The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker

Author:Kylie Lee Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2023-08-24T15:42:12+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I threw open the door to my cousins’ room and tripped straight over Wenshu, tumbling inside. He let out an indignant sound and knocked a pot of ink over his scroll, black bleeding across the floor.

“Sorry, sorry!” I said, soaking up the ink with my sleeve and quickly using alchemy to put it back in its pot as the bewildered guard appeared in the doorway behind me. Yufei, who was lying on her side in bed, raised an eyebrow and sat up.

“Zilan,” Wenshu said warningly, frowning at his ruined scroll.

“Please don’t murder me,” I said. “Last night, I was—”

“We know, a messenger came to tell us where you were,” Wenshu said. “Yufei almost stabbed him.”

Yufei shrugged. “It was too late for visitors.”

“Though he didn’t tell us what you were doing,” Wenshu said, crossing his arms. “Nothing dangerous again, I hope?”

“I passed!” I said, because if anything could distract him, it was this.

Wenshu’s anger melted away instantly. He smiled, reaching out and ruffling my hair like when we were kids. “Of course you did,” he said. “You’re the best. You always were.”

At his words, my throat closed up and my vision blurred with tears. I’d never thought I needed Wenshu’s praise, so I wasn’t prepared for the wave of relief it brought, like I could breathe for the first time since we’d dreamed of coming to Chang’an. I wasn’t a failure who had to be sent home alone. I wasn’t deadweight for my perfect cousins to drag around. They weren’t going to leave me behind.

“Why are you crying?” Wenshu said, horrified. “Stop that!”

“Shut up, she’s happy,” Yufei said, crushing me in a hug so forceful that my ribs squeaked in protest.

“Be happy some other way!” Wenshu said, grabbing a rag and passing it to Yufei, who scrubbed at my face until I took the hint and blew my nose.

“What about you?” I said. “Which office will you work in?”

They looked at each other, then down at the floor. Their silence stretched longer until it became its own answer. I crushed the rag in my fist. “You didn’t pass?” I whispered.

“It’s not about passing or failing, Zilan. There are ranks,” Wenshu said. “We’re in the third tier. That means we’ll train for another year, then they’ll send us somewhere else.”

They have to leave Chang’an? I shook my head, pressed up against the wall like I could back away from their words. I’d worked as hard as I did so we could stay together. I didn’t want any of this if it meant saying goodbye.

“But you did so well on the second round,” I said, my voice small.

“Yes, the written round, not the oral one,” Wenshu said, expression pinched, unwilling to meet my eyes. “I swear they talked faster just to confuse us. And I think they try to force Southern candidates back to the South, since Northerners can’t speak our dialect as well.”

“For now, we can stay,” Yufei said, reading the devastation on my face.

I opened my mouth to tell them

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.