Chapter 4

Then, the day before my eighteenth birthday, an imperial edict came crashing into our household.

At a palace banquet, His Majesty had taken one look at my sister and chosen her.

With a word from his imperial lips, she was made a Zhaoyi consort and ordered into the palace at once.

Father held the bright yellow edict in hands that shook too hard to keep their grip. He sank to the floor and did not get up for a long time.

Mother wailed.

The servants knelt all around, none daring to raise their heads.

Before the New Year, the emperor had suddenly fallen gravely ill and nearly died. Somehow, though, he had recovered his vigor.

Everyone in our household had thought the monk’s prophecy about the sovereign moon meant the crown prince.

The crown prince was young, only three years older than my sister. They had long since confessed their feelings, and inside and outside the palace, everyone took their marriage for granted.

Who could have imagined that the edict would name the old emperor instead?

The old emperor, forty years older than my sister. Older even than Father by a good stretch.

I was so furious I wanted to tear the edict apart.

My sister was such a good person.

She put pretty flower pins in my hair, arranged it in the latest styles, and in winter spread thick cream over my hands, cupping my cold-red fingers and breathing warmth onto them…

Why should someone as good as her have to marry an old man?

The palace was full of consorts more beautiful than she was. Why couldn’t the emperor be satisfied?

My brother cried too. What use was being a man, he said, if all he could do was earn a little money and offer no help when it mattered?

My sister alone did not cry.

She wiped my tears with a handkerchief, her fingertips cool. Then she dabbed face cream on my cheeks and carefully smoothed it in.

“Jiang Li, this is the fate the monk foretold. We must believe in fate. I’m only going where the current carries me. But you’re different. I want you to be a tiger in the mountains, a flood dragon in the sea, a dragon in the heavens.”

“If Heaven has already decided, then my Jiang Li must be the fiercest, the wildest creature of all, and make this life worth having lived.”

I blinked. So an eagle wasn’t even the most formidable thing I could be.

A tiger ruling the mountain forests, a flood dragon beneath the vast sea, a dragon soaring through the highest heavens…

And all I’d aspired to was chasing people to shit on their heads.

The palace allowed her two days. Then they would come for her.

The next day was my eighteenth birthday.

I began waiting as soon as the midnight watch had passed.

I leaned on the windowsill and stared at the courtyard wall.

Qi Yao had said he would come back the year he turned eighteen.

What would he look like now?

Tall and strong, his skin dark from the sun?

Would that pretty face of his have scars?

I waited until full daylight, until the sun climbed above the eaves, until Mother slid the jade pin for my coming of age into my hair. The wall stayed empty. No one appeared.

A corner of my heart felt hollow, but there was no time to think about it.

Mother told a maid to bring a bowl of red-bean porridge.

The same porridge I’d had at seven.

Only it tasted different.

When I was seven, Mother had made it herself, with sugar. It had been sweet.

This bowl was made by a maid. The beans hadn’t soaked long enough. They were hard in my mouth, jarring against my teeth.

Still, spoonful by spoonful, I swallowed it all.

Then I had that dream again.

Someone opened my chest and took out two bones, placing one in my sister’s chest and the other in my brother’s.

Pain drenched me in sweat. I tried to cry out, but no sound came.

A curtain separated the inner and outer rooms. Mother watched only my sister and brother as they woke, clutching their hands and weeping with joy.

No one lifted the curtain.

Only when my sister had caught her breath and said, “Go and see Jiang Li,” did someone pull it aside.

I was already dead.

I floated in the air, looking at myself on the couch. My face was a bluish white. Blood had soaked through a great patch of bedding.

Mother screamed and flung herself forward. Father stumbled, overturning a stool.

My sister covered her face and cried. My brother knelt on the floor, pounding it with his fist again and again.

I floated above them, cursing in fury.

That wicked monk had lied!

What happened to becoming a beast?

What happened to being an eagle, a dog, a turtle?

I hadn’t even had a chance to be an animal. I’d just died?

I’d been ready to become my sister’s tiger in the mountains, flood dragon in the sea, dragon in the heavens. Instead, I was dead.

What a rotten bargain.