Chapter 4: The Open Door

Wuhen stood in the doorway in a borrowed black robe and let the cold air hit his face.

Nobody stopped him.

The corridor beyond the door was long, black, and lit by red lanterns every ten paces.

There were no guards.

There was nothing but a draft smelling of ash and plum, and a stone floor under his bare feet.

He told himself it was a test.

He told himself he would walk to the end of the corridor and see.

The first twenty steps were easy, because the night's qi still burned in his belly.

At thirty, his legs began to shake.

At fifty, he reached an arch and stepped out into a garden of white ash-blossoms.

The trees were bare and pale as bone, and the flowers lay on the black ground.

Above the garden wall he could see a sky the color of old iron, and past it the jagged line of the Ashen Lands.

It was the first sky he had seen in a hundred years that wasn't white.

Wuhen made it halfway across the garden before the ground tilted.

He caught himself on a tree, and the tree shook, and the blossoms came down around him.

His core flickered.

His knees hit the ground.

"I'm not finished," he said to nobody, and tried to stand.

"You are."

A hand closed around his upper arm.

Chenjue stood over him in a loose black robe with his hair unbound.

He looked like he had run the length of the palace.

"I told you," Chenjue said. "You don't die in my palace."

"I wasn't dying. I was walking."

"You were falling over in my garden," Chenjue said.

"Then your garden should be flatter."

He tried to pull his arm free, and it was like pulling against a mountain.

Chenjue bent, slid an arm behind his knees, and picked him up.

"Put me down."

"In a moment," Chenjue replied.

"I'm perfectly capable..."

"You walked fifty paces and fainted into a tree." The red eyes met his, steady. "You can hate me from the bed."

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