Chapter 24 Àn’yīng
àn’yīng
The Four Seas, Realm of Dragons
Upon our return, we find that our glade has transformed.
A house, its terra-cotta-tiled roof curving in a perfect replica of my home, has appeared on the white-sand beach in the shade of the great camphor trees.
The wind has quieted, and the sun has shifted its angle in the hazy, dreamlike sky in a way that’s reminiscent of late afternoons in Xī’lín.
On the other side of the realm, stars streak the violet sky like pearl dust.
The inside of the cottage is styled with rosewood furniture and silk cushions. A grand bed with sleek turquoise sheets sits in front of a breathtaking view of the ocean, and gauze curtains hanging in the windows ripple in the warm breeze.
The beauty of this realm feels like ashes in my heart, though, with the heaviness of what we’ve learned.
So long as Yù’chén lives, we cannot win the war against the Kingdom of Night.
“àn’yīng.” Hào’yáng comes up behind me and turns me to face him. “Talk to me. Talk to me as you did in the days when you spoke to me through the jade pendant.”
“I…” Words falter on my lips as I think of Yù’chén’s red gaze, the crack in his voice. 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.
Hào’yáng seems to sense the disquiet in my thoughts. He takes my face in his hands and says steadily, “I want to know what is in your heart, àn’yīng, no matter what it is.”
“I choose you,” I whisper. “I choose peace, and I choose to fight for our realm’s freedom.
I choose to bring back sunlit days in my village with my family.
That has never changed and never will change.
” I squeeze my eyes shut. “But that doesn’t make this any less difficult.
He saved my life. He gave me all that was within his ability, given his circumstances of birth.
And…I loved him, Hào’yáng. I loved him, and I know what is needed to end this war, but…
” My throat seizes. I mean to tell him that a part of me understands Yù’chén more deeply than I’ll ever admit—that he was born into this life, into his bloodline and title and birthright.
That he never chose to begin this war, the war that continues to rage, contingent upon his life.
“I know,” Hào’yáng says softly.
“To end this war, he has to die.” I force the sentence out.
“Hào’yáng, Yù’chén is the reason the mó were able to break through the Kingdom of Rivers’ wards in the first place.
His blood ties him to that land, and they were able to create gateways in.
If he is crowned emperor, it’s likely those gateways will become permanent, merging the two realms together.
He is the reason the dragons cannot choose a side, the reason the land cannot accept you as emperor. ”
There is only one way this can all end. One way we will win this war.
Yù’chén must die.
Hào’yáng tips my chin up. “We focus on the next steps for now,” he says. “We haven’t secured the backing of the dragons, but you still have your claim upon Lady Shī’yǎ’s title and army. We make for the Kingdom of Sky next—as was our initial plan.”
I recognize the way his expression shifts into one of quiet calculation.
It has been weeks since the Kingdom of Night breached the Kingdom of Sky; we have no information about the state of the war and no way to contact anyone there.
Returning to the immortal realm is like stepping into a tiger’s lair.
“It will be difficult,” Hào’yáng says. His head is tilted, his eyes have a faraway look—and I know he is contemplating strategy, running through a dozen different approaches and scenarios in his mind. “We’ll need to spend tomorrow planning.”
“Tomorrow,” I agree.
Hào’yáng studies me for a moment. “Something else is bothering you.”
I glance up sharply, surprised that he’s read me so thoroughly.
Survivor’s instinct has trained me to hold my fears and vulnerabilities close to my heart.
Sharing anything other than hard determination felt like a weakness, and yet…
as I look up at the face of my boy in the jade, confiding in him comes to me naturally.
“When the Dragon King spoke of dragons’ true forms and how it may take centuries for She of the Moon-Frosted Sea to return, I thought of myself.
” My voice feels tight, but I keep going.
Keep pushing myself to open my heart to him, one word at a time.
“Sansiran’s act opened my full immortal powers.
I don’t know where the mortal part of me ends and the immortal part begins.
I don’t know if that means I have a long life ahead of me now.
