ANMEI

The door of living bark sighed as Liu Anmei stepped through, and the temperature rose as if the room itself regarded her and decided to be generous.

She whistled under her breath. “Oh, I like this one.”

The chamber was a hall of fire.

Pillars of flame rose like dancers, twisting into arabesques and spilling sparks the way silk spills light. Lamps hung from chains that should have melted and did not. The floor was polished stone veined with ember-light, warm under her bare feet in a way that edged toward indulgence. Somewhere overhead, a choir sang on a single note, and the note shifted in color—scarlet, gold, carmine—until she could almost taste it.

Flame-trails braided themselves across the high vault. Figures formed inside the heat—shadows with eyes and smiles, stepping in and out of the columns as if slipping between curtains.

“Welcome,” one of them said. A woman at first—then a man—then neither, shifting between as easily as fire shifts shape. Their eyes were the bright, flattering kind. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Obviously,” Anmei said, hands on hips. “I’m worth waiting for.”

The figure laughed, delighted. Around it, others tittered and sighed, the sound as warm as the rest of the room.

“It can be like this,” the first voice—voices—promised. “For you. Always. No more scowls from sword-girls. No more tsk-tsk from serious princesses. You can experience it all, the, laughter. the love....the heat. People who understand.”

“I understand,” another murmured, stepping from a flame-pillar with cheekbones that would look good under moonlight. “How hard you fight for meaning in a world that punishes joy.”

“I understand,” said a third, tall and lazy-eyed, the kind that ruins reputations on accident and considers it charity. “How your body wants to move when everyone else wants to plan.”

Hands reached wwith offerings of all kinds; silver cups, ribbons, roses that smoked slightly at the edges. The air smelled like roasted fruit and cinnamon and something she could not name that made her mouth water.

Anmei grinned and took a cup. “To being understood.”

The drink slid down like flame and then broke into sweetness—mango and something heady. She took another sip, and the room purred. It felt good to be clapped for simply entering a space.

“Tell me what I win,” she said, flippant.

“Anything,” they said together. “You can be flame that takes. Flame that draws eyes. Flame that gets anything and everything.”

“Everything?” she asked.

“Everything,” they promised.

She let the word rest on her tongue, rolling it around like candy, enjoying the noise it made in her head. Everything.

Then she noticed the shadows.

They were far back at the edge of the hall—vivisected silhouettes pressed thin by the brightness of the flame. Six of them. They moved when she moved, and they moved slower the more she laughed. They formed and formless, familiar but foreign. They were important. She knew immeidately.

She tilted her head. “What are those?”

“Background,” said the first figure. "Nothing of which you should be concerned.”

Anmei took another sip and peered. The shadows were women and reminded her of her companions. The likeness became more steady as she thought that. The first one was tall and still. Vivian, she assumed. There was one standing with shoulders squared as if presenting an argument she had already won, which had to be Sophie. Marissa was the one with a fan who had a cock to the hip that was coy and sensual, the twins held hands and cocked their heads with mouths curved. The last looked bored but faded into darkness—Elizabeth Cleary. Anmei took one step toward them, and the temperature dipped.

“Careful,” the lazy-eyed one warned, smile still perfect. “Too far that way and you’ll leave the light.”

“Hmm,” she said to no one in particular. She liked the light. She liked how it made her skin look, as though someone had painted her with oil and adoration. She liked how in the light the air tasted like markets and festivals and new lip paint.

“Dance?” said a hand of someone she didn’t recognize—or maybe she did and just didn’t care. He offered a hand, the intent obvious. They were to dance.

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She set the cup on a column and jumped.

Platforms bloomed from the floor—glass and flame and some other material that had the give of wood and the heat of stone. The dance was not a dance exactly; it was what her body did in moments of reflection and decision. The room watched, and it felt good: appreciative, not greedy. Applause came in waves; men and women and those between and neither drew in closer, making a circle.

The closer they came, the farther away the shadows seemed.

“You can stay,” said the first voice, an ache in the mouth of it like hunger delayed. “We’ll make a stage for you. We’ll make every night a festival.”

“Will you?” she said, and spun.

The spin carried her across to the edge of the hall where the shadows kept step, but now they were very thin. Her heart did something odd in her throat.

“They don’t need me,” she said aloud, testing it against the thrumming choir. “They have swords and crowns and ledgers.”

“Exactly,” said the lazy-eyed one, looping her hand with his. “Your fire is for you.”

“Is it?” she asked the ceiling.

The ceiling loved her. Its answer came in new platforms and lavish light. She was good at this—jumping without looking for the next landing until she was already on it. She laughed, startled and sincere, as the ground moved to catch her.

