I nodded violently, eager to do anything to lighten her cares. Hope burst in me at this show of strength, dissipating abruptly when she fell back down, as though she had struggled against the shackles of her broken body and could fight no more.

“The sea,” she rasped. “It is beautiful there.” Her body shuddered, eyelids fluttering in a frantic rhythm before going still.

Soft cries punctured the silence, those of my mother’s, as I stifled the screams that surged up my throat. I crumpled over Ping’er, clasping her tight—as she had held and rocked me in her arms when I was small enough to fit in them. But she was no more, forever gone … taking along with her a part of me.

Part II

Chapter 12

The rush of the wind was a mournful lament as our cloud soared onward. My mother’s eyes were veined red, the coils of her hair undone, falling over her shoulders. As my gaze rested on Ping’er’s body, a wrenching pain suffused me. Without her vitality and warmth, it was nothing but a shell.

Memories flooded me: of Ping’er correcting the fingering on my flute, of her showing me how to pluck the strings of a qin, of her stories that gave me my first thrill of adventure. The times she had tucked me into bed and pressed a kiss to my brow when my mother had lingered too long in the forest. The tears came then, sliding down my cheeks. I would not wipe them away or flinch from these recollections, because they were all I had left of her. There was an aching finality to this moment, this immutability of death. For gone were the days that Ping’er would hug me, never again would she call my name. How did the mortals bear such anguish, knowing all they loved would meet this end?

A gust of wind ruffled Ping’er’s sleeves. I smoothed them down, my knuckles grazing her skin—so cold and still. I was a selfish creature to think of just myself. What of Ping’er’s family? My mother? This loss was not mine alone.

I touched my mother’s arm. “Are you all right?”

“Pain is no stranger to me.” Her eyes were dulled pools of despair. “At least we have each other.”

I wanted to tell her of my father then, to let hope spark in this impenetrable darkness. Yet my vow bound me fast, as did my shame. How arrogant I had been to think I could have helped my father, how reckless to steal from the Celestial Emperor, to have imagined we could escape his wrath, to have ever challenged him in the first place. For now Ping’er was dead, our home was destroyed—and I was lost.