed, my bare feet padding over the cold wood. The windows whine open with a light push, and I drink in the sweet, fresh air, the breeze ruffling my hair, drying the last of my tears. The scene outside does not look as desolate as I’d feared. There are no corpses sprawled over the paths, no fires. The stretch of tallow trees and houses lined up over the hill are almost the same as what I remembered, only quieter.

But there are the civilians: limping, weeping as they walk, carrying the sick and the frail and the elderly, though they all look too old, even the children, with their haggard faces and haunted eyes. The ones who have survived—just barely. The Killing Plague may have been contained, but that doesn’t undo the damage. I watch in horror as a little boy attempts to wrap a dirty strip of cloth around his own bleeding arm. It will not stanch the bleeding, not with how loosely he’s wrapping it. He will only make the wound worse.

Before I am even fully aware of what I’m doing, I’m pushing myself off the bed and through the doors, rushing out into the cold air—

“Wait,” I call out to the boy. “Let me help you.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The mortals come to me when they’re dying.

And there are so many different ways for a mortal to die, if left alone for too long. A shattered bone. A punctured lung. A dent in the skull. Something as simple as a cut that hasn’t been cleaned fast enough.

Yet, compared to the gods, they seem awfully calm about the possibility.

“There’s no need for such fuss,” an elderly man grumbles as I examine his visibly broken arm. “Just give me something for the pain and I’ll be fine. I have to get back to work soon.”

“Let me see what I can do,” I say, taking his uninjured wrist and stretching it out on the table between us to feel his pulse. Ideally, the table would be much wider, and I would have a cushion for him to rest his arm, and we would be indoors, sheltered from the wind and glare of the sun. But this was the best we could do—and it’s not terrible, considering the circumstances. In fewer than three days, we’ve managed to set up tents all over the lake’s shores, stations for the mortals to refill their free porridge and rest their heavy limbs and seek out help. After I healed the little boy the other morning, word had rapidly spread through the villages of a physician who performed miracles.

“Make sure you don’t move,” I tell him, letting my palms fill with blue light. I hold on to his arm and count silently to three until the light is absorbed into his skin, into bone. “All right. You should be fine now,” I say.

When I release him, he slowly lifts his arm and flexes his fingers as if this is his first day inside a new body. His eyes widen. “It’s healed. Just—just like that? Is it magic?”

Magic that shouldn’t be allowed in the Mortal Realm. But the scales have already been knocked off-balance, and if we’re going to fight against the Heavens, we’re going to need all our powers to do so. “Take care of yourself,” I tell him, avoiding the question.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you—”