Page 82 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

The vision in the mirror-water changed to show, of all people, Wei. He galloped on his black steed like a creature of the dark world, bentforward through the Great Forest on his way to Guma. In his hands, he clasped a moon-steel sword and a bloody chrysanthemum—the warrior the cards of fortune had shown her, whose destiny was tied to hers.

“I used him to gain your trust,” Kang said. “I arranged for you to meet him so you could see me as your friend. And now he will fulfillhispurpose. He still loves you, the honorable fool he is. He thinks he can save you, and that your salvation will come with Guma’s end. He thinks you’ll be free at last.” His lidless eyes stared into hers, and his next words were shards piercing her flesh. “He left the envoy to kill your mother.”

“No,” Xifeng cried, hot panic rising in her like bile, and it became a scream. “No!”

The monster’s hand came down on her shoulder like a vise. “There is nothing we can do for her, and nothing more we need her for,” he said soothingly. “Her time has ended.”

Guma, who had fed and clothed her, given her all she could, and taught her all she knew.Thatwas what a mother did for her children—she made them strong and prepared them for the hardship and brutality of life. Guma had endured pain and fear, but she had still raised Xifeng.I wanted the world for you.The soft, tender mother Xifeng had imagined in Mingzhu and Lihua had been a childish illusion. She’d had a real mother, and she had abandoned her.

“Why?” she sobbed. “Why must I suffer like this? Why must I always be the one to lose and to struggle with the darkness?”

The emptiness inside her roared. She had deserted Guma, and now she would never hear her say, at last, that she loved Xifeng. Wei had taken that from her, that hot-blooded warrior who had loved her so deeply. Once her lover, and now her mortal enemy.

“Wei,” she breathed, and it was a curse. She raked her fingers in thedirt, imagining shredding his beautiful golden skin into ribbons of flesh. The warrior on the card had held a bloodstained flower... but whose blood was it?

Kang knelt before her with the concubine’s knife in his hands. “Being chosen by the Serpent God and facing this darkness makes you special,” he said in a low voice. “It sets you apart. Why would you want to be like everyone else?”

Behind him, in the waterfall, she saw her own beautiful face. Slowly, it mutated into something horrid: the fresh youth became a pockmarked, wrinkled visage ravaged by the cruelty of time. She trembled as the ruthless mirror-water stripped her of her beauty. Wei would not have loved her without it, she felt certain. Lihua would not have been drawn to her, and Jun would not have pursued her.

Your beauty is all you are, and all you have,Guma had once told her.Your only weapon.

“You have a choice.” Kang’s words sounded hauntingly familiar.

Once before, Xifeng had chosen to accept the Serpent God’s assistance. She had let him help her destroy Lady Sun. This time, he was asking something ofher—something that would ultimately help her as much as it did him.

She could refuse him. She could return to her town in poverty and obscurity. She could grow old and ugly alone while the concubines’ bodies remained beautiful forever, locked in time in the springs. And everything she had been through—including Wei’s loss and Guma’s death—would have been for nothing.

Or Xifeng could accept him and fulfill the destiny even Guma had not fully understood. She could remain forever young and beautiful, a powerful Empress and the Serpent God’s consort, living on the hearts of her enemies. She could surrender what was left of the light othershad seen in her—the light Wei had taken with him when he left her. She could give up her old self to the darkness, completely, with both hands open.

Do not resist me,echoed the voice she knew so well.

Once again, she had a choice to make. So Xifeng chose.

“I have no intention of resisting you,” she said.

“Why would you want to be like everyone else?” Kang repeated.

And she agreed with him. She agreed in the way her fingers closed on the blade, in the way she used it to dig into Lady Meng’s chest, and in the way she closed her lips around the blistering heat of the concubine’s heart. She was special, with every bite, every stream of blood spurting from her ravenous mouth. She was a monster, a bride of the darkness, and she rose to face her destiny as though it were the blood-red sunrise of a new day.

Xifeng returned to the royal apartments to hear screaming from Empress Lihua’s bedchamber. Maidservants and ladies-in-waiting rushed in and out with pale faces, their eyes wide with fear. The Imperial physician stood in the corridor barking orders to his assistants, who raced past without a second glance.

“Is it happening? Is the child coming?” she asked one of the ladies.

“No,” was the grim reply. “Her Majesty has been poisoned.”

Kang appeared beside her in his human form. Though his face was as round and friendly as ever, Xifeng knew she would always see those lidless eyes and that gash of a mouth whenever she looked at him now. Despite Lihua’s piercing screams, he wore an impassive expression that didn’t completely hide a flicker of satisfaction.

Lady Sun and Lady Meng had each paid the ultimate price. And now Kang’s next victim—and, by default, Xifeng’s—would be the Empress, a woman who had once treated her like a daughter.

But what sorrow and revulsion she felt faded quickly. Lihua wasthe Fool and had to be eliminated, no matter the cost. No one with a destiny like Xifeng’s could afford to care or love, not when it came to protecting what was rightfully hers.Love is weakness.How right Guma had been.

“Did you do this?” she whispered to Kang.

“I told you Lady Sun once accused me of stealing black spice. She gave me the idea, really. I went back to Bohai’s stores and took some later, though Icertainlydid not let a concubine catch me,” he added, chuckling.

Xifeng gave a slow nod. Smoked in great quantities, black spice would cause a prolonged, deathlike sleep, but when taken directly through the mouth—as Lihua had—it became a potent toxin. Kang had been slowly poisoning Her Majesty for a year or more, likely in minuscule, undetectable amounts. Xifeng thought of all the times she had noted Empress Lihua’s pallor, her shaking hands, her lack of appetite. Over many months, bit by bit, the substance had built up in her body and her symptoms had worsened... into this.

Another scream ripped through the air. Xifeng encountered a devastating scene when she and Kang entered the royal bedchamber. Empress Lihua had been restrained to her bed with sheets and blankets. Telltale red scratches covered her arms and legs, clearly made by her own fingernails. Blood splattered her sheets, which the maidservants were trying to change while avoiding the Empress’s foaming, gnashing mouth.

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