The Poppy War (The Poppy War Trilogy #1)
The Poppy War: Part 2 – Chapter 11

When the main column of the Federation Armed Forces marched on Sinegard, they did not attempt to conceal their arrival. They did not need to. Sinegard knew already that they were coming, and the terror the Federation inflicted gave them a far greater strategic advantage than the element of surprise. They advanced in three columns, marching from every direction but the west, where Sinegard was backed by the Wudang Mountains. They forged forward with massive crimson banners flying overhead, illuminated by raised torches.

For Ryohai, the banners read. For the Emperor.

In his Principles of War, the great military theorist Sunzi had warned against attacking an enemy that occupied the higher ground. The target above held the advantage of surveillance and would not need to tire out their troops by climbing uphill.

The Federation invasion strategy was a giant fuck you to Sunzi.

To storm Sinegard from higher ground would have required a detour up the Wudang Mountains, which would have delayed the Federation assault by almost an entire week. The Federation would not give Sinegard a week. The Federation had the weapons and the numbers to take Sinegard from below.

From her vantage point high on the southern city wall, Rin watched the Federation force approach like a great fiery snake winding its way through the valley, encircling Sinegard to crush and swallow it. She saw it coming, and she trembled.

I want to hide. I want someone to tell me I’m going to be safe, that this is just a joke, a bad dream.

In that moment she realized that all this time she had been playing at being a soldier, playing at bravery.

But now, on the eve of the battle, she could not pretend anymore.

Fear bubbled in the back of her throat, so thick and tangible that she almost choked on it. Fear made her fingers tremble violently so that she almost dropped her sword. Fear made her forget how to breathe. She had to force air into her lungs, close her eyes, and count to herself as she inhaled and exhaled. Fear made her dizzy and nauseated, made her want to vomit over the side of the wall.

It’s just a physiological reaction, she told herself. It’s just in your mind. You can control it. You can make it go away.

They had gone over this in training. They had been warned about this feeling. They were taught to control their fear, turn it to their advantage; use their adrenaline to remain alert, to ward off fatigue.

But a few days of training could not negate what her body instinctively felt, which was the imminent truth that she was going to bleed, she was going to hurt, and she was most likely going to die.

When had she last been this scared? Had she felt this paralysis, this numbing dread before she stepped into the ring with Nezha two years ago? No, she had been angry then, and proud. She had thought she was invincible. She had been looking forward to the fight, anticipating the bloodlust.

That felt stupid now. So, so stupid. War was not a game, where one fought for honor and admiration, where masters would keep her from sustaining any real harm.

War was a nightmare.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and hide behind someone, behind one of the soldiers, wanted to whimper, I am scared, I want to wake up from this dream, please save me.

But no one was coming for her. No one was going to save her. There was no waking up.

“Are you all right?” Kitay asked.

“No,” she said, trembling. Her voice was a frightened squeak. “I’m scared. Kitay, we’re going to die.”

“No, we’re not,” Kitay said fiercely. “We’re going to win, and we are going to live.”

“You’ve done the math, too.” They were outnumbered three to one. “Victory is not possible.”

“You have to believe it is.” Kitay’s fingers were clenched so tightly around his sword hilt that they had turned white. “The Third will get here in time. You have to tell yourself that’s true.”

Rin swallowed hard and nodded. You were not trained to snivel and cower, she told herself. The girl from Tikany, the escaped bride who had never seen a city, would have been scared. The girl from Tikany was gone. She was a third-year apprentice of the Academy at Sinegard, she was a soldier of the Eighth Division, and she was trained to fight.

And she was not alone. She had poppy seeds in her pocket. She had a god on her side.

“Tell me when,” Kitay said. He was poised with his sword over the rope that constrained a booby trap they had set to defend the outer perimeter. Kitay had designed this trap; he would unleash it just as soon as the enemy was within range.

They were so close she could see the firelight flickering over their faces.

Kitay’s hand trembled.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

The first of the Federation battalion crossed the boundary.

“Now.”

Kitay slashed at the rope.

