Present

Shyong Liu Yoichi paced his study, his sharp purple eyes glaring down at a coffin of ice.

The many facets and angles distorted the body frozen inside, but Yoichi knew the face of his enemy. The Ji Yu chieftain had nearly upset the intricate plans Yoichi and his mother had been carefully piecing together over the years.

Nearly.

Yoichi had had to take matters into his own hands to salvage his empire. His mother hadn’t been happy about that either, but he doubted she actually had the capacity to feel joy. He had stopped the Ji Yu chieftain from ruining all they had worked for, that was all that mattered.

Now all that remained was to break into this wretched coffin. The chieftain’s vastly overpowered Ro was already gone, lost to his younger half-sister, Koida, but if Yoichi could break through, he should be able to perform the Far-Stretching Tap Root, one of the core techniques of the Path of the Water Lily. This would allow him to siphon the Ji Yu chieftain’s Ro from Koida and absorb it himself.

Footsteps in the empty alchemy laboratory outside his study alerted him to his mother’s approach. It could only be her. The rest of the alchemists in the eastern tower had scurried off when their new emperor had sent them away for the night.

From the quick, clipped pace, Yoichi could tell that his mother was irritated. He should have had the ice coffin dragged to his royal residence. He doubted she would have looked for him there, even now that Hao was dead. In the five years since he had come to court, she had never visited his private chambers, maintaining the façade that they barely knew one another. It was an arrangement he preferred.

A gracefully aging woman in the robes of a court alchemist stepped between the wooden shelves dividing his study from the laboratory. Yoichi had never grown used to seeing his mother with locks dyed as black as night and brows smudged with charcoal. The disguise was part of her role as Sulyeon, skilled court alchemist, a part she played well enough to fool even the emperor who had been her lover when she was nothing more than a harem girl. Yoichi wondered whether his mother would let her hair return to white now.

She bowed deeply, exposing the back of her neck.

“Phoenix Emperor of the Rising Shyong Liu Dynasty,” she said in the tone of a minor official greeting her exalted ruler.

Yoichi smirked. “I’m alone, Mother, unless you count this chunk of ice. But you’re more than welcome to continue talking up to me.”

Youn Wha rose, a scowl twisting her face.

“Have you found a way in?” she asked, switching to the familial tone of a mother to her son. An irritated mother.

“Not yet.” Yoichi pulled back an open palm to his hip, fingers bent into claws, then slammed his fingertips into the ice coffin. Poisonous black Ro seeped from his fingertips, sliding over the surface, searching for an opening or weakness, trying to dig down like roots into soil, but the fingers of virulent black light couldn’t pierce the ice. He let the technique dissipate, his toxic Ro retreating through his pathways and back into his heartcenter. “It seems to be unbreakable.”

“You’ve tried to melt it?”

Yoichi rolled his eyes. As if he were a fool.

“Over a sufficiently hot fire?” his mother insisted.

“Fire,” he drawled. “Why did I not think of that? Here I’ve just been breathing on it.”

“I said sufficiently hot,” she growled between her teeth.

“Do you consider an all-consuming salt fire sufficient, esteemed Mother?”

He felt a surge of petty vindication as she turned away from, unable to find a flaw in his methods. She grunted and cupped her chin, her colorless eyes scrutinizing the ice much as he’d been doing.

She returned to the only conclusion she seemed to come to of late: “If you had just followed my carefully-wrought plan—if you hadn’t panicked and thrown away everything I’ve been working for from the day you were born—”

“I salvaged the plan before that Ji Yu scum could tear it apart.”

“Nonsense,” she snapped. “Hao never would have put aside conquest for peaceable negotiation. He loved the battle too deeply.”

“You didn’t hear the old fool fawning over the alliance with that tribe of savages,” Yoichi muttered.

She ignored this, of course, as it would have proven her wrong. “We could have continued siphoning unlimited Ro from the casualties of that endless war, then when the time was ripe, killed Hao and taken back your rightful throne.”

“Apologies, Mother, but the time was ripe. We would have had no better opportunity to enact our plan once the youngest was married off and swept away to some remote mountain village.”

“You have the entire Path at your disposal, and yet you fear a few hundred miles?” His mother’s charcoal-smudged brows made her eyeroll overly dramatic. “There is no place where the Water Lily does not take root.”

Always straight to quoting the Ancient Master, as if he were straying from the Path. He was twice the devotee she had ever been.

“Even in the heart of a second princess, Mother?”

The heady scent of lotus blossoms filled Yoichi’s nostrils.

That’s why I speak to you and not her, the Whisperer breathed in his ear, the soft feminine voice more sensation than sound. Youn Wha follows the Path of the Water Lily, but you, my white-haired hero, are the Water Lily.

Oblivious to the Whisperer’s encouragement, his mother glared, her eyes glowing black as toxic Ro manifested around her in a sea of deadly waving tentacles. “If you allowed Hao’s youngest daughter to escape alive with the most powerful Ro ever known solely to prove a point, Shyong Liu Yoichi, I will send you to the afterlife myself.”

“Of course not.” He affected a bored expression because she hated it when he used his court face with her. “If that dim-witted Ji Yu had drank from his own cup, his head would be dangling from the Executioner’s Tree, and Koida would be recovering in the Sun Palace while I led the war against the Ji Yu.” The antidote he had intended to give her was still hidden in the sleeve-pocket of his finest robes. “Ascending through marriage to Koida would have been the best way to ensure the entire empire backed me. As it is, however, the nobles who survived the feast conveniently happen to support the Rising Phoenix Emperor.”

“By my count, those attending the wedding feast accounted for less than half of the nobility and far fewer ranking officials,” Youn Wha said, arching one smudged brow in challenge. “As long as she lives, the rest could rally behind her.”

“The news is spreading, Mother. In a day—two at the most—every noble in the empire will believe Koida a murderess,” Yoichi said. It was a regrettable step, one that nullified the possibility of his original plan, but accusing her had been a necessary course correction. “An angry little second princess who didn’t want to be married off. She turned to poison to make a play for the throne, but the wandering hero who held the only other blood claim stopped her. The rest of the court will be all too happy to stand behind the emperor who brought her to justice.”

“If he does bring her to justice,” his mother said, a cold thread of doubt running through her words. “On that demon beast of hers and with a day’s ride, there’s no telling how far she could have gone by now. I will not clean up this mess for you.”

She sees a mess where there is opportunity. The Whisperer chuckled softly in his ear. You’re going to make a much better Immortal than she ever could have.

Hiding his smile behind an appropriately dutiful expression, Yoichi executed a respectful filial bow.

“Fear not, honored mother and esteemed grandmaster, your son is well prepared,” he promised. “I’ve called upon the palace’s best trackers and strongest soldiers. They are to be ready to ride out with their new emperor within the hour.”