I opened my eyes. Xiayin had wilted against the wooden pillar at her back, her shoulders drooping and her eyes blank, and I wondered what was going through her mind.

My heart ached, and I knew now there wasn’t a poultice for this. No medicine to change how I felt. And I didn’t want to change it, anyway. It was as important to me as being a lantern-maker’s daughter; a piece of me without which I would not be me. A lantern without a flame burning inside, empty and dark and cold in the night.

“I’m not going,” I said firmly. “But… Do you remember when we first met?”

“Yes,” she said, with a small smile. “I’ll never forget.”

“Do you think … Chilli Oil chose both of us?”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. I always assumed she chose you, because you saw her first.”

“She’s happy to let you pet her. She doesn’t let anyone else do that. Not even my mother.”

Xiayin’s smile bloomed full. “Yes, but your mother doesn’t even approve of Chilli Oil’s name. I wouldn’t let anyone touch me if they went on about how much they hated my name.”

We laughed, before I sobered, remembering what I was about to propose. “I’m sure Chilli Oil chose you too, just like she chose me. So would you like to take her and go to the palace?” I couldn’t change how I felt, but I could still give Xiayin a chance at the future she wanted. Besides, if she said no, maybe it would mean she was as reluctant to leave me as I was to leave her.

Xiayin looked at me a long time, her tired face drawn in the pallid lantern light. “I don’t know, Jingzhi. I couldn’t… It doesn’t feel right. She’s yours.”

“She’s ours,” I insisted.

She inhaled sharply. I heard it; felt it in my own lungs. “It’s a lot to think about,” she said.

My mouth twisted wryly. “Isn’t it?”

“I think you should go home. We can talk about it again in the morning, can’t we?” She stood up with a hand on my shoulder, a brief pressure that I mourned as soon as it was gone.

*

In the morning, my phoenix had disappeared. She wasn’t in my room, or in the garden, where she sometimes slept to wake dew-drenched at dawn.

I knew immediately that I would find Xiayin gone too, if I went to her home.

Even though my mother was trusting me to work on a new design for a lantern, I sat slumped in my room all morning until my grandparents called me to help make lunch. I went into the kitchen and rinsed rice grains. Something about them swirling in the water lulled me into reminiscence. Xiayin would play with Chilli Oil in the garden sometimes, chasing her in gleeful circles … or perhaps it was Chilli Oil who chased her. I kept thinking of the joy I’d held in my chest, watching them. How could I have let them both go?