A rolling avalanche of logs was freed from its breaking point, pulled down by gravity to bowl straight through the main advancing force. The logs rolled chaotically, shattered limbs and crushed bone with a noise like thunder that went on and on. For a moment the rumbling of carnage was so great Rin thought they might have won the battle before it started, might have seriously crippled the advancing force. Kitay whooped hysterically over the clamor, clutching Rin to keep from falling over as the gates themselves shook.

But when the roar of the logs died down, the invaders continued to advance into Sinegard to the steady beat of war drums.

A tier above Rin and Kitay, standing at the highest precipices of the South Gate, the archers loosed a round of arrows. Most clattered uselessly against raised shields. Some found their way through the cracks, embedded their heads in the unguarded fleshy parts of soldiers’ necks. But the heavily armored Federation soldiers simply marched over the bodies of their fallen comrades, continuing their relentless assault toward the city gates.

The squadron leader shouted for another round of arrows.

It was close to pointless. There were far more soldiers than there were arrows. Sinegard’s outer defense was flimsy at best. Each of Kitay’s booby traps had been sprung, and though all but one went off beautifully, they were not enough to even dent the enemy ranks.

There was nothing to do but wait. Wait until the gate was broken, until there was a tremendous crash. Then the signal gongs were ringing, screaming to all who didn’t already know that the Federation had breached the walls. The Federation was in Sinegard.

They marched to the cacophony of cannon fire and rockets, bombarding Sinegard’s outer defenses with their siege breakers.

The gate buckled and broke under the strain.

They poured through like a swarm of ants, like a cloud of hornets; unstoppable and infinite, overwhelming in number.

We can’t win. Rin stood in a daze of despair, sword hanging by her side. What difference would it make if she fought back? It might stay her death sentence by a few seconds, maybe minutes, but at the end of the night she would be dead, her body broken and bloody on the ground, and nothing would matter . . .

This battle wasn’t like the ones in the legends, where numbers didn’t matter, where a handful of warriors like the Trifecta could flatten an entire legion. It didn’t matter how good their techniques were, it mattered how the numbers balanced.

And the Sinegardians were so badly outnumbered.

Rin’s heart sank as she watched the armored troops advance into the city, rows and columns stretching into infinity.

I’m going to die here, she realized. They’re going to slaughter all of us.

“Rin!”

Kitay shoved her hard; she stumbled against stones as an axe embedded itself in the wall where her head had been.

Its wielder jerked the axe out of the wall and swung it again toward them, but this time Rin blocked it with her sword. The impact sent adrenaline coursing through her blood.

Fear was impossible to eradicate. But so was the will to survive.

Rin ducked under the soldier’s arm and jammed her sword up through the soft groove beneath his chin, unprotected by the helmet. She cut through fat and sinew, felt the tip of her sword pierce directly through his tongue and move up past his nose to where his brain was. His carotid artery exploded over the length of steel. Blood wet her hand to the elbow. He jerked a little and fell toward her.

He’s dead, she thought numbly. I’ve killed him.

For all her combat training, Rin had never thought about what it would be like to actually take someone’s life. To sever an artery, not just feign doing so. To break a body so badly that all functions ceased, that the animation was stilled forever.

They were taught to incapacitate at the Academy. They were trained to fight against their friends. They operated within the masters’ strict rules, monitored closely to avoid injury. For all their talk and theory, they had not been trained to truly kill.

Rin thought she might feel the life leave her victim’s body. She thought she might register his death with thoughts more significant than One down, ten thousand to go. She thought she’d feel something.

She registered nothing. Just a temporary shock, then the grim realization that she needed do this again, and again, and again.

She extricated her weapon from the soldier’s jaw just as another swung a sword over her head. She rammed her sword up, blocked the blow. And parried. And thrust. And spilled blood again.

It wasn’t any easier the second time.

It seemed as if the world were filled with Federation soldiers. They all looked the same—identical helmets, identical armor. Cut one down and here comes another.

Within the melee Rin didn’t have time to think. She fought by reflex. Every action demanded a reaction. She couldn’t see Kitay anymore; he had disappeared into the sea of bodies, an ocean of clashing metal and torches.

