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with her mother until the fath-omless lake was fi lled with her tears.
    You have left her with nothing but a broken heart. With a debt that 39

    Cindy Pon
    cannot be paid. You could have married Master Huang to help your family. But instead you shirked your duty and ran away.
    The voice was like glass shards coated in honey.
    The slithering forms, all murmuring their disapproval in some ancient tongue, shifted in the abyss around her. But Ai Ling understood. Selfish. Ungrateful. Useless. She wanted to tear off her ears, gouge out her eyes, anything to stop the voices inside her head.
    And your father. He loved you so well. A useless daughter. Your father said you were special. Your father lied. The last word seemed to snicker and shriek. It tore through her mind, reverberated in her skull, and echoed into infi nity.
    Her father appeared, wearing his favorite dark blue robes.
    He raised one hand toward his daughter, a look of love and concern on his face. Ai Ling wanted to speak, reach her hand to him.
    Then the whites of his eyes began to move as hundreds of maggots squirmed, falling from empty sockets, until his entire body was a writhing mass. His skin peeled away to expose raw flesh, then decayed to mere bones. The skeleton dissolved to silver wisps of dust, streaked away before her horrifi ed eyes.
    Your father is dead. Go home.
    Ai Ling bit her tongue so she would not scream. You lie, she shrieked in her mind. But part of her believed it.
    Go away. Go back.
    The muscular tail squeezed tighter, smothering the precious 40

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    air she had been given. It crushed her until she was nothing.
    Nothing but darkness and hot salty tears.
    Ai Ling felt someone tap her cheek. She opened her eyes and winced, her sight seared by the bright blue skies. A young man’s face appeared above hers.
    “Are you all right?”
    She gazed into his strange amber eyes—a color she had never seen. They were fi lled with concern.
    No, she wanted to say, I’m not all right. My father is dead.
    I may as well be dead to my mother.
    She wanted to curl up and cry. And sleep. Forever. She shivered, even as the strong afternoon sunlight warmed her wet clothes and damp skin.
    “Get me away from here,” she whispered. It was all that she could muster.
    Ai Ling felt herself gathered into strong arms as the stranger lifted her.
    She leaned into him, trusting him completely in her grief and exhaustion. She shut her eyes and once more lost grasp of the world around her.
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    C H A P T E R F O U R
    Ai Ling awoke to the sound of twigs crackling on a fire. The orange glow licked beneath her closed lids. She didn’t want to open her eyes.
    A shuffling noise to her left. Curiosity overrode fear. She peered from under lowered lashes and saw the young man kneel before the fire, stoking it with a stick. The fire fed and grew. Ai Ling basked in its warmth.
    What had she said to him? Ai Ling couldn’t remember.
    She tilted her head, wanting to see his face. Her movement caught his attention, and their eyes met.
    Strange amber eyes. She remembered now.
    “You’re awake,” he said.
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    S I LV E R P H O E N I X
    Ai Ling looked toward the fire. Dusk neared. She could tell by the light and the birds singing above them. Cheerful.
    Just as they had been before she was pulled into the lake.
    Had she dreamed it? She touched her still-damp clothes and didn’t answer him.
    “I found you on the water’s edge,” he said. “You were half submerged. When I tried to pull you out—it was as if something was pulling you in.”
    He stirred the fi re again, and the fl ames leaped. His brow furrowed.
    “The water was clear. Shallow. There was nothing at your feet. Yet I used all my strength to drag you out.” He sat down on the ground and rested his arms on raised knees.
    “You saved me. There is no proper way I can thank you,”
    Ai Ling said.
    He leaned forward and smiled at her. It altered the lines of his face. “She speaks.”
    Ai Ling shifted