Chapter One
Ruan
NING LIYUE SHARES A BIRTH DATE with her sister, but the family throws lavish banquets for Ning Wan, inviting all similarly-aged nobility, while Liyue is left in the shadows of her residence.
Another uproar of cheers in the distance. In her courtyard, Liyue closes her eyes and listens to the leaves, the wind thick with the scent of mortar and dust—materials of abandoned masonry. Her father had ordered the servants to repair her rundown yard the last time he was home, but after he embarked for another battlefield, they dared not continue in fear of displeasing Madam Ning.
Ning Liyue is, after all, a living and breathing and eye-soring reminder of her husband’s infidelity.
Liyue’s fingers run along the leather scabbard at her side, gripping the locket, thumb thrusting out the hilt of her short sword with a clink. Behind her eyes, she sees the courtyard, leaves rippling and squirming like an animal to be hunted, lit up against the window paper of her chambers.
Pebbles crunch under hurried footsteps. “Fourth Miss!”
Liyue’s eyes snap open and flinch against the pouring brightness. Amah Fu scurries toward her, curtsying at a distance safe from potential misunderstandings of affinity. The old woman gives a cursory smile. “Madam is summoning the Fourth Miss to the Ancestral Hall.”
Liyue sheaths her sword to disguise her start. The other Ning children pay reverence to Madam Ning in her chambers or vestibule. Only Liyue is received in the hall of utmost formality to emphasize her exclusion from the family. A spectacle for the ancestors to witness. Even then, the materfamilias rarely wants to see Liyue’s face.
The clamour and laughter heighten as Amah Fu leads Liyue across the estate, past Ning Wan’s bustling residence and the red lanterns strung up for her special day. Liyue lifts the edges of her hemp robes as she steps past stone lions and over the doorsill into the dim hall. A small-statured woman nearing her sixth decade, Madam Ning sits in a dark wooden armchair, robes of embroidered silk draping over the curved arms. Behind her, tablets of ancestors’ names are arranged on a gold-gilded altar, adorned with incense that clog Liyue’s airway like cotton balls.
“Good morning, Mother. Liyue humbly pays respect.” She keeps her gaze lowered, kneels, and brings her arms around in a perfect arc, pressing her trembling hands and forehead to the clay-tiled floor.
Amah Fu retreats to Madam’s side while Liyue waits in silence. An incense burns by. She begins to feel the soreness of her legs through the kneewraps.
By now, Madam should have composed herself enough to speak. Liyue’s heart beats in her throat in terror. Did she make a mistake? Was her footing too spaced out? Her reverence too stiff?
At last, Madam Ning drawls, “Raise your head. You become seventeen today, correct?”
“Yes, Mother. Liyue is honored that Mother remem—”
“Wan’er turns twenty today. It is a rite of adulthood of the utmost importance.” Madam pauses as she fixes her gaze on Liyue. A glare of virulent hatred. The outlines of her headdress trembling along with her fist. Every time, Liyue thinks Madam will finally hit her, slap her across the face, curse her whore birth mother, curse her disloyal father. But Madam only closes her eyes. In these oscillations, she seems to understand that Liyue had no control over her own birth, that she is but another victim.
Liyue would rather Madam strike her.
Liyue’s breathing evens as Madam’s thinly veiled malice continues, “It would be unseemly for a descendant of the Ning name to be absent from the activities. Even a mongrel like you.”
A pang spreads in Liyue’s chest, and she forces her face to tense. Unfrowning, unreacting. Madam will interpret any reaction, any emotion as disrespect. The incense wafts in sparser clouds as Amah Fu moves to refill Madam’s tea, allowing one deep breath for Liyue.
“You are to attend the pre-ceremony event at Wan’er’s residence, child. No longer than two incense burn’s time. You cause sufficient trouble as is.”
Something in Liyue’s heart stirs like a bug wriggling under a rock every time she’s forced to interact with Ning Wan. But she can’t refuse Madam, or they could imprison her, starve her, have her kneel before the ancestral altar until sunrise—or worse, confiscate her short sword.
