Chapter One: Inside It All Feels the Same

A/N: Hello, everybody! First, a note: this is act two of the Acid and Ember trilogy. The first act is "East of the Crescent Moon," and I very strongly suggest that you go read that first, as I am not a fan of lengthy exposition and honestly, I think you'll appreciate this story more if you take the time to read it. I've grown a lot as an author since its inception (1.5 years and 100k+ words later), and my characters have grown as well. For those of you who insist upon reading anyway, I like to recommend a song to go along with the chapter, like a wine with a meal - optional, but it does help set the mood. I also tend to write snippets of haiku – you'll recognize them at the beginning or ending of sections of a chapter, entirely in italics. The song to accompany this chapter is "Ascolta" by Ludovico Einaudi.

Her eyes opened slowly, her spirit not yet returned from her dreams; she stared blankly at the faintly nodding faces of the morning glories peeking through her window, looking but not yet seeing. The first rays of sunlight had just barely begun to creep along the indigo-brush sky, the stars still holding council above the trees and soft strips of clouds moving languidly between the earth and the heavens. The nocturnal had gone to sleep, the birds not yet awake, this a rare moment of utter stillness… She gazed into the throats of the golden flowers, something about their rich, tawny color drawing her in, visible even in the low light.

She lifted her hand from the silken sheets entangling it and pressed her hand against a faint tickle on her cheek. It came away wet.

I was… I was sinking. I was trapped, and I sank, and… I left something important. No, someone. Someone important.

Lixue closed her eyes and tried to remember her dreams, their vivid colors already beginning to flee from the waking world, details blurring and fading, water slipping between her fingers onto the thirsty ground. As soon as she recalled one moment, another would evaporate, leaving only a damp spot on the dirt as evidence that it had ever even been. I can't forget, please don't let me forget, she pleaded weakly.

It's a song I only want to sing with you. She held fast to those words, fiercely refusing to let them go. Anything, anything but what they meant, the tickling of a familiar tune she couldn't quite recall and the sense of safety and affection, something warm and soft curled gently about her heart. It's a song I only want to sing with you.

Sunlight began to drip across the smooth stone floor of her room, the light slowly burning away everything but the gold of the morning glories in her window and those ten words. Even then, the flowers began to curl together in fear of the true day, the world outside shaking itself awake; it cared not for her anguish and moved along as it did every day, dragging her along with it.

She closed her eyes and allowed a long, shaky breath to leave her body, clenching the bedclothes in her fingers. These scents around her reassured her that this was her room, she'd lived here since infancy, but something inside of her whispered no. Layered under these memories of this room was something else; she concentrated, focusing the overlapping images and rewarded with the faintest touch of smoke on her tongue, immediately scared away by the soft knocking on her door.

"Lady Xing, I've brought you some fresh clothing," a soft, cautious voice drifted through the wood. "May I come in?"

"…You may." Her voice was strained, and it hurt to talk, as though something had scrubbed the inside of her throat with pumice. She swallowed, hard, and the feeling passed.

The door creaked open, and the bent form of an elderly servant shuffled through, a clean hanfu carefully draped along her arm. She laid it down with infinite care on the chest at the foot of the tigress' bed, smoothing it out with her knobby fingers. She bowed to Lixue, who had sat up in her bed, uncaring that she was only partially dressed, the blankets pooling around her bare waist and her face carefully expressionless.

"What is your name?" Lixue did not mean for it to come out as a demand, but she did not retract it, curious and cautious together. "You seem familiar."

"Forgotten me since yesterday, my young lady?" the human gave a half-bark of laughter. "I don't expect you to remember my name, just your manners, and that's all that's between us. I do the laundry, I make your bed, and collect my wages at the end of the month. You needn't concern yourself with my name." She bowed, a shallow but respectful bow, and excused herself from the room.

Lixue watched her retreating back and stared at the door long after it had softly shut.

