Page 4 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

“No,” Xifeng said hastily, feeling faint under her severe gaze. “I don’t dare question the spirits of magic. It’s just... difficult to imagine such a future for myself.”

“You question my interpretation of the spirits’ message, then?” No one grew angry faster than Guma whenever she suspected Xifeng’s skepticism. She snatched the Empress card from her niece’s hand, mouth twisted with fury. “Any other girl would kiss my feet if I told her she would be Empress of all Feng Lu one day. Butyouspit in my face with your doubt.” She raised her sharp, bony hand to strike her.

Xifeng cringed. “Please, I don’t doubt you! If you say I’m to be the Empress, then the Empress I will be.” That calmed Guma a bit, though her mouth remained downturned. She straightened the cards in a sullen silence, which Xifeng knew could last for days if her aunt wished to thoroughly punish her. “I’ve grown used to our way of living. I have trouble imagining myself owning servants and silks I might have once embroidered for finer folk. That’s all.”

“The cards have always told us your fate lies in the Imperial Palace.”Guma clenched her teeth. “Why else would I fill your head with poetry and calligraphy? Why would I bother teaching you the history of our world and the politics of kings? Other women dream of warm houses and sober husbands for their daughters. I dream of life at an Emperor’s side for you, and this is how you treat me. With suspicion.”

Xifeng kept quiet as her aunt continued ranting at her. Had she been braver, she might have asked Guma to reconsider the meaning of the fortune. Perhaps the card meant she wouldservethe Empress, notbethe Empress. It would make more sense, not to mention it sounded much less terrifying. And it would explain how Wei could still be a part of her future—perhaps the sacrifice merely referred to giving up her old life, and not him at all.

But the danger of Guma’s drawn-out silence kept Xifeng quiet. She felt too unsteady to argue, anyway, surrounded by the caustic stench of the incense. She blinked her blurry eyes and noticed that one other card held a droplet of blood, not yet absorbed.

“Guma, there’s a seventh card.”

“Don’t be foolish. There are only ever six, and that one doesn’t have enough blood to be yours.” Still, she seemed curious, so Xifeng flipped it over.

The card showed a slight boy on the cusp of adulthood, pale and oddly delicate. He wore peasant garb and carried a traveling pack, and his eyes were fixed on the stars above. So intent was he upon the heavens, he did not notice that his foot hovered over the edge of a cliff.

“What does this mean? This boy?” Xifeng’s head swam. She felt herself swaying in her seat, and gripped the edge of the table to steady herself.

Guma’s cruel eyes took in the card. She turned it over, silent and intent. The drop of blood was gone, as though it had never been thereat all. “This is the Fool, the card of infinite potential. This boy means luck.”

Excitement slithered down Xifeng’s spine. In the musky haze, anything seemed possible. Only moments ago, she had questioned her aunt’s reading of the Empress card. But now, she didn’t know why she had doubted. A normal reading only ever consisted of six cards, yet she had been granted seven. Surely, that was a sign from the gods themselves. The woman painted on that sliver of wood was her and no other; that was the shape of her own head. “The spirits favor me completely, then,” she said drowsily.

But Guma’s harsh voice broke into her revelation. “Notyourluck... someone else’s. This card shows a stranger born under a lucky star.” As quick as she had been to dismiss the card, she now glared as though it were Xifeng’s fault. “Someone plots against you, against everything we strive for.”

Xifeng’s stomach churned as her eyes refocused on the boy’s face. The artist had given him such long lashes. They cast a shadow like the fringe of treetops against his skin. If she pulled off his hat, would she find a waterfall of hair to rival her own? “An enemy disguised,” she uttered, and it seemed the words did not come from her lips, but from the card itself. Guma went very still. “A snake in the grass. A dark world in the cave.”

The room twisted further, and images swam before Xifeng’s eyes: a sea of waving yellow grass, and a snake like a disturbing ink stroke on paper. It glided toward the mouth of a cave with unnatural grace, the movement like dark silk curving around a man’s beckoning arm.

“The Serpent God,” Xifeng murmured as the snake took the shape of a thin, unnaturally tall man. “The true god of us all.”

A voice spoke inside her mind, gentle and familiar, one that hadspoken at the edge of her hearing many times before but never so clearly.The moon shines down upon us, beloved...

The images melted into each other, but Xifeng could still sense Guma there, sinking to her knees with her hands outstretched in prayer... or apology.

Something shifted in Xifeng’s chest. She had heard its growl of fury earlier when she saw Ning looking at Wei, but this was something else, something new: a lazy, satisfied preening, like basking in sunlight. If she closed her eyes, she might even be able to see the creature’s spiraling coils through the cage of her own ribs.

Embrace this boundless night,the voice said tenderly.

“Leave her,” Guma hissed from where she still knelt. “Let her be!”

Xifeng felt herself falling, heard the crack of her forehead against the edge of the table. Right before she sank into unconsciousness, she thought she saw the strangest thing of all: her aunt bending over her with tears in her eyes... as though she loved her.

Xifeng closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.

Xifeng woke the next morning in the room she shared with Ning. She lay still, head aching as she blinked away a disturbing dream in which she’d swallowed a snake whole. She could still feel it writhing down her throat, choking her, and shuddered as Guma limped in and placed a bowl of steaming broth beside her.

She struggled to sit up. “I’m sorry I overslept. What happened last night?”

“You don’t recall fainting?”

Xifeng winced at a stabbing pain above her heart and tugged at the neck of her tunic, gasping at the sight of the bright red crisscross on her skin. It had been etched by a sharp blade.

“I had to drain you of some lifeblood. There was too much magic coursing through you.” Guma tilted her head. “You truly don’t remember what happened?”

“The card you showed me—the Fool, the boy who looked like a girl in disguise—he... orsheis my enemy.” It wasn’t a question, but stillGuma nodded. “And I’m not to know who she is? Or when I will meet her?”

“The spirits of magic were warning us. We must stay vigilant. Trust no one, understand? Nothing can stand in your way when you earn your place in the Empress’s inner circle.” She lowered herself painfully onto a stool, examining each of her niece’s features in turn.

---