Chapter 2
Rui
Present day
“What is your name?” asks the young man with the silvery-white hair.
Rui, she thinks. But the name that leaves her lips is a different one. “Lei Ying.”
Rui shot up, suddenly awake.
“Zizi?” she whispered, reaching out. But the sheets on the other side of the bed were cold.
He wasn’t here with her. He wasn’t here anymore.
She blinked, taking in her surroundings. Neutral-colored walls, a single window, bland cabinetry, clothes from her opened
suitcase strewn across the floor . . . She was back in her dorm room at Xingshan Academy. Back in reality.
She stretched her stiff limbs and dragged herself to the bathroom. The cold water was refreshing against her cheeks, but it
failed to wash away the remnants of her dream. She couldn’t believe she’d dreamed of Four, of all things. A Four her subconscious had made up. Dream Four shared the same bladelike features as Zizi, and they had a similar air about them,
as if one were merely an alternate version of the other at a different point in time.
The dream felt so real. The snow . . . the black pine forest . . . fighting the Revenant . . . a voice that sounded like her
own, speaking the words that Zizi had said to her the night they met, when he’d saved her from bleeding out on the street.
Don’t be afraid. . . . I’m here.
What was the name she had given at the end?
“Lei Ying,” she whispered.
Why would she have said it instead of her own? She suddenly wondered what had happened to Four and Lei Ying after their first meeting.
“Why do you care? It’s only a dream,” Rui told her reflection sternly as she brushed her teeth.
Her pale, drawn face stared back, dark circles bruising under her eyes. Insomnia plagued her, and whenever she did sleep,
it was filled with dreams and nightmares. Was she having them because of what Four did to her? She wasn’t a vessel for his
underworld power anymore, but she wondered if it had left a lasting effect on her body.
Rui wished desperately that she knew someone who would answer her questions. But the only person who could was gone.
Forever.
I’ll never forget you.
His parting words had been a curse; Rui could not stop thinking about him.
She glanced at the red string around her wrist. It reminded her of the red line forming around Four’s forearm in her dream.
What an odd parallel her silly, messed-up brain had conjured. Her string had appeared after she’d spent the night with Zizi in this exact same dorm room. It was inseverable, as if a spell
had been cast on it.
It had become a habit of hers to tug on it several times throughout the day, each time a little more urgently than before.
Rui wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to get rid of it or if she was making sure the thread was still there, as though
it was proof that he had been real.
Ten cackled in her head. Whatever you think this boy feels for you, it is a lie. You were merely a host, a convenient coincidence.
Her heart ached. Did Zizi the mortal boy truly exist, or was everything a lie? Sometimes she thought she might hate him. He’d
waltzed into her life, made himself seen and known, until she was so used to his presence that, without him, everything lost
its color. She hated that he had saved her—before and again. But deep down inside . . .
Rui shook her head, severing the thought and its emotion at the jugular.
What was the point of replaying the things that had gone down in the tunnels at Outram that day?
There was no closure, and she didn’t dare hope for any.
She had failed in all the important ways.
Feng, the Hybrid Revenant who had murdered her mother, had been found.
But it was Ash Song, her mentor, who’d killed him.
Her revenge felt half empty. And it hurt more because after everything, the boy she’d once had a connection with was no longer speaking to her, and the other boy . . . well . . .
She spat out her toothpaste. At least the realms were safe now. With all ten Kings together in the underworld, the Nothing
should have stopped decimating the Courts, and fewer Revenants would be formed in the human world.