"Yesterday...?" That couldn't be right. But… she couldn't remember where she had been yesterday, so it might as well have been true.

She swung her bare legs over the edge of the bed and stood. And sat back down. And stood again.

The floor's too close.

It was a ridiculous explanation, she knew, but… it was. She padded to her chest, taking a moment to touch the cool cloth of the hanfu, running the pale sage silk between her fingers, the pattern of autumn grass in that same beguiling hue of burning gold. She snorted and swung the chest open, throwing the carefully laid out hanfu haphazardly onto the bed, clawing through its contents for her mirror. She wiped it off with a corner of the sheet, the polished silver tray plain and functional in design, before aiming at her face.

She was scowling. She focused on relaxing her face, gently poking and prodding her features with her claws as though she might deform them, clay under the potter's hand. It was almost unfamiliar, the way her cheekbones softened near her eyes, the dark slashes of her eyebrows, but it was hers just the same and she didn't know why she should expect anything different. She rubbed at her mark with her thumb, wondering if it would come off.

It didn't.

Dragging a comb through the snarls of her hair, she sat on her bed and contemplated the strangeness of waking up. Then the strangeness of the strangeness – wasn't it the most natural thing in the world to wake up in one's own bed? She thought herself in circles, touching the bare skin of her arms, her breasts, feeling like maybe they were missing a few scars but unable to pinpoint exactly where, a million unnamable things prodding her senses and jeering at her utter cluelessness.

She twisted her hair around a bamboo ornament, plain but for a simple design in silver filigree, and washed her face in the shallow basin of water. Slipping the hanfu over her shoulders with a sigh, she began to tuck her fingers between the belt and her hip, furrowing her brow when nothing was there. Should there have been?

This is infuriating. There's nothing wrong, but everything's wrong, and I don't know why and I can't remember shit.

She shut her eyes, rubbing the back of her hands against her lids. Getting angry wouldn't do anything.

Her ears perked – somewhere in the castle, a few floors down from her tower, a man's voice singing indistinctly in a warbling tenor and badly off-key. Her heart jumped in her throat at the sound, tugged by its heartstrings out of its rightful place in her breast, a shudder clenching her jaw and arcing from her ears to the back of her neck. She knew that voice.

Forgoing any idea of footwear, she gingerly stepped out of her quarters onto the smooth stone of the landing, not bothering to look out of the window in her haste to chase after the song, or rather the man she knew to be singing it. She stepped around a maiden in servants' clothing on the stairs, attempting to temper her eagerness with restraint and having very little success. The floor's apparent closeness gave her a few stubbed toes, a misjudgment on where to place her feet, but nothing that did not fade away in moments. She followed the melody down three more flights of stairs to the main tower, then up one once she was within. The paintings and draperies were familiar to her when she passed them, but only in her periphery. If she stopped and truly studied them, their familiarity would fade; if she tried to remember where they had come from, they began to seem foreign, so she tried not to look at them too hard and simply let them be part of the scenery.

She approached a wide set of doors, guarded by two feline hanyou – brothers, it looked like – who opened them without word. She studied their armor as she passed between them. Of decent make, but poor materials, and they beg for a good cleaning. The entire castle's interior seemed to be like that, it seemed – something subpar that desperately wanted to be something extraordinary but wasn't fooling anybody, no matter how much care was put into the construction of its walls. It almost seemed a waste, like putting a warhorse into a harness to pull the undertaker's wagon.

Lixue halted just inside of the door, not daring to believe her eyes. The room opened before her, a grand view of the valley on the other side of the windows, iron supports artfully twisted into the stone and a table running along its length, fruits and cold meats occupying its center, but the room was not what she saw. It was the silhouette of the man standing against the bold light of morning, leaning against the stone and one hand on his hip while he took in the view, that held her fast.

She had been so sure she would have never see him again.

"Papa," she breathed, the word soft on her tongue and her throat suddenly a noose pulled taut.

