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“Tell me. Tell me I won’t lose you,” he continues, his voice low and urgent, yet it doesn’t sound like a command. It sounds more like a plea, even as his teeth scrape the vulnerable skin of my throat. “Tell me I can be yours.”

I try to speak, to latch on to whatever clarity I can find. “You won’t—lose me.”

Focus, I will myself.

It’s not violence that he is after now, but that may soon change. Best to stabilize him while I still can. And this is as good an opportunity as any: My powers will work best when he is this close.

So the instant he draws back, his grip loosening a little, I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him again, as hard and as urgently as he had kissed me before. It is the sort of kiss that distorts the senses, that makes it feel as though the fire devouring him from within is racing through me too. That makes it all too easy to run my hand down to his chest, to feel along the smooth planes of his skin beneath his robes, and to call my power to life between my splayed fingers. Ocean-blue light pours out from my palms into his heart.

I had once thought that if there came a point where I had everything I’d ever longed for, I would cease wanting anything else. But now I have him, and still I long for the world, for him, in new, different, familiar ways. To do everything we haven’t yet done, and then to do them all over again without worrying about the end. There would be no end. No parting. No threat hovering just over the horizon. I would take him to the gardens I had loved as a child, where I’d go to secretly feed the koi in the pond and the phoenixes in the trees. I would wander the world with him, and maybe when we tired, we would settle down for the night in an inn just like this one, and in the mornings, we would visit the nearest teahouses and stalls of steamed sweets. In the dusk, we would stroll through the night markets, and amid the sea of lantern lights we would pick up pretty, useless little trinkets, woven bracelets and silver hairpins and ornamented masks, and we would try them one by one because we had the time. We would find a cottage like mine, with its glittering, outflung view of the sea, and the days would pass in the details: collecting fresh firewood and sharing meals together and gazing up at the stars. I would gather flowers: peonies and magnolias and azaleas, and when they withered, I would heal them and bring them back to life. And when I reached for him, he would be there. When I called his name, he would answer. He would gaze so softly at me, the kind of beautiful that feels surreal no matter how many times you’re presented with it, and I would think of another life where we didn’t make it, and I would hold him close, and whisper my thanks for the impossible.

Light flows between us, bright and humming. I do not know how many minutes trickle by like this, how long I stay there, my hand pressed to his heart, drawing upon all the power I have stored and more. Those passing by on the streets must be able to see it: a single room, glowing in the night, illuminating the broken pieces of furniture and murky, stagnant water down below. And then the room darkens too. Slowly, the light fades from blue to white under his skin, and he gasps, like someone near-drowned breaking through the currents of a river.

His lashes flutter. His eyes have lost their crimson sheen. They widen a fraction when he sees the teeth marks swelling in my neck.

“I did this to you,” he realizes, his voice quiet with dawning horror. He brushes a gentle finger over the raw, red indentions, and then he presses his lips to my skin, right where it hurts, as careful now as he had been reckless before. It is the softest graze of sensation, the barest brush of warmth, but I tilt my head to the side, exposing more of myself to him, overcome by the emotion flooding through my throat. Everything here feels too tender, too delicate, incapable of surviving a world this violent. In the back of my mind I envision a pear blossom tree, its petals torn apart by deluges of rain. I pray to shield him, shield the both of us from fate, except it is a prayer even the gods cannot do anything about.

“You didn’t mean it,” I tell him.

He shakes his head, his expression so pained, so ripe with remorse that all I can want is to ease the furrow between his brows and coax his fears away. “I’m sorry.”

No, I am.

“It’s already forgotten.” I smile and give in briefly to the least dangerous of my temptations, running my thumb along the curve of his cheek, down to the corner of his quivering lips. “We’re both tired. Let’s just rest here for the night, all right?”

I expect more resistance, but he steps forward and arranges my robes for me, tugging the soaked blue gauze up to cover my shoulder once more. “All right,” he says.

When Keran’s breathing has steadied, I slip out the door to the balcony.

It’s freezing, my breath forming white fog, the slide of my damp hair on my neck like ice, but I do not mind. I stare up at the sky. One last time, I promise myself, knowing what must happen after this. I just want to look at the stars one last time.

They’re especially beautiful tonight, brighter than I remember, spilling across the darkness like salt from the sea. My heart swells until it hurts, until my eyes ache and blur with those brilliant points of light, and it looks like the stars are falling down to the Mortal Realm. I wish I could stay long enough to count them all. To memorize every single one of them.

But my thoughts are broken by the soft, sudden thud of footsteps behind me. Before I can spin around, a hand clamps around my mouth.

And everything goes dark.

Chapter Thirty-One

The first thing I register is pain.

Sharp, brutal, insistent stabs of it. In my temples. In my stomach. Around my wrists. My eyelids feel sealed shut; my bones seem to be cased within stone. Wind tears at my hair and nips at my bare skin. I try to breathe in, but even that drives a blistering wave of agony through my rib cage and, with it, a deep spasm of panic. Intuitively, as one would recognize death in a limp body from afar, I understand that I’m no longer in the Mortal Realm.

When at last I manage to open my eyes a sliver, gray light burns against my pupils.

Then the light ebbs, even though the pain does not, and I stare down at the sky.

I’m suspended on a floating stone platform, too high to make out anything below me. If I were to fall, it would be a steep drop down into nothing. There are only the dark clouds rolling in, murky and ominous. I cannot see any other gods, yet my neck prickles with the feeling of being watched by countless pairs of eyes on all sides. Heavy chains encircle my arms and legs, creaking when I strain uselessly against them. My panic digs deeper, wrenching through my gut.

I had been prepared for the end.

I had not been prepared for this punishment.

A voice rumbles from somewhere in those clouds, as if the sky itself is speaking, each word echoing around me, reverberating with rage. “Rujia, the god of healing.” My knees shake. It’s the Celestial Emperor. “You promised to bring the crown prince back. Out of generosity and consideration of your service to the Celestial Realm in the past, I gave you a chance to redeem yourself, but you have failed.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I protest, resenting how small I sound, a pebble cast out into the sea. “I didn’t. I tried everything to bring the crown prince back. I did everything right. He would have survived his tribulations, if it weren’t for . . .”

If it weren’t for Ziyan. If it weren’t for the Killing Plague. Even now, I cannot be sure: Where had it gone wrong? When had the threads of our fate become so irrevocably tangled? Was it when the Death God had first lowered his sword? When I’d called him by his name? When I’d crossed paths with him again in the Mortal Realm? When I had kissed him instead of letting him kill me? Or was it even before that, when the crown prince had sought to destroy Death to save a mortal woman?