Her face must’ve paled, despite her best efforts, because Madam scowls, wrinkles gathering around her eyes. “Why the aggrieved look? Is that how the thing that birthed you climbed into Zhongchuan’s bed, doe-eyed and whining? Another more sensible Madam would have rid you as an infant!”
Liyue hurries back into a groveling position, forehead knocking onto the floor tiles, evading the teacup that Madam throws at her head. “Liyue would never dare be anything but grateful to Mother for allowing her to celebrate Elder Sister and her achievements.”
Shutting her eyes again, Madam says instead, “Half of your residence’s stipend shall go toward the upkeep of the Ancestral Shrine.”
The prospect of punishment alleviates her mood. Incense smoke thickens around Liyue as if in concurrence. She bites her lip, noting to ration coal more strictly before summer.
Madam sends her back with a more presentable brocade robe. Red and pastel yellow, with matching hair pins and necklets, bringing good fortune to a milestone birth date.
The servant by the gates glances in surprise at Liyue before declaring, “Fourth Miss is here!”
The announcement coincides with a cheer as Ning Wan tosses an arrow squarely into a narrow pot. Liyue enters with a hardened scalp. Twenty-odd young women and men crowd the yard permeating with blossoms and dew, some lounging in the gazebo next to the flower beds or admiring the fruit trees and decorative mountain. Most are gathered around Ning Wan by the pond playing pot-tossing, their backs to the gates. Bodies in silk and pearls and gemstones move about, lined in Liyue’s sights like otherworldly creatures.
Good morning, dear older sister. I wish you the happiest of birth dates. Approaching the pond, Liyue rehearses a nitpick-proof congratulations in her head while adjusting her lips to the right smile.
“...your mongrel sister?”
Liyue stops, blood suddenly pulsing in her ear.
“Don’t call her my sister!” Ning Wan bundles her silk sleeve up her arm and fishes another arrow. The strings of pearls on her headdress swing all over. “And why would I care? Better she stays under a rock than ruin my banquet.”
“If I were the only noble who’s never been to the Imperial Banquet, I wouldn’t show my face in public either,” states a young man, looking similar in age to Liyue, as he tosses an arrow. His jade pendants and leather boots glisten in the sunlight, a bright yellow sash around his waist—a member of the imperial family, likely the youngest prince.
Another woman leans in, excited as if receiving a red pocket. “What does she look like? Is it true her mother was an eldritch?”
Heat rushes to Liyue’s head and her jaw tightens, sheets of chickenskin rising on her arms in the early spring air. How could they compare the woman who gave her life to those monsters that consume human flesh?
The whispers reach the volume of a feasting hall. The sons and daughters of some of Great Ruan’s highest-status nobles contribute their guesses. Liyue recognizes a few of them.
“I hear her eyes are large and bulging like a taotie!” says the daughter of a warden, ironclad in rubies.
“Legends say a fox demon lives in her kind’s blood, creating illusions to turn people against each other.” The son of a magistrate, topknot bound in a nephrite jade pin, boasting his high ranking in last summer’s provincial exams.
“I hear she shapeshifts and feasts on flesh in the dead of night! That’s why her residence has no maidservants.”
The prince snorts. “Brings shame to her ancestors.”
They gasp and laugh, turning toward the only person who’d dare insult a noble’s ancestors. Even Ning Wan’s shoulders stiffen, but she says nothing. The scholar catches sight of Liyue in his peripherals and makes a surprised noise, and then everyone turns.
And they quiet.
People tend to react similarly when laying eyes on Liyue for the first time. Rather, the contradiction of her. Be it servants, nobility, or her own father when he returns once a year or so. Though younger, Liyue towers nearly a head above Ning Wan, taller than some men in the courtyard. Delicate robes strain on her broad shoulders, gold accessories clashing against her cooler complexion. Brows full, cheekbones high. Soulless holes for eyes.
Neither one nor the other.
Ning Wan tilts her chin, smirking with Madam Ning’s mouth lines. “Look who decided to show. Eavesdropping, befitting a mutt.”
