The Blood Orchid by Kylie Lee Baker

Author:Kylie Lee Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Zheng Sili came up behind me, clearing his throat. “It says—”

“I can read!” I said, angling away from him, a strange coldness washing over me as I kept reading.

Empress Wu hanged in front of imperial palace after siege by private armies. Crown Prince Li Hong and concubine Fan Zilan reported missing. With no surviving members of the House of Li to be found, the future of the crown is uncertain. The Tang Dynasty may have come to an end.

Slowly, I folded the paper in half and tucked it into my bag. Everyone was staring at me, but I felt very far away. So this was why they were robbing this man, I thought. Their master is going to Chang’an to claim the throne because the Empress is . . . Yufei is . . .

Behind me, Zheng Sili shifted from foot to foot. “Are you . . .” he trailed off, the unasked question hanging in the air.

I felt like I’d fallen into a frozen pond, like the world around me was suspended in slow motion. Yufei was never someone I had to worry about. Out of the three of us, she knew how to protect herself the best. Leaving her had felt like the most logical decision, something none of us had thought twice about. But we’d left her to die alone.

“I need to get to the river,” I said, tightening my grip on Durian and shoving through the door.

If it hadn’t been too long since the Empress’s body was hanged, maybe I could still find Yufei at the river of souls and tether her there like Hong until we could reach Penglai Island. Yes, that was what I would do. Death was only temporary for a resurrection alchemist, after all. Yufei was only a little bit dead, and soon she would be perfectly fine once more.

But news traveled slowly across the country, even something as important as this, and I knew that unless Yufei had the mental fortitude to try to hang on, she would be gone within a day. I’d only just managed to tether Hong before he wandered off, and I’d done that only hours after his death. Surely for something like this to have been printed and reached the northern borders, days had to have passed.

I ran faster, ducking around families and merchant carts and old men while Zheng Sili hurried behind me. Up ahead, a cart turned sideways blocked the road, a crowd of people gathered like a dam in the river. I tried to shove my way through, but the crowd was too dense.

When I came close enough, I saw the wheels of the cart lodged in the mud, the horse trying futilely to pull it through. I shoved Durian into Zheng Sili’s arms and started fishing through my bag for stones.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Zheng Sili said, his voice high-pitched and nervous. I ignored him, pulling out three earthstones and sinking my hands into the mud. With a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.