He turned, an easy smile on his lips as he looked at her. "Good morning."

A hotness pinched her eyes and her lip began to tremble, her father's smile quickly turning to a look of confusion and dismay. "Lixue? What's wrong?"

"Papa!" She ran to him, throwing herself in his arms and unable to stop trembling as she buried her face in the man's chest. "It's you, it's really you," she murmured, over and over. He held her, obviously confused, and pet her head softly as he waited for his daughter's hysteria to pass.

"Of course it's me," he half-chuckled. "It's very rare for me to be someone else. What's… gotten into you?" He pried her away and held her at arm's length, studying her red face.

"Y-you were dead," she stammered, composure attempting to reassert itself over her features. "I missed you so much…"

He furrowed his brows at her, and spoke in as soothing a tone as he was able. "I'm sure it was just a very vivid nightmare, cub."

She nodded. Doubt poked at her, but her father stood before her. "I was there. I saw you die, papa," she touched his face, his unshaven chin prickly with stubble. "I tore out the traitor's heart and ate the still-beating thing, then burned his holdings to the ground in recompense." Wait, how do I remember that? Her face twisted up in confusion.

He laughed darkly. "You're so bloodthirsty, my zhanshi. I don't know where you got it, either." He guided her to a cushion. "Sit down and eat, it'll help take your mind off your dream."

Lixue did as she was told, staring blankly at her bowl as her mind worked. So much didn't make sense. Was it really just a dream? She'd had realistic dreams before, but they always had something off about them, and never did they hang over her head like this one, leaning over her shoulder and whispering wrong, wrong at every word, every stone, every face.

Her father chattered to her as he dined, and she tried to focus on what he was saying.

"—doesn't think I know the price for silk, and gave the contract to that milk-brained lizard on the coast. I swear, sometimes he doesn't know his head from his ass if it weren't for the smell." He reached for a tiny pearl of an orange, popping the whole thing in his mouth and crushing it in his fangs, chuckling at his own humor.

"Contract?" she blankly echoed. "Since when do you do contracts?"

"Eh?" he eyed her. "Contracts are what keep the oil burning around here. Can't rely on chance with most of our goods. Try some of the pork, it's wonderful."

She mechanically picked up a slice of the cold meat with her claws, putting it in her mouth and chewing as she thought. He was right, it was good.

"…Goods?"

"What's wrong, girl? You're acting moon-addled. Yes, goods. I trade them… then get money or other goods… then trade those and turn a profit." He shook his head at her, his tiny ponytail of dark hair swishing back and forth.

"You're no merchant." She delivered this information matter-of-factly. "You're a mediator. You go to castles and forts to be a neutral third party, oversee negotiations and keep the peace. You're very good at it, and more than a little bloodshed was spared because of you." She stared at her father's thoughtful gaze. "Simply handling and selling goods is beneath your abilities."

"You've always been clever, Lixue, but never have you spoken so beyond your years as that." He leaned back, curling his fingers together. "There was a time I was interested in doing just what you described. I was traveling in the north with your mother and heard of some impending nastiness between a few of the lords there. I wanted to help, but every time I'd try, things would just kind of… fall through. I took it as a sign from the gods that it wasn't for me, and took up the mercantile business." He looked at the ceiling with a sigh. "You're right, though. I'm not very good at it."

"Perhaps you should try mediation again," she suggested. "It is better, I think, to be late than never show up at all, and there's always a need for a peaceful ear."

"Maybe." He studied her more closely. "When did you get so mature? It's like you aged overnight."

"Did I?" she half-smiled. "What age am I supposed to be then?"

"Are you trying to trick me? I know when your birthday is, and you aren't fooling me into two birthdays again."

"No, papa."

"Hmm. I'll humor you. You're two hundred and twenty-nine years old, as of three months ago. See? I remember." Xing Chao smiled triumphantly.

"I'm – what? No, that's not right."

"It is. I wrote it down the year before last and keep a tally. I learned."