” I swallow. “I am afraid, Hào’yáng, of being in this world once everyone I love is gone. ”
“Few mortals reincarnate,” Hào’yáng says, “and despite being heir to our kingdom, the rules will apply to me as well. In these realms, all is ephemeral, even across an immortal lifetime. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or if I will live past the end of the week.
” His gaze softens. “What I do know, àn’yīng, is that I would spend this lifetime with you, whether as your friend or your companion or your ally or whatever you wish us to be.
” He smiles and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “So long as I can be by your side.”
I draw a deep breath. “And I think,” I say steadily, “that you owe me the whole truth.”
I lead him to the rosewood dining table, where a meal is set out for us. In silence, I pour tea into two cups fashioned out of seashells.
I look up at Hào’yáng expectantly.
He takes a sip from his own cup, then sets it down. “The whole truth,” he says, and his face settles into that look of concentration I’ve seen so often on him. “Last time, I told you the story of your father pulling me from the rubble of my home and taking me to the immortal realm.
“I arrived broken, lost, a shell of who I’d been.
I’d just watched my family die before my eyes, and I had failed my people and my realm.
I had no idea what my future looked like—if I even had one at all.
The loss and the shame of it all nearly killed me.
I remember sitting down for my first meal in the Kingdom of Sky, dressed in fabric woven from the clouds and glinting with sunlight, surrounded by the immortals I had heard of in stories, beings I’d only dared hope I would glimpse once in my lifetime…
and I wanted to disappear from this world.
The real cruelty of death is the suffering it causes the living. ”
He stares at a spot on the table. I want to reach back out through time and hold his hand—the hand of the young heir who had lost his kingdom and the child who had lost his entire family.
“Then one day, Lady Shī’yǎ brought me something: a broken jade pendant with jagged edges.
She told me that inside was a little girl who would need my help, and that I had to stay strong for her.
” A smile flits across Hào’yáng’s lips. “I thought she was lying to me, that she had made up some silly story for my benefit—so I threw the pendant across my chambers and left it there.
“That is, until one day, I heard a voice speaking from the other side.”
A shudder breaks through me. I can hear myself as though it were just yesterday; I can see the wink of my pendant in the moonlight, smell Méi’zi’s hair as she dozed curled up against me, taste the fear and despair pressing against me in those early days as Mā lay unmoving on our couch.
Help me, I whispered to the stone, because I had nothing else to hold on to and no one else to ask. Please. Someone.
“I picked up the pendant, certain I was hallucinating—but there you were.” Hào’yáng smiles.
“You were so thin, and so pale in the moonlight.
You were nine or ten, just a year or so younger than me—but you looked as though you had survived a living nightmare.
The way you gazed into the pendant…it was as though you were looking into my soul. Pleading for my help.
“I spoke to it, but I realized you couldn’t hear me—so I did the only thing I could think of. I picked up my brush, and I wrote back. I wrote the first thing that came to mind.”
“ ‘I am here,’ ” I whisper.
“ ‘I am here,’ ” Hào’yáng echoes softly. “And then you continued to talk to me. I realized that, though I could see you and hear you, you could only read the words I wrote back to you.
“I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: A sense of purpose. And a knowing that I was fortunate to be safe and alive and fed in a realm away from the nightmare that mine had become. That countless others—my people—were suffering and struggling to stay alive.
“You saved my life that night. I realized how much of a coward I’d been, how selfish and weak. So I began to train. I spent every waking hour training with the Kingdom of Sky disciples. I promised myself that even as a mortal, I would become the best warrior of them all.”
“And you did,” I say softly. “You became captain of the guard.”
He doesn’t match my smile. “Because of you, àn’yīng. Everything I did was because of you. Because I told myself that one day, I would be strong enough to return to my kingdom, that I would find you, my girl in the jade, and I would liberate our realm.”
I’m breathless with this confession. This truth, this affirmation, that I’d been seeking from him for so long.
“And somewhere along the way,” Hào’yáng continues, his gaze soft, sunlit as it finds me, “I fell in love with you.
From telling you how to fish and hunt to laughing when you slipped and fell in the pond…
teaching you to spar and use your blades and draw talismans…
I fell in love with you. With your bravery, your protectiveness, your loyalty, and your ferocity.