Fighting the Federation was wholly different from fighting in the ring. She didn’t have melee practice. The enemy came from every angle, not just one, and defeating one opponent didn’t bring you any closer to winning the battle.

The Federation did not have martial arts. Their movements were blocky, studied. Their patterns were predictable. But they had practice with formations, with group combat. They moved as if they had a hive mind; coordinated actions produced by years of drilling. They were better trained. They were better equipped.

The Federation didn’t fight a graceful fight. They fought a brutal one. And they didn’t fear death. If they were hurt, they fell, and their comrades advanced over their dead bodies. They were relentless. There were so many of them.

I am going to die.

Unless. Unless.

The poppy seeds in her pocket screamed for her to swallow them. She could take them now. She could go to the Pantheon and call a god down. What did Jiang’s warnings matter, when they were all going to die regardless?

She had seen the face of the Phoenix. She knew what power was at her fingertips, if only she asked.

I can make you fearless. I can make you a legend.

She did not want to be a legend, but she wanted to stay alive. She wanted more than anything to live, consequences be damned, and if calling the Phoenix would do that for her, then so be it. Jiang’s warning meant nothing to her now, not while her countrymen and classmates were hacked to pieces beside her, not while she didn’t know if each second was going to be her last. If she was going to die, she would not die like this—small, weak, and helpless.

She had a link to a god.

She would die a shaman.

Heart hammering, she ducked behind a gated corner; for the few seconds in which nobody saw her, she jammed her hand into her pocket and dug the seeds out. She brought them to her mouth.

She hesitated.

If she swallowed the seeds but it didn’t work, she would certainly die. She could not fight drugged, dazed, and hallucinating.

A horn blasted through the air. She jerked her head up. It was a distress signal, coming from the East Gate.

But the South Gate had no troops to spare. Everywhere was a crisis zone. They were outnumbered three to one; if they lost half their troops to the East Gate, then they may as well let the Federation stroll into the city unchecked.

But Rin’s squadron had been ordered to rally if they heard the distress call. She froze, uncertain, seeds uneaten in her palm. Well, she couldn’t swallow them now—the drug needed time to take effect, and then she would be in limbo indefinitely while she probed her way to the Pantheon. And even if she could still her thoughts long enough to call the gods, she didn’t know that they would answer.

Should she stay here, hidden, and try to call a god, or should she go to the aid of her comrades?

“Go!” Her squadron leader shouted to her over the din of battle. “Go to the gate!”

She ran.

The South Gate had been a melee. But the East Gate was a slaughter zone.

The Nikara soldiers were down. Rin raced toward their posts, but her hope died the closer she got. She couldn’t see anyone in Nikara armor still fighting. The Federation soldiers were just pouring through the gate, completely unopposed.

It was obvious now that the Federation forces had made the East Gate their main target. They had stationed three times as many troops there, had set up sophisticated siege weaponry outside the city walls. Trebuchets launched flaming pieces of debris into the unresponsive sentry towers.

She saw Niang slumped in a corner, crouched over a limp body in a Militia uniform. As Rin passed, Niang lifted her face, streaked with tears and blood. The body was Raban’s.

Rin felt as if she’d been stabbed in the gut. No—not Raban, no . . .

Something slammed against her back. She whipped around. Two Federation soldiers had crept up behind her. The first raised his sword again and slashed down. She ducked around the path of his blade and lashed out with her sword.

Metal met sinew. She was blinded by the blood streaming into her eyes; she couldn’t see what she was cutting, only felt a great tension and then release, and then the Federation soldier was at her knees howling in pain.

She stabbed downward without thinking. The howling stopped.

Then his comrade slammed his shield into her sword arm. Rin cried out and dropped her sword. The soldier kicked it away and smashed his shield at Rin’s rib cage, then pulled his sword back to deliver the finishing blow while she was down.

His sword arm faltered, then dropped. The soldier made a startled gurgling noise as he stared in disbelief at the blade protruding from his stomