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“The moment I could move again, I searched for you. The skies were still sealed. When your sword returned to me, when I heard you scream, I rushed to you—but it was too late. You were gone.” His face darkened. “There was only one place they would have taken you, for the reason they wanted to seize you.”

“The gateway. How did you get through it?” I asked. “Lord Dalian said there were restrictions on who could pass through, that it was dangerous.”

“The Wuxin attacked me on my way back to Kunlun. I left one of them alive. He proved to be most informative, and not entirely fond of their ruler.”

“You killed the rest?” I tried to recall the viciousness of their schemes, but found no satisfaction in their deaths.

“They took you from me,” he said with deadly calm. “I was not inclined to mercy, nor did they seek it. One agreed to help me in exchange for his life, letting me take his place through the gateway, showing me how to slip through it unharmed.”

“You could have died.” Though he stood before me, I went cold at the thought.

“Some things are worse than death. If I couldn’t get to you, you would have been lost to me. I couldn’t bear that again.”

“Again?” Something stirred in me, something that slipped away when I tried to grasp it. “The way you speak to me sometimes . . . it’s like we’ve known each other long before we met.”

Zhangwei searched my face, light flaring in his eyes. “What do you recall? What happened to you?”

“I was taken to a temple. I looked into the Mirror of Destiny there, regaining some of my memories. Fragments. Disjointed pieces. I was an immortal, like you. My mother was Queen Caihong.” I laughed; it seemed ludicrous when spoken aloud.

“She is your mother,” he corrected me gravely.

“Does she hate me now?” I asked haltingly. “Why did she try to hurt me?”

“She never hated you; she loves you,” he replied. “When you were mortal, she couldn’t show her feelings. She had to pretend, even though it hurt her, because you weren’t meant to know—not until you’d regained your memories. Otherwise, our plan would have failed.”

It hadn’t been anger or loathing in her face, but pain? My heart ached, and I did not realize until that moment just how much I’d missed her. “What was the plan?”

“You and I both needed the Divine Pearl Lotus, the antidote to what we suffered. But there was only one, and it hadn’t bloomed yet. We had to wait. And the only way we could share it was between a mortal and an immortal; there wasn’t enough otherwise. If you’d regained your memories too early, before you’d given me the lotus—you wouldn’t be wholly mortal anymore. We wouldn’t be able to share it.”

“And you’d have died.” I recoiled, unable to bear the thought. When had my feelings for him grown so deep? They frightened me a little, because I didn’t quite understand them.

“At least you would have lived,” he said.

Silence fell over us as we stared at each other. Was he thinking of all we’d almost lost? All we’d regained?

“It was fortunate our scheme failed the first time,” he said somberly. “We didn’t know you’d been given the waters of death then. If we’d tried to restore your immortality without the gift from the Tree of Everlasting Life, your immortal self would have been irrevocably lost. You would have become Wuxin, your past a blank sheet of paper to write whatever they chose.”

I drew a long breath. “They plotted this all along. Fortunately, they knew nothing of the tree’s gift.”

“Who gave you the water from the Wangchuan?” His voice dropped dangerously low.

“Aunt Shou. She is one of them.” It hurt to say it aloud. “She did it to force my grandfather’s hand into giving me the lotus.”

“She always kept a distance from me. Her powers of concealment must be strong.” His expression was grave. “I sensed the lotus when I first healed you by the wall, but I only detected the taint of the Wangchuan River later—when my enchantment bound us in the palace. I’d hoped the Ancient Grandmaster could remove it.”

“Was that what you asked him? What you couldn’t tell me?” It all made sense now.

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t then. It was hard to keep everything from you.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to take the lotus from me the first time,” I said, recalling the hurt when I thought he’d betrayed me.

“A mistake, that I ask your forgiveness for,” he admitted. “I thought you loved me then. I wanted to believe it, impatient for us to reclaim our lives. There was nothing harder than pretending you were a stranger, seeing your mistrust and resentment whenever you looked at me.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” I meant it. I now understood that he hadn’t wanted to harm me but to help us.

“If only we’d found you earlier. We’d been searching for you for years, the moment you descended to the Mortal Realm,” he told me. “Discreetly, not to alert our enemies of your vulnerability—not just the Wuxin, but many at your mother’s court would leap at the chance to dispose of the heir. Our search was thwarted by the mortals’ fear and suspicion of us. Many lied, concealing their children’s birthdates, obscuring any information they shared.”

“Immortals have done little to earn our trust,” I said, defending them. No matter what, they would always be my people. “The Wuxin also concealed me from you.”