Chapter 8 Àn’yīng #2
Tears roll down my face. I take his palm and press it to my cheek, knowing that these hands wrote those careful, golden words that helped me live, day by agonizing day, through all of nine years.
“àn’yīng?” He opens his eyes. They reflect the light of Meadowsweet’s glow, of my talisman’s spirit energy working to heal his impossible wound. His fingers cup my cheek, his thumb tracing a caress across my skin. Wiping away my tears. “àn’yīng, don’t cry. Don’t cry for me.”
I can’t move on from Meadowsweet’s memories. All these years, I’ve had his comfort in my solitude, his encouragement in my grief. Yet when it came down to it, there was no one by his side to take away his tears.
I know instinctively what to do as I lean forward, pressing my fingers to my heart, where my life energies thrum with the pulse of my blood. I guide them up as I lean down, place my palm to his cheek, and kiss him.
He inhales as I exhale, my life energy streaming into him with my breath.
Hào’yáng’s eyes fall shut, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks.
I exhale again, following the rhythm of his breaths as they grow steadier.
By contrast, my heartbeat slows as my life energy continues to drain from me into him.
“àn’yīng.” His voice sounds distant to my ears even as he folds me into his arms. I lean into him, too tired to hold myself up any longer, yet all I’m aware of is my own overwhelming relief as I listen to the song of his heart.
“Stay,” I whisper. “Please, stay with me.” For half my life, Hào’yáng has been the steady presence by my side, a warmth like sunlight. And now, finally, possibly too late, a realization spills from my lips, falling like teardrops: “I can’t bear the thought of a world without you, Hào’yáng.”
His eyes shine, the corners softening until all his masks fall away. He’s smiling at me as he parts his lips to speak.
The hellbeast comes out of nowhere. I feel only a rush of cold wind, sense a darkness denser than night pressing at my back, and then—
Impact.
My head’s ringing. The world is spinning, a kaleidoscope of stars and clouds and the deep, deep sea beneath. Dimly, I hear Meadowsweet’s scream, feel Hào’yáng’s hands slipping through my fingers…
“No,” I gasp, reaching for him as I orient myself again. I’m not falling—I’m rising, there’s pressure around my midriff.
When I look down, I realize why.
A pair of giant claws hold me, tightly enough that I can’t move but not enough to hurt me. A shadow envelops me; from above comes the beat of wings.
Qióng’qí.
Beneath us, hanging between me and the deadly drop to the sea, is Hào’yáng. He grips my fingers with one hand, his other reaching for Azure Tide at his hip. But with each wingbeat of the hellbeast, Hào’yáng’s grip slips farther and farther down.
I draw my lotus sword and slash at Qióng’qí’s talons.
The first swing falls on empty air.
The second is when it happens: As the blade arcs, it slows, and the surface of the blade brightens.
I catch my reflection on the ancient metal the sword is forged from, catch the way my eyes widen in horror as, with a streak of light, the blade shatters into a million glittering pieces.
For a heartbeat, they linger in the air, fractals in a kaleidoscope of motion and soft light.
Then, they fall. Pieces drift onto Hào’yáng’s and my skin so that, for a few heartbeats, the two of us are aglow in the remnants of the sword.
Light threads through Hào’yáng wrists, his fingers, his cheeks, the curves of his throat, dissolving into his veins.
When he looks up at me, his eyes shine with the color that once ran through the lotus sword.
àn’yīng, he mouths, and I realize that I, too, am illuminated in the sword’s light.
But the light is dimming. Night rushes in, the wingbeats of the great hellbeast carrying me higher in its claws as Hào’yáng continues to slip down.
I seize Hào’yáng’s arm with my other hand. My fingers are stiff with cold, and his wrist guard cuts into my palm with his weight—but I can’t let go, I can’t.
Hào’yáng gazes up at me. His face is serene.
àn’yīng. His mouth moves in the shape of my name, and I hear his voice as though he speaks in my ears, as though I am once again eleven years old and lost and alone, drowning in the depths of a frozen pond. Yet this time, the words that come are different.
àn’yīng, he says. Let me go.
“No.” His wrist slides farther down my grasp, the metal of his lamellar armor tearing my flesh. My blood drips on his armor. “No, Hào’yáng, you promised me—”
Even as I speak, I catch the growing shadow behind him. I lift my gaze to find two pinpricks of hellfire red burning through the night, the massive shape eclipsing half the sky.
As Táo’wù slams into us, Hào’yáng’s hand jerks in mine. I don’t comprehend the blood trickling down his chin, nor the dark patch spreading across his armor, until I see the claw protruding from his midriff like a curved sword.
A scream tears through the night as a silver streak rams into the hellbeast: She of the Moon-Frosted Sea, scales flashing and talons out. Táo’wù’s great claw rips from Hào’yáng’s chest as it turns to fight the dragonhorse, blood arcing like crimson beads through the night.
Together, dragon and hellbeast hurl down through the night into the dark.
But the damage is done.
Hào’yáng’s lashes flutter. He lets out a sigh that might have echoed through the realms. His grip loosens in mine even as I dig my nails into his wrist, then his palm, then the tips of his fingers—
And he falls.
Through the night, illuminated by the cold light of stars.
I’m left with only the wind between my fingers, screaming his name until he’s swallowed by the sea of clouds, screaming until my throat is hoarse and my chest is on fire and my heart feels as though it has torn from my rib cage and plummeted into the deep, cold sea with him.