"No, I'm four hundred and… something… not 229."

"Was that part of your dream?" He leaned forward, putting his chin in his hands. "If I weren't so sure that this is reality, I'd almost think you lived another life in your dreams last night."

She looked down at her hands, her hanfu clutched between her fingers on her lap. She let it go, smoothed the silk. Something inside of her was twisted up, tighter and tighter, holding onto something she needed to know. The harder she tried to see inside, the harder it would curl against her intrusion. Could it be that she had lived another life? She knew that she wasn't so young as two hundred. But… it would explain her strange-looking face, and the closeness of the floor. If her body was younger, she'd be shorter, her features not yet free of the roundness of youth.

"Is it spring or fall?"

"Spring." He didn't question her, just answered.

229. Spring. Father is alive, and a merchant. These things made no sense. Was this reality? Or another dream?

"Well," her father's voice broke into her thoughts. "Regardless of what did or didn't happen last night, your schedule remains the same. Kuno will be here this afternoon for a social visit, and I expect you to behave yourself this time. I mean it."

"Who's Kuno?" her head snapped up. Something in her father's tone…

"Gods, you don't even remember that? I'm going to have to spend all day re-teaching you everything if you can't even remember your betrothed." Exasperation. It was exasperation in his tone.

"My what?" She stood up immediately.

"Your future husband. I know you don't like it, but give it time."

"Do I get along with him, at least?" Her lip curled, a sour taste on her tongue. "I don't want him."

He looked at her seriously. "We've spoken about this, at great length I might add. Whether or not you like him is almost irrelevant at this point; you refused or mauled every other suitor before him and you're fast approaching the time when you'll stop even having them. He's been gracious enough to help us keep the castle, and we're not in the position to refuse his help."

She glared at her father with as much ice as she could muster. "I won't be bartered away. I am not an object to be sold or kept."

"I know it, love," he turned from her gaze. "I've tried every other thing I can think of to keep this from happening, but… you know it's the only way we have left."

She didn't respond, clenching and unclenching her fists, her jaw, trying to work her brain around the situation. "Sell the castle."

"I'm not selling our home. It's been in our family for generations. It's bad enough I've had to sell practically everything in it."

"A castle is too much for two people. We don't need to be living outside of our means."

He slammed his hand on the table and she jumped, the dishes clattering from the impact. "Enough!" He closed his eyes, then withdrew his hand from the wood. "You are precious to me, daughter, but you will remember that while you live under my protection, you will obey. I've been lenient with you, I love you, but I can't have your pride putting us in jeopardy." He stood then, and she was reminded again how small she was. "These things cannot be broken or bartered with. We all have to do things we don't want to in order to survive."

She cast her gaze on the walls, then, the sun's glare coming in earnest and the hall carefully clear of servants. She concentrated on the stone, that mysterious hint of smoke on her tongue reappearing. This place burned to the ground. I wasn't here when it happened. I was… running? Why would I run from anything?

"Are you listening, Lixue?"

"No, I wasn't."

A sigh. "I said, go take a bath. You smell like you've been rolling flowers in the dirt."

"That's an odd thing to smell like. Maybe I'll roll some more. See if this Kuno wants me then." She stalked away, her meal mostly uneaten on her plate.

He frowned again. He murmured to himself as she left. "It's like she's someone entirely different." It hurt him to raise his voice to her, but if he had to be honest with himself, he felt a little unsettled around her now – something about her had changed, something deep and immutable. If she decided to truly challenge him, the only possible result of even a thousand different scenarios would end in her victory. She smelled different, not simply her dark green oleander and burnt vanilla, but an overlying hue of golden tones that he could not place.

It was only later, when he was walking through the under-tended garden, that he caught the foreign scent again. He knelt closer, wondering at its strange significance, and studying the serene way that the lotus blossom rested in his palm.

Unfamiliar – your breath promises of spring – yet familiar.