Jade Fire Gold(111)
The girl’s golden-brown eyes gleam. “Is that all she has to say? Is she certain of the new emperor’s identity?”
The messenger nods once. The girl dismisses him. He pivots on his heel and makes his way down the slopes.
Alone again, she glances back up at the dark spot in the sky. Her whistle rings loud and piercing, and the spot grows bigger. As it nears, its feathers glint in the sun. The girl raises her right arm, steadies it. A large golden eagle swoops down and lands, talons gripping the leather sheath around her forearm.
“How are the thermal winds today, Gerel, my love?” she says to the bird, stroking its downy feathers. It chirps, head quirking this way and that. The girl laughs softly. “Yes, it’s cold. But don’t worry, we’re going south.”
She smiles, crooked and mischievous, the right side of her lips lifting higher than the left, a single dimple appearing near her chin. An old memory floats in her mind.
Of a girl. Of a boy.
We will find Father’s murderer. We will take back what’s ours. We will go home.
“It’s time for me to go home. It is time for me to take back what is rightfully mine,” she murmurs, remembering the boy she once loved.
The brother who had become emperor.
Acknowledgments
Firstly, I want to thank you for sticking with this tale until the end, and for flipping to the acknowledgments section. Maybe you were curious, maybe you flipped the previous page by accident, or maybe you’re like me—for whatever reason, I stay in the theater until the end of movie credits and I always read the acknowledgments at the back of a book.
Debut books are special. Many are books of the heart. Some are penned in a rushed, fevered state, while others are written through many long years filled with anxiety and uncertainty. I wasn’t sure what story this would turn out to be when I first had the image of a girl standing in an ever-expanding desert, alone and weary. And of the boy she meets, who was equally lonely from shouldering the weight of legacy. In the end, it became a story about family, about grief, about trauma, and mostly, about hope.
Books are not created from a single person’s imagination. The book you’re holding right now would not have existed without the encouragement, support, and labor of so many people. To everyone who had a hand in transforming Jade Fire Gold from a nascent idea in my head to an actual book in a reader’s hand—thank you, thank you, thank you.
To Elana Roth Parker, thank you for seeing something special in my story and for believing in me. To the LDLA team, your support through the years has been invaluable.
To my editor extraordinaire, Alice Jerman, I’ve learned so much from you. Thank you for helping me take this story to the next level, for patiently answering all my questions, introducing me to really delicious tea, and most importantly, thank you for your kindness. It has been a privilege to have you as my editor.
To Clare Vaughn, I’m so grateful for your tireless work behind the scenes and your cheerful emails always bring a smile to my face. To Vanessa Nuttry, Nicole Moreno, Gwen Morton, Jill Freshney, Veronica Ambrose, and Megan Gendall, thank you for the beautiful interior of this book, and for catching all my typos, rogue commas, and random capitalizations or lack of. Most of all, thank you for letting me keep my em dashes.
Catherine Lee and Jenna Stempel-Lobell, you literally designed the cover of my dreams! To Zheng Wei Gu (GUWEIZ), thank you for bringing that vision to life with your immense talent.
To marketing mavens Lisa Calcasola, Audrey Diestelkamp, Kadeen Griffiths, and Emily Zhu, to publicity powerhouse Lena Reilly and the rest of the publicity team, and of course, to the wonderfully talented Epic Reads crew, thank you for your creativity and enthusiasm. To Andrea Pappenheimer and the entire sales team, and to Patty Rosati and the School and Library team, thank you for all the work you’ve put into getting my book out there.
A special shout-out to Hannah VanVels. It was you who gave this book a chance to come alive. To Laura Rennert and the team at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, thank you for picking up the reins and guiding me forward.
To everyone at Hodder & Stoughton, I couldn’t ask for a better team in the UK and beyond. To editorial wizard Molly Powell, publicity genius Kate Keehan, marketing stars Maddy Marshall and Callie Robertson, Claudette Morris and Matthew Everett in production, and special editions logistical mastermind Sarah Clay, thank you so very much. To Aaron Munday, thank you for designing such a beautiful cover for the UK edition, and for fulfilling my secret dream of having multiple covers for my book. To Paul Kenny, Cindy Kan, Emmanuel Wong, and the Hachette UK/Asia team, thank you for all your hard work and energy.
To Daphne Tonge and the amazing team at Illumicrate, a huge thank you for supporting Jade Fire Gold from the beginning. To Anissa de Gomery and the lovely book fairies at FairyLoot, thank you for granting my wishes. And another massive thank you to Korrina and the incredible OwlCrate team!
To the generous and talented authors who took the time to read and blurb my book: Joan He, Elizabeth Lim, Hafsah Faizal, Chloe Gong, Roseanne A. Brown, and Swati Teerdhala.
Thank you to the wonderful book community. To booksellers and librarians, thank you for doing what you do best. To readers, book bloggers, bookstagrammers, booktokkers, including Sherna @bookworm.swiftie, Abi @boohoo.books, Cossette @cossettereads, Rogier @roro_suri, Deidre @inabookdaze, CW and Skye from The Quiet Pond, Shealea @shutupshealea, Fadwa @wordwoonders, Jo @thebookrising and so many more . . . thank you for your support. I don’t know your last names or even your real first names, but I do recognize your Instagram handles and your Twitter avatars (even though you keep changing them lol). Every interaction brings such joy, and I’m so honored to have you in my corner (T_T).