“Yesssss,” the divinity hisses, its tongue to the hollow of Mei Huang’s throat. “Littlest Sister, you smell so sweet. A perfect gift. Will you waste it on something like this boy? You don’t love him. You don’t even know him.”

“It isn’t about him.”

The goddess laughs into Mei Huang’s skin, a razored noise, teeth applied to her collarbone just so. The tiniest nip. Mei Huang shudders. “If you insist. If you insist, Littlest Sister. I will not turn down a gift.”

She Who Waits is not uncompassionate. The trimmings of liver that It takes from Mei Huang and the soldier are insignificant, almost vestigial, cuts so small they may as well be nothing.

“Aren’t I the better one?” It coos into Mei Huang’s ear as It seals her belly, leaving behind a puckered line of black tissue.

Mei Huang, gasping curses into the cloth between her teeth, finds no answer to give. But she does think to herself, even as the goddess makes room in the wrap of Mei Huang’s intestines, head rested against diaphragm: this is not so bad, she would tolerate depravities that are a hundred times worse if she had to, all for the sake of her.

“You weren’t pregnant when we began—”

Mei Huang studies the palm aligned below her own, meaty, textured with scars, one finger foreshortened. “No. No, I wasn’t.”

“Is it mine? Was this something that she demanded?”

They are all the same, Mei Huang reflects. Every last one of them. These foreigners and fears, birthed of willful monotheism, always so leery of the goddesses, unable to fit their mouths around the sacred names without shuddering disapproval. Yet still they come to the gilded city of Hong, still they track the world-turtles, always searching for a better death than the one they’d be given.

“No. And even if it was, this is not your business to know.”

“But if it is my child—”

“It is not. I promise you. Even if was your cum that warmed my womb, stirred it to sudden life, it would not be your child. It would be mine and my sisters and my temple’s own.”

He blinks slowly, stupidly. “But if it was my semen that—”

“No.” Mei Huang sighs. “This child is not yours.”

The soldier—so exasperatingly young, his skin pink where it isn’t laced with scars—changes direction, fumbles through a worse question. “Did we—”

“No. No, we did not. Please. No more questions. You are embarrassing yourself with your ignorance.” Mei Huang interrupts, sighing again, hoping to circumvent any coital fantasies, hand retracted so that she can steeple fingers above a knee. Her guts ache, the skin pulled tight over an embryonic tumescence. “You have what you need.”

“I suppose.” His eyes, shaded by gelatin-colored lashes, are uncertain. “I—I don’t know what I’d expected. I thought your order granted immortality.”