At the far edge of the hall, where the warmth thinned and shadows sharpened, Vivian’s silhouette made the smallest motion—a reach toward something unknown, a voice of caution in a life and circumstance that heeded very little. Anmei pretended not to see it, because if she saw it, she would have to look at the others too. And if she looked at the others, she would remember the way Elizabeth’s mouth went thin when she lied and the way the twins’ fingers found each other under tables, and she would not like the person she would be if she did not answer.

“She wants you,” said a new figure, stepping through the fire. “He does too.”

The air leaned.

This one had eyes like corners you want to sit in and hair you could pull too hard. He held himself the way certain men do when they know a body can be used as a suggestion. He did not look like Ethan—not really—except in the part that mattered: his attention came on rails.

“Champion’s companion,” the new one promised. “Torch at his side. Flame he comes home to. The one who warms the part of him no one else even knows is cold.”

Her mouth went dry in a way that had nothing to do with thirst.

The offer was precise, and that made it suspicious. Her smoke-sweet joy hit something flinty and struck a spark of clarity.

“What does it cost?” she asked, suddenly too careful to grin.

The choir missed a note. One cup on a nearby ledge cracked and then sealed again as if embarrassed.

“Cost?”

“Everything costs,” Anmei said. “That’s how you know it’s real.”

The first figure sighed. “Only the boring things,” it admitted. “ You will lose the quiet nights with unglamorous people. Sitting on steps with no one to clap for you. Choosing one person and being chosen when no one is looking. Laughter when the audience is forced and the light is bad. Standing next to someone when the only thing of value in sight is their smile. Being a different kind of fire—the sustaining sort of flame.”

The list felt like her mother’s kitchen and the way the city smells at dawn.

The lazy-eyed man rolled his shoulder. “But think what you get,” he purred. “To be seen all the time.”

Anmei looked at him. “I am seen all the time,” she said. “It is… not as good as you think.”

He blinked. She stood very still and looked at the six shadows at the edge until her eyes stung. Vivian’s silhouette breathed. Sophie’s held tilt turned into the suggestion of a bow. The twins’ hands found each other. Elizabeth’s mouth softened the smallest degree.

“Jump,” the lazy-eyed one coaxed. “We’ll catch you.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

She took one step back toward the shadows. The temperature dropped. The salt in the air grew teeth.

“Stay,” the first figure urged, not quite as warm now. “This is what you were made for.”

Anmei grinned, bright as a match struck in a dark theater. “No,” she said lightly. “This is what I was made from. Not for.”

She lifted her hands, and the room—being the polite kind of trap—paused to watch.

“I’ll make a trade,” she said. “My flame for their warmth. My stage for their table. My applause for…” She glanced up, letting the word choose itself. “For presence.”

The pillars leaned in. “Define your terms.”

“I don’t leave the light,” she said. “I take it with me.”

She turned away from the pretty man with the corner eyes. She turned her back on the platforms that knew her feet. She lifted one hand toward the edge of the hall, toward the six shadows, and snapped her fingers.

The sound cut the choir. The heat gathered in a rope from the ceiling—thin, then thicker, then braided—and hung above her like a line on a stage. She grabbed it, tugged. It burned, then cooled, then burned again, and somewhere in the tug-of-war she began to laugh for real, because this was what she was made for: making difficult things look easy and easy things look difficult until people wanted to try the difficult ones just to prove her wrong.

She walked backward, pulling the line of heat with her, dragging it toward the shadows. They came nearer in half-steps, like animals wary of a fire they secretly liked.

“Is this allowed?” she asked the air, not looking up.

“Only if you can do it,” the room said, honest for the first time.

“Good answer,” she said, and pulled.

The rope of heat unspooled into a banner—bright, molten fabric made of flame. She threw it. It arced, blazing, and the shadows caught it. Vivian’s silhouette steadied; Sophie’s flared; Marissa’s fan finally, blessedly, closed and stayed closed. The twins lifted their corners together. Elizabeth held her section like a dare.

The platforms in the center hissed. The pretty people at the edges looked annoyed for the first time. The lazy-eyed man pouted.

“You could have had it all,” he said.

“Oh, I intend to. But on my terms,” she said cheerfully, and blew him a kiss.

The room shivered, offended and impressed. The pillars lifted their heads like snakes catching scent. The choir found its note, now warmer, and the heat settled into her bones like a promise that remembered her even when she forgot herself.

A door appeared in the flame like the throat of a forge.

Anmei looked at it, then at the banner in the shadows, then at the door again.

“Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone,” she called.

Anmei stepped through.