“You’re not wrong.” Gingerly, careful to make no contact, Mei Huang circles to Lei Yang’s right. An instinctive gesture, worthless in truth. Lei Yang might have an sold an eye for greater power, but she sees as well with one as others do with six. Her children—bone-beetles, marrow-roaches, like so much glass in her black hair—chitter at Mei Huang.

“I have never been wrong. You know that. And you didn’t answer my question.”

Mei Huang narrows her eyes. “No, it wouldn’t have been that terrible.”

“So, why do it for him? Of all the people you could have given up yourself for. You chose a foreign soldier. It seems such a waste.” Lei Yang raps her chin, theatrical. “Did he spurn you? Was that why? Is this a question of love, Mei Huang?”

“You should know the answer to that. We’ve spoken about it.” Mei Huang traces a spell with the edge of a nail, repeating the sigils, over and over, until her skin bleeds into the patterns. Beneath her dermis, She Who Waits stirs like a worm in her blood.

“Yes.” Lei Yang’s pupils divide, once and then again, so that four black circles spin in each of her irises. “Yes, we have. Is it time then, Mei Huang? Is it time to send you to her palace? Is it time to take you to her? Now, Mei Huang? Is it time now?”

She’d hoped for someone less garrulous, more refined, but you don’t choose these things. You grasp them with both fists and cling tight even when the world conspires to unbend your fingers. “Yes. Why not?” Mei Huang whispers. “Yes, sister. Yes.”

A flash of a bone knife.

The cut barely hurts at all. It spreads the skin of her chest into two halves; the blade leaves no scratch on her breastbone. Mei Huang’s blood washes onto the streets of Hong, vermilion on dusty red, a spill as bright as the sun. It feeds into the slits sliced into the world-turtle’s shell, anointing the massive reptile, a sacrifice, a gift.

Somewhere, Mei Huang’s goddess must be stirring, irate that another of her own is now consecrated to She Who Waits. But all things come to those who wait, as they do to She Who Waits. Like death, like life, one lies at the end of the other. Mei Ying, Mei Ying, sings her failing consciousness. Wait for me. I’ll be there soon.

She wakes in scarlet; like a child, newborn. Her robes have been replaced by more aureate finery, carnelian and lustrous ruby, the drag of her cape a shade of burgundy so deep that it is almost black. The air is hot.

“Littlest Sister.” She Who Waits traces Mei Huang’s cheek with a blood-rinded nail, her disapproval clear. “That was a mean trick.”

“It wasn’t a trick.”

“You crossed faster than I thought you would.”