“What use is that now?” Despair welled up as I recalled the empress’s outrage, the guests decrying the “ill omen,” and General Wu’s spiteful accusations, all fanning the emperor’s temper into a raging blaze.

“Better late to a task than to leave it undone,” he said, striding toward the door.

I flushed at my thoughtless words. “Liwei, thank you,” I called out to him.

He stopped by the entrance, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Xingyin, I have said before, there is no need for thanks between you and me.” Without another word he left, his back straight, his shoulders pulled more taut than usual.

I searched my mother’s room, as neat as always, the wooden shelves uncluttered except for a few plants and ornaments. A book lay on the table beside her bed, with an archer and the ten suns painted on its cover. The story of my father’s legend, of how he had slain the sunbirds. A folded piece of paper lay beside it. I picked it up, startled to see the characters in unfamiliar strokes—who would have written to my mother? A violation to read something addressed to another, but perhaps this was a clue to her disappearance. Smoothing out the paper, my eyes darted across the characters:

Tonight, you will find what you seek in the
realm of mortals.

My chest clenched with foreboding. Racing to my room, I grabbed my bow, heading outside to summon a cloud. Careless, to not think of this before. Since regaining her freedom, there was one place my mother returned to whenever she could get away. Even though it was frowned upon, even though she risked punishment by entering the Mortal Realm without permission.

At the point where the two rivers merged, near where the Black Dragon had been imprisoned, rose a hill covered with white flowers like snow half-thawed in spring. A marble grave lay upon it, curved like a crescent, the characters of my father’s name gleaming in gold. Ash crumbled from the glowing tips of incense sticks recently pressed into the brazier, their heady scent coiling in the air, thick with hope and grief. Offerings of apples, leafy mandarins, and sponge cakes were piled beside it, along with a slender sprig of osmanthus, its pale petals already rimmed with brown. My mother had been here, except where was she now?

With magic forbidden in the Mortal Realm, I ran down the hill, calling for her—along the river that smelled of earth and rot, before plunging into the forest where shadows darker than night crawled. Was I mistaken? Was she not here? It was then I sensed it, her aura fluttering like the wings of a frantic moth. Sprinting toward it, I almost crumpled with relief to find her wandering the outskirts of the forest, her steps stumbling and uncertain, her gaze hollow.