Chapter 22 Àn’yīng #2
Blood pours out of him, thick and red, and into the cuplike petals of the flower. When it’s full to the brim, it detaches from Yù’chén’s chest and drifts into the air.
Feeling is returning to my limbs: the cold against my soaked dress, the trembling of Yù’chén’s fingers as he fights to hold on to enough strength to hold me. I wriggle a toe, then test a finger, shift a hand.
Yù’chén’s knees hit the floor. His shoulders cushion me as he collapses, bringing us both to the ground. His eyes, wide and unfocused, redden; veins across his face and hands darken as his magic stirs to heal him.
I act then.
I twist from his grasp, and Fleet and Poison are in my hands with a flick of my wrists.
I know I have only seconds before my window of opportunity closes.
Within the pái’fāng, just steps away from me, the gateway to the mortal realm flickers; beyond the halls of its Imperial Palace are the open skies and, even farther, the vast sea.
The sea that carries Hào’yáng in its depths, life slowly ebbing away from him with every second I delay.
Yù’chén’s gaze follows mine, to the gateway and the halls of the Kingdom of Rivers’ Imperial Palace. Red drips down the corners of his mouth as he reaches for me, his fingers clasping over my wrist. “àn’yīng?” Confusion creases his brows as he scans my face.
He will find out, if he offers his blood to the Long River later, that Hào’yáng is still alive; that the land will reject him.
And he will come to understand the choice I am making in this moment: to take a last chance to restore my realm to its sunlit days, free of the grasp of the Kingdom of Night.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“àn’yīng.” His voice, his eyes, every part of him breaks when he reads my intentions. Still, he holds on to me. “Stay.”
My own heart is tearing. I knew this to be one of the consequences of opening myself to him again, of letting him into the most intimate parts of my mind—this exquisite kind of pain.
Come with me, I want to say—except I could never allow that. He is the son of my realm’s greatest enemy, bound to her by an unbreakable covenant…and his blood is the reason they were able to cross the wards into my kingdom in the first place.
Now that I know Hào’yáng, the mortal heir to the Kingdom of Rivers, lives, there is only one way this can end.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeat, and then I wrench my hand from his and turn away.
I summon my spirit energies to activate the talisman on Fleet’s hilt. Instead of a spark, a golden glow lights my chest and dances from my fingers into the blade.
Air becomes fluid around me. Time slows as I leap forward, dodging Niefuzan’s magic and Xisenyin’s shield of ice. Something has changed since I emerged from the crystal spring. Spirit energies surge through my veins, and I feel invincible—like I can fly.
When I reach the gateway, I hesitate. Glance back.
Behind me, Sansiran has risen from her throne, her hands stretched toward me as though prepared to unleash her magic. The wrath in her blood-red gaze promises retribution, and I know this isn’t the last I’ll see of her.
But my attention is on Yù’chén.
He’s lying where I left him, by the spring. Black veins spiral up the cords of his neck. His fingers have turned to claws, his skin to scales—the cost for his magic to heal him.
His eyes, though, have never left me. It isn’t fury, or anger, or vengeance in his expression. It is heartbreak and a bleak, knowing exhaustion.
I’m sorry that I can’t change everything, àn’yīng. But I swear to you, I’ll do everything in my power to give you what I can of the world you wanted.
I’ll never know the extent of what he’s done for me in the shadows of his realm, but I know that within the confines of his birth in this lifetime, it is more than I can ever repay.
The gateway flickers again.
I know that if I hesitate any longer, I may not have the strength to leave.
So I turn and step through.
—
The air of my realm greets me, the smell of pines and mountain wind and impending snow drifting through the Imperial Palace’s open doors at the far end of the hallway. It’s colder here than in my village, though I don’t think I’ve been gone long enough for the turn of a new season.
And it’s dark.
I look back through the gateway into the throne room of the Kingdom of Night, bright flowers twisting around tree branches that fracture the night sky. The chamber’s obsidian pillars meld into the marble and lapis of my world, and shadows drift out through the gateway.
A silhouette steps into view: Niefuzan. Dark magic explodes from him, tendrils sharper than knives reaching for me—
I fling my hands up, pushing spirit energies through my palms as I conjure the first talisman I learned from my father.
A shield blooms from my hands, blush-colored, like the warmth of spring.
Niefuzan’s power slams against it, and I almost expect it to shatter.
Yet as his shadows refract, dissolving beneath my shield’s gentle glow, I realize that the mó’s magic, strong though it is, does not work the same way in my realm…
and that the extent of my own power has grown with the awakening of my immortal half.
