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Xifeng felt faint as she stared into the face of this woman... her mother. “I spent my childhood yearning for you, and you were there the whole time.” Thetengaruqueen had known.You drift toward each other,she had said,two streams from the same river.
“I wrote to Long’s parents when my baby was born. They told me he had died and never to contact them again. They didn’t want anything to do with me or their granddaughter.” Guma shook her head. “But there was someone else who could help me, who had done this to me so I might depend on him. He called me back to him, insistinghe had given me my gifts and talents out of the goodness of his heart. But those gifts and talents now allowed me to see exactly what he was: an evil spirit using me for reasons I didn’t understand. He told me his secret.”
The Lord of Surjalana,a voice whispered inside Xifeng.
It was one of the many names of the jealous god who had ruled the desert and coveted the Dragon King’s wealth and might. Xifeng remembered Shiro telling her a theory in which this god, seduced by power, never returned to the heavens at all.
“The Serpent God is the Lord of Surjalana.” Xifeng shivered. “All those nightmares you had... All of those times you came running home to lock the doors and windows...”
“I would rather have starved and watched my baby die than crawl back to that cave, to thatbeingwho had destroyed my life.” Guma’s eyes met hers. “I burned everything he gave me. Every book of poetry, every gift... even the deck of cards. I bought a new deck myself, though it cost me dearly. I wanted nothing more to do with him, now that I had a child to protect.”
Xifeng felt a lump in her throat, as though the rat’s heart had lodged itself there.
“I promised myself you would be better than I was,” her mother told her, eyes blazing. “When I read your fate in the cards, Iknewyou would be, though I was afraid at first. If I pushed you toward your destiny, might you encounterhimon your path? But then I asked myself: where is the safest place on earth for my daughter? Where will she be mightiest, most powerful, and under the rule of no one but herself? Ah. As Empress of Feng Lu, protected by the Great Forest. Just as the cards predicted. A woman of unimaginable strength, with an army at her back.”
“But you served him for so long. He controlled you,” Xifeng argued. “How do you know he isn’t controlling you now?”
“He can’t. He isn’t. I took precautions... I denounced him...”
“How could you have agreed to give him all of those things without knowing the costs? Without knowing what you were paying for?”
“Aren’t you doing the same thing?” Guma countered. “You are following your destiny without knowing the costs. You are willing to pay in other people’s lives to get there. Do not dare pass judgment on me, daughter, without first accepting your own actions.”
“No,” Xifeng whispered. “It’s not the same.”
Her mother’s fading mouth twisted. “Do you see now what I’ve tried to teach you? Love is weakness. You open yourself up to choices you’d never make if your heart were your own.” She moved closer, desperate. “I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to be like me. I’d rather have you hate me as your aunt than pity me as your mother. And I was so afraidhewould find you.”
A dark, terrible anger settled into Xifeng’s bones. “You pushed my destiny on me to get me away from him. You knew I would leave you to pursue it.”
Guma’s sad face was a wisp of smoke now. “I wanted a better life for you.”
“How do you know you aren’t connected to him still?” Xifeng enjoyed watching her flinch at the cruel words. She flung them like daggers, wanting Guma to hurt as much as she did. “How do you know he hasn’t been speaking to you through those cards? Through this incense?”
“I know I’ve done things you can never forgive. But I did them for you, and my time is almost over now. Protect yourself, child. Rid yourself of the Fool, whoever she may be.” Her mother’s eyes flickered to the invisible wounds on her face. “Until you do, you will never be safe,and you will be reminded of it again and again. It is a consequence, like everything else.”
“This was a reminder?” Xifeng touched the pristine skin of her face, which had been shredded only moments ago.A vein of madness runs through our family.
“I want you to know... I wanted the world for you.”
“This destiny you saw for me could be whathewants,” Xifeng shouted as her mother faded out of view. She hoped Guma was still listening, hoped the pain of this revelation would make all those years of brutality and abuse worthwhile. Maybe, at last, they would be even. “How do you know he isn’t in my very bones, and his eyes aren’t looking back at you?”
The creature inside her roared with this truth. The realization twisted Guma’s disappearing face: the Serpent God had taken his final payment, after all.
He had taken Xifeng.
She felt him burst free, and though her mother was gone—though Xifeng stood alone—the strange waterfall now reflected a being too tall to be human, once a darkness twisted within and now joyously released. Exhilaration tingled in her nerves as she watched herself beside him, tall, imposing, as treacherously beautiful as an immortal.
My shadowed goddess. My dark queen. My fairest,he said.Guma was only a means to an end. You are my prize.
She licked blood from the corner of her mouth, still ravenous for more. In the reflection, the man ran long, thin fingers down her neck, and she closed her eyes as though she could feel it.
The moon shines down upon us, beloved...
“Our deal is different from what she had with you,” she told him, still smarting from Guma’s accusation. “I know my ending. I understand my destiny. I’m different from her.”
Fairest. The water a vast and eternal mirror...
Another image appeared in the mirror-water: Lady Sun, waiting alone in the tunnel. Lady Sun, descending the stairs to the hot springs as if in a trance.