Liyue’s heart thuds against her ribcage, and she blurts, against her better judgment, “My mother is not an eldritch.”
Ning Wan blinks, then laughs. “You’re defending the eldritch that had a hemorrhage birthing you yet still didn’t hold you once? Understandable that you’re so attention-starved since your own mother abandon—”
Liyue has trained in the swords for as long as her memory stretches, her father having noticed she shares her birth mother’s physical talents. She certainly can produce a sizable bruise from a punch. But instead of breaking Ning Wan’s nose, her frustration manifests in a shove.
Straight into the pond.
It takes a beat for Ning Wan’s flailing, shrieking form to sink in, and panicked shouts rouse from the guests calling for servants but none lending a hand to the splashing girl. Liyue’s eyes are wide, her breaths shaky in a horror that forbids any shred of satisfaction from executing that small, meaningless act of vengeance. But even when servants flood into the residence and a fawn’s uncontrollable tremble starts in her legs, she can’t convince herself that she regrets it.
Neither starving her nor having her kowtow could satisfy the livid Madam Ning this time. Liyue kneeled before the ancestors’ tablets from the Sheep hour to the next day’s Rabbit hour with nothing to eat. Three amah rotated in overseeing her, cracking a whip on the stone floor if she showed signs of sleep. When the sun rose at last, they had to carry her across the estate and onto her arhat bed.
“Madam hopes you learned your lesson,” says Amah Fu in an icy tone, and the maidservants pull the doors shut.
Liyue scans her chambers, relaxing when she finds her short sword on the dresser next to a plate of tea biscuits she cannot reach. They didn’t take it. Didn’t want to touch an eldritch belonging, perhaps.
She turns her face into the cushion, letting the fabric soak the tears leaking from her eyes. Her hollow stomach groans, and she knows it’ll hurt when she eats. Her knees feel aflame, tender and swollen around the joints, throbbing with each heavy pulse of her heart. Slowly, sense returns to her legs, ballooning the pain from her kneecaps to her entire lower body. But she doesn’t cry because of the pain.
Ning Liyue cries because, despite everything and everyone telling her otherwise, she still believes her blasted birth mother loved her.
❦
Liyue wakes as the sun dips into the horizon. Fire red streams through the windows. Her head throbs as she limps to grab her short sword and pull open the lattice doors. The estate is readying for slumber at this hour, only servants rushing about, tending to chores before nightfall.
Clutching the railings by the fish pond, Liyue trudges toward the apothecary and welcomes the sharp, chilly evening air into her lungs. A reminder of her vitality. That she can feel pain and cold in her flesh because she was meant to exist, that she was wanted.
She slips through the back door, bitter and grassy scents hitting her, and lights an oil lamp hanging in the middle of the chamber. Surrounded by hundreds of labelled boxes, she begins fishing herbs from multi-cabinet drawers that she would mash into paste and apply to her knees. But the last ingredient, orchid grass, is absent from its container. Likely emptied to rush medicine for Ning Wan. She feigns sickness at every inconvenience to avoid studying, and Liyue’s shoving her into a pond gave her unprecedented ammunition.
Liyue’s nose sours in defeat before she exhales to calm herself. There must be something that can replace it.
Two servants walk by outside, complaining they must refill herbs on top of a towering list of errands thanks to the vicious Fourth Miss who caused the Third Miss’ illness. The more senior servant instructs the other, “Tomorrow, take the medicinal scrolls from the shelf and ask Amah Ding about which dispensaries to purchase the most commonly used ones.”
With legs like milk cubes, Liyue climbs atop a stepstool and strains for the top shelf, her fingers coating in dust before finding a box of old scrolls, each labelled with a class of medicine. She leafs through the box under the oil lamp. More servants hurry past the apothecary toward the kitchen.
The old scroll of grass herbs is coarse on Liyue’s fingers, stained in dew or nectary, creating a sweet yet inky scent. Her fingertip traces the paper as she skims, locating orchid grass, and reads its potential replacements. For headache, bruise, broken finger, excessive bleeding, stomachache, joint pain—
Liyue glances back. Excessive bleeding. Hemorrhage.
