Already, my mind was piecing the fragments together. That somehow, my mother’s tears had revived the laurel. It had just enough power left to save one of us and it had chosen me. Was it obeying the Moon Goddess’s command? Or was this the laurel’s final gift to me? For all those years I had played beneath its shade, perhaps it knew me too.

Yet even as life pulsed through me once more, as I gazed at Wenzhi—a part of me remained dead, and no magic in the world could bring it back again.

Chapter 36

Wugang was dead. His army gone. Yet the scars of his brief reign remained, some reaching so deep, they might never heal. Would it have pleased him to know this? I believe it would. He had achieved immortality in a way he would treasure more than the infinite years bestowed upon him, that he had squandered in vengeance and hate. He did not deserve this; he deserved to be forgotten, his name trampled to dust along with his body. As for me, I would cast him from my mind, for he was unworthy of a place there alongside those I had lost, whom I still cherished with every breath I drew.

I glanced around the Hall of Eastern Light, my gaze falling on the Celestial Empress’s body in the coffin of clear crystal upon the dais. She had died in battle—a hero’s death, with songs already composed in her honor. When I knelt before her body today, it was the first time I had ever meant the respect the gesture conveyed.

Her magnificent silver brocade garments were embroidered with gold phoenixes and their rainbow-hued tails—a splash of color in the sea of white mourners, like winter had descended upon the Hall of Eastern Light. A crown of pearls and gold feathers glittered from her hair—was it the one that had captured my childish imagination before? Her hands were clasped across her stomach, her nail sheaths glinting against her pale skin. A skilled artist had painted her face until her cheeks were radiant, her closed eyelids swept with gleaming powder. She looked beautiful, for eternal slumber had eased the perpetual tension from her features. Or perhaps, I saw her now through new eyes: who she had been, what she might have become had life taken a different turn.