Chapter 67 Blood and Salt
BLOOD AND SALT
Terren subdued the dragon quickly and unspectacularly. It had already been near its end—its strike at Maro had been a desperate one, a dying thrash—and after only a few quick sword maneuvers, it slammed into the near side of the arena and fell limp next to the barrier.
Then it was over. Maro was dead, the dragon felled. Everything was decided.
The audience did not cheer. Witnessing a prince’s death—and not the one they would have expected—seemed to have stunned everyone into solemnity.
I left the tent behind and began making my way down the long, carpeted steps, passing by torches, the tasseled statues of fortune lions, the flapping 刀/Dao banners.
The summer winds—which did not seem to be blocked by the literomantic barrier—carried the scent of salt and ash.
Nobody stopped me. I was as close to being empress now as Terren was to being emperor.
As I passed the second layer, I overheard some of the ministers still trying to figure out exactly who had cast the Blessing, exactly what it was.
“It must be a heart-spirit poem. I do not know what else can penetrate that barrier.”
“No—can’t be. That is a killing spell, not a healing one!”
“Will the Crown forgive the prince his use of it?”
Terren waded through the foaming, ankle-deep water to the dragon, the little fish following him as a golden glimmer.
He knelt by its snout and sank the silver dagger into its scales.
Red rivulets of magic glowed bright as he began his persuasion once again.
Let the Dao power be amplified. Let the coming reign be one of blades.
Probably, I thought, in answer to the literomancer’s question.
The dragons accepted no literomancy in the taming process—and there hadn’t been any.
The spell had not been used in the fight against the Crown, but to save Terren from Maro.
And in any case, it had been cast by someone outside the arena.
I reached the bottom of the square, stepped past the hushed audience, the imperial guards, and the literomancers, and put my hand to the barrier.
It felt like nothing, not even glass. But my hand could not move past it at all.
I was reminded of how the Aricine Ward had stopped me from touching Terren, the night the rumors came and we had tried to bed each other.
The little fish wriggled its way from beside Terren towards my hand.
Terren’s eyes followed it. Without taking his hand off the dragon, he used a floating sword to trace a quick spell on the ground, releasing his part of the barrier spell.
A moment later, the air in front of my hand rippled. He had let me in.
I had predicted he would. In coronations past, the princes always had allies in the arena with them—the ones who survived, anyway—to cheer them on as they claimed the Crown. Terren might not have brought any allies with him for the fight, but that didn’t mean he had none.
He might be hesitant about trusting anyone, but he had no reason anymore not to trust me. He had already died. I had brought him back, given him life. If I had any intentions at all of harming him, he surely had reasoned, I would have just left him lying on the ground, broken.
As soon as I stepped through, the little fish dug its way into my heart and vanished, and I knew it was at that moment the crowd of ten thousand learned what Terren already knew.
“Wei,” he said with a laugh. “I felt it. I felt it. I felt your heart inside mine…”
It was a strange laugh, a laugh I was not used to—one that was entirely devoid of menace, that held only joy.
From the dagger he was holding, still more magic was pouring into the Crown. I knelt next to him in the frigid water and held his free hand while the salt wind battered us. I could barely hear anything outside. The barrier must have muffled all sounds, shutting out the world.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Terren asked, still with wonder. “That you were writing a poem to help me with my coronation?”
“If I did, would you have allowed it?”
“Unlikely.” He laughed again. He also looked as if he was about to cry.
And, as I took in the sight of him—exhausted and drenched, water slicking his hair against his sigil—I thought I knew why.
All his life, people had only ever hurt him, maneuvered against him, wished him dead.
For someone to heal him must have been so unprecedented that he could not possibly have been prepared.
“Did you frame Hesin, then?” he asked after a while.
“No,” I lied. “He really did betray you.”
He considered this, then nodded. “Tell me everything, but only after this is over. Not now. I am very tired.” A pause. “I am also happy, for once, and I wish to remember this moment untarnished.” More red magic flowed from him into the dragon, hot. The water beads on its scales began to steam.
The dragon was changing. The last of its salt crust was vanishing like snowmelt.
Its red scales lengthened, became more muted in color, grew sharper, until each one of them was a knife capable of cutting flesh.
The change had begun near Terren’s dagger at its head, but soon spread all the way down its body, until the entire length of it was steel gray and as reflective as a thousand mirrors.
The Crown had turned over to blades.
Dimly, distantly, from beyond the barrier, came a wave of tentative cheering from the crowd.
The sky was not red anymore. The heavy gray clouds had broken, too. Bright sunlight poured through with Heaven’s approval, reflecting off the chopped water and the dragon’s scales.
Terren removed the dagger from its head and stood.
For a long time, he just stared at the Crown, as if he could not even believe he had managed to succeed. Then, all at once, it seemed to hit him. His fists shook as his eyes glittered. “Wei,” he called to me breathlessly. “I did it. I … actually did it.”
Then he said, louder, more confidently, “I did it. Look! There’s proof!
” He pointed to the dragon with a sleeve and grinned, near overflowing with joy.
And then his lips began to tremble and he made a choked sound, and then he was still grinning but also bawling his eyes out. “The dragon … it’s over … it’s over…”
I stood, dabbed at his cheek with a sleeve, and said, “You don’t have to fight any longer,” which made him shake his head a little and laugh through his tears. Then I put a hand over his and began gently prying his dagger away. “You won’t need this anymore.”
He resisted me, but not as much as I thought he would. The moment it left his hands completely, he began to shake and cry even harder. It was like he did not know who he was, if not someone who held a blade.
“What now?” he said, in a voice small and utterly lost.
I took a step towards him in the water, close enough to feel his breath on my cheek.
His eyes widened. He understood.
And I could tell the idea terrified him. He had gone completely rigid, though his hands still trembled. The fear on his face was so raw that for a moment, I almost regretted what I was about to do—what I must do.
Terren. Do you trust me?
Three heartbeats passed, maybe five. Then he nodded to himself, took a deep breath as if to gather his courage, and leaned in. A tear rolled down his shining Dao seal as the gap between us closed, and closed, until there was no room for even the wind, and he had touched his lips to mine.
“Wei,” he whispered. “I was lost, but then you came bearing a lantern.”
The world melted away entirely as I focused on the prince.
I sensed his breaths calming as the moment dragged on, saw his expression becoming more peaceful under the wind-stirrings of his damp hair.
He kissed me tentatively at first. Then he found his courage after all and kissed me harder, blood and salt.
And maybe he was laughing a little, I didn’t know.
All I knew was that the moment he closed his eyes was when I stabbed him in the heart.
“Good night, Terren.”