SU TANG (素醣)

  Day 24, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  It was the first snow.

  A time of reunion.

  A time of poetry and plum blossoms and roasted chestnuts in copper pans. A time for lovers to huddle and children to chase snowflakes and the world to hold its breath under a hush of white.

  This was the first snow.

  At time of beauty.

  I came to consciousness on my knees, surrounded by a blanket of white, and my head exploding in a different dimension of pain.

  The bodies of the guards, those men who had held me down, were no longer upright. No longer anything, really. They were stuck to the stone wall like pressed herbs in an alchemist’s manual: flat, jagged around the edges, a smear of red against old grey.

  And at the far end of the courtyard—the far, far end—Zhao Lili lay in a crushed heap of winter cloaks and gold-threaded vanity. Her lacquered hairpins scattered like broken glass.

  I turned my head slowly, in an effort to reduce the pain of the torsion. My eyes caught the jagged black streak winding down my left arm as if someone had scrawled a curse directly onto my bones. I traced it all the way to my palm.

  báilián was dancing there.

  It spun softly in a nest of white light, petals unfurling as if tasting the air. My hand trembled, whether deliberately or from tiredness. But then the lotus only glowed once more and vanished like breath on glass. Gone.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Did I summon it? I must have… but when and—

  Is that why everyone’s been blown away? But what about—

  Where’s—

  “Xiao Wu!”

  His name cracked from my throat like splintered glass. I lurched forward, legs failing to coordinate, limbs made of wet wool and jelly. I collapsed beside him, scraping my knees on newly formed sleet.

  “Xiao Wu. Xiao Wu.”

  I cupped his face. My hands were shaking so hard I nearly dropped him. His cheeks were cold. Too cold.

  My voice was breaking. My words, muffled by the stupid half-sewn stitches still pulling at my lips, were coming out in shreds.

  I tore them out. The stitches. One by one. They ripped, and maybe they bled, but I didn’t feel it. The pain on my mouth was nothing compared to the ache thundering through my head.

  I dragged him up and pulled him into my arms.

  His scent, a mixture of sweat, metal, and skin, clung to him. My hands passed by his exposed back torn to ribbons, and his bony, emaciated rib cage. His blood smeared all over my clothes, but I didn't care.

  “It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.” I was gasping, babbling, rocking back and forth. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’ve got you. It's me.”

  I held him there. I held him there, until my feet turned numb under his weight and from the snow collecting in our clothes. I wrapped his arms around my waist the way he used to do when he wanted to be picked up as a child. I knew it was irrational. He wasn’t even holding me—I was holding him.

  Snow fell like sifted ash, silent and dirty in the corners of the palace walls. Around us, the courtyard was a grave.

  Eventually, I stroked his hair, ruffling it like how I always did.

  “I’ll get Qi Qi. I’ll get her,” I murmured into his hair. “She’ll fix you up. We’ll—”

  —be fine.

  My voice broke into a sob.

  I looked down at his face. His poor face.

  There was mucus trailing from his nose. Dried tears crusted in his lashes. Blood in the corner of his mouth. His skin had gone greyish blue, like moonlight on marble.

  I tried wiping it away. Wiping his cold cheeks. Wiping his nose. Wiping his pale lips. Wiping his eyelids.

  Eyelids that would no longer open.

  Lips that would no longer smile.

  A nose that would no longer breathe.

  I screamed.

  It was the first snow.