“Yarrows work well as astringents to cease bleeding,” she reads as she reaches for the scroll of flower herbs. “It has small white flowers and fern-like leaves.”
The desperation to connect with her mother, even through possibly the worst day of her life, vexes Liyue. No one dared to mention the eldritch around Madam Ning. And sorrow fell upon Father’s face whenever her birth mother was mentioned, yet he never made efforts to search for her. Did he love her? Did she love him? Liyue was never given any answers beyond biased and hateful rumors, not even her mother’s name, and that vexes her more.
She blows off the dust on the second scroll. “Yarrow. Yarrow.”
Its last significant use is from Jinyu 3rd Year. Liyue’s birth year. The handwriting of this section is distinct from the rest, ink still fragrant despite its aging fade. At the bottom stamps the official red signature of an imperial medicus, along with a line of gold ink—the Empress’ verbal blessings of a successful delivery.
Liyue’s breath trembles. The Empress, of whom she’s only seen the untouchable silhouette behind the veils of a palanquin, personally blessed the birth of an illegitimate child? The entire Great Ruan must’ve heard about it. Perhaps because it was early in the Empress’ reign that she made a show with a general’s childbirth.
Had her legs been more than barely functional, Liyue would’ve kicked herself for not discovering the medical records sooner. Madam Ning ensured to wipe all traces of her birth mother, but it’s a crime to tamper with imperial writings.
There were complications during labor. The assisting maidservants credited the Empress’ blessings and experienced medicus on the eventual delivery with minimal harm done to mother or daughter.
The discovery fills Liyue with a stubborn hope more authentic than any hurt she’s ever felt. She doesn’t recognize any of the maidservants’ names except one.
Amah Fu.
Chapter Two
Beizu
MUDURI STARES, THROUGH THE JADEITE LIQUID, at a familiar set of features on a ten-year-younger face. His brother, but a young woman instead. Catkin-like dark hair frames her oval face. She glances between a stone tablet and him, bird-neck bone ornaments swaying with each snap of her head, her expression cold as if she doesn’t know him. Not like his brother knew him.
When his head clears, anxiety returns to his throat and stomach, churning his organs apart, but he bars those feelings from the surface. Languidly, he leans forward, his own reflection on the liquid moving to meet him. His hair seems longer, eyebags darker, skin more textured, but none are as prominent as his bare, tattooless neck and biceps.
He steps out of the floating liquid and onto the wolfskin rug in the cabin. “Each time I awake and see you, I think of Bura.” He dons the sweater and coat hanging from a knob on the brick wall and adjusts the horse-hoof cuffs. “You look a reflection of him.”
Nixiha shifts on a bristly cushioned bench beside the wooden table littered in sachima and fritter crumbs. A messy snacker, also like Muduri’s brother. She scowls, her breath fogging the air. “I am uninterested in reminiscing about my heartless father. Just tell me whether you saw your god.”
Muduri was thirteen when he was allowed to meet his six-year-old niece. The first words she uttered were Bura is no father of mine, and Muduri nearly launched a black sun at her right then and there. It was too much for a boy whose wounds of losing his family were still raw.
But he understands now.
The spiritual realm is hazy and intentionally forgettable, so Muduri describes quickly, “I stood before the Lotus Gate.”
Nixiha sweeps the crumbs off the table and begins scribing. “Good fortunes, finally! I’ve forgotten what it looks like!”
“It’s a magnificent set of doors inscribed into a mountain, bottomless canyon below, with a giant half-lotus platform to stand on. Torches lined the center of each petal to light the otherwise dark space.”
While Nixiha’s head is down, he grabs a metal cup from the cabinet and pours himself some rice wine. The alcohol slows the thunderous storm of his heartbeat.
“And then? Did the gates open for you?”
“They did.” Muduri stretches his sore limbs and tousles his unruly hair out of his forehead. “I tried speaking to Xihe.”
Nixiha whispers in admiration, “The Mother Goddess of the Ten Destructive Suns.”