I turn and run, Fleet and Striker instantly in my hands.
I feel it so strongly now, the hum of something new inside me, a strength both foreign and familiar that sings in my blood.
The hallway of the palace blurs by, yet somehow I’m aware of every pillar, every fallen silk banner and piece of rubble strewn on the ground—all the carnage and destruction that the Kingdom of Night brought upon our palace when they poured through the gateway and launched their war against my realm.
I think of Hào’yáng, barely older than me, watching the slaughter of his family. Waiting, in the aftermath, for death to claim him as mó prowled the ruins of his beloved home.
I’m coming, Hào’yáng. The doors are in sight, flung open at the end of this grand hallway. Don’t you dare leave me behind again.
I burst into open air and twilight skies.
Ahead of me stretches a long marble walkway, cracked, and pillars crumbling from the battle that took place here a decade ago.
The grand steps leading down from it are falling to ruin, but beyond that, gleaming beneath the last rays of light, is the Long River.
It roars past the palace, the purest shade of turquoise, bifurcating the Imperial City that clusters around it.
This is the realm I wish to save. The realm I won’t let fall into eternal night, into the power of the mó.
I take one last glance behind me. The gateway looms, as if a piece of our realm’s skies has been carved away. Darkness leaks out; the Kingdom of Night’s scythe moon and stars drift between clouds of the mortal realm.
My breath plumes before me as I run. It is instinct to gather spirit energies in my hands and fling them into the air. They unfurl into mist, swirling into an iridescent cloud around my feet, my legs, twining around my body. And as a wind gusts up, I am airborne. I am the wind and the clouds.
I am immortal.
The ground falls away beneath me as I fly, the mortal realm turned to a glittering stretch of abandoned cities and towns, and then to an expanse of red and gold pine forests. Beyond the horizon is where my realm ends and the Four Seas begin: the seam between the mortal realm and the dragon realm.
Make haste, daughter of immortals, for time runs out…
I travel through the night on a wisp of iridescent cloud. And at long last, when dawn tints the skies, I see it: the sapphire sea reaching all the way to the edge of the world. The rising sun paints a path of gold across the water straight to me—and somehow, I know that therein, my path awaits.
I let go of the spirit energies, my mortal body disentangling itself from the wind and the clouds.
And I fall toward the sea.
Toward Hào’yáng.
The water is cold against my skin, but I no longer feel it the way a mortal does. The light above me fades, yet…a glow emanates from within me. That same blush glow—like the breath of spring, the first hint of dawn, the bloom of a flower—pulses from my chest.
Growing stronger.
From the depths of the ocean comes a resounding glimmer, like a faint heartbeat.
I don’t know how long I’ve been traveling when I spot it: the lotus from my vision in the spring, drifting in an ocean current. As I near, its light grows brighter, reflecting in my own skin—as though its magic draws out that of its other half within me.
Its petals open at my touch.
And there, lying within, is my boy in the jade.
Just as in my vision, nearly all color has leached from him; the frost has crept over his neck, framing his face and silver hair. When I press my palm to his cheeks, his skin is ice-cold.
I place my other hand over his heart.
And…there. A whisper of a flutter.
He is dying, and I know what I must do.
I close my eyes and touch my chest, searching through the woven strands of energies as Yù’chén once taught me to do. They glimmer in my vision like ten thousand magic threads of all colors and lengths.
This time, instead of searching for my life energies, I search for those threads of pure light: pink shot through with gold, resembling strands of sunlight. I gather them between my fingers, and I pull.
The lotus’s essence wells up in my throat as I lower myself to my boy in the jade.
His lips are like ice, yet as I exhale, the lotus’s energies pour from my lips, their light dancing across his face.
As they stream out into the currents, they first bloom into points, like the petals of a lotus flower.
And then, slowly, the energies coalesce, shrinking into a gleaming pearl that glimmers gold and blush, the colors of a sunrise.
A pill of immortality.
I capture it in my palm and tip it into Hào’yáng’s mouth.
“Hào’yáng,” I whisper. My voice ripples through the water, echoing in the vast emptiness as my heart gives a responding cry.
I am exhausted; my strength and energies are spent.
The world begins to drift in and out of sight.
And perhaps it is a dream, that light dances upon his face like the sun through water; that sparks ripple across his skin, spreading through his chest, pushing back the frost.
As darkness closes in on my vision, something strange happens.
A bright blue glow pulses through the ocean from beneath us, and the sea opens like a great maw or a set of heavenly gates…to swallow us whole.