To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

Chapter Three

Baihu.

The White Tiger.

Clad in a crimson three-­ piece suit, red as bloodstains—­ Roman fashion—­ the man standing across the table from me resembled nothing of the sweet, blushing boy of my childhood memories. The friend, the neighbor, whose sickly mother traded cured meats and pickled cabbage for our rice in the winters. The boy who sat on rooftops with me to watch fireworks at New Year, cried into my arms when his mother grew ill and his princely father grew violent and cruel like my own father.

Of course, at twenty, Baihu was no longer a boy.

Like me, he grew up too fast.

But while I clung to my dignity, Baihu chose to abandon his three years earlier, when he ditched the robes of our heritage and severed his topknot. His hair was now short, styled back in the Roman way. Every day, he resembled more of the false Gods on the other side of the Fence, as if he couldn't wait to shed this skin, erase his past and any resemblance to us from his new, elevated position as

Prince Valentin's right hand.

In the eyes of another, he might have been handsome, beautiful: a man handmade and loved by Nüwa herself.

To me, he was nothing but a traitor. One of them.

"You're back," he said, voice gentle as a falling feather.

"This is the last time," I told him. "Meiya is going to quit. She's doing ­ really well. Soon, we won't need your charity anymore."

A half smile. "You said that last time." His tone wasn't threaten- ing or malicious. It was innocent, brows drawn as if in genuine concern.

The fluttering in my chest turned into a hard weight. Opian was a toxin, and addicts who tried to quit rarely lived through the pain, the way one's body deteriorated during the withdrawal period.

The odds were not in my sister's favor. And they never will be.

Nevertheless, I believed in her. Meiya was strong and brave. She would survive her addiction.

She had to.

Opian had already taken my father. I refused to let it take my sister, too.

But my faith in her didn't make coming to the Lotus Tower, time after time, any easier.

To say Er-­ Lang Baihu was a villain would be a stretch. To say he was innocent was a lie. He existed somewhere in between: the gray between black and white.

Once upon a time, before his mother smoked her life away to ease the pain of her ailing body and he sold his loyalty to the Romans for fortune and power, Baihu was my friend. Someone I had once admired. Someone who was noble, kind, loyal.

Not anymore.

"Maybe opian isn't as bad as you think it is," he said, voice cold as unworn silk. "Many praise opian for its ethereal benefits, you know. It also enhances Xianling powers, makes your magic stronger. Word has it the late Emperor himself was a fan."

Frustration was dark crimson. It tasted of ash when I tried to swallow, scorched my throat before clotting my lungs. "Yes, so much of a fan that he sacrificed his only daughter to Rome as collateral when they threatened to halve our opian supply," I retorted, and quickly regretted it.

Beautiful and kind, Princess Helei was the late Emperor's 掌上明珠, the pearl atop his hand, the apple of his eye. The person he'd treasured the most in the world. But now she was just insurance, a hostage kept behind their towering fence, to be killed the moment Er-­ Lang dared to defy Rome's rule.