On the Dragon Boat Festival, Fahai's opportunity came.

"Give her realgar wine," he told Xu Xian. "It will reveal her true form."

At the festival, someone gave Bai Suzhen the wine. She tried to refuse.

"Please," the host said. "It is tradition."

She drank. And in the moments that followed, Xu Xian saw the truth — a white snake coiled in the bed where his wife had been — and fainted dead from terror.

Bai Suzhen, newly revealed, was desperate. She fled to the underworld itself, where she begged the King of Hell for her husband's soul.

"I will give you anything," she said. "My cultivation. My centuries. My life."

The King of Hell, who was not unkind, looked at this creature who was half-demon and half-something-he-could-not-name. "You already have," he said.

And he gave her back Xu Xian's soul.

When Xu Xian woke, his wife was beside him, ordinary and beautiful. She said nothing about what had happened. He said nothing about what he had seen.

But something had shifted between them. A door had opened that could not be closed.

Some truths, once seen, cannot be unseen. Some love, once tested, cannot be untested. And some marriages survive by mutual agreement to never speak of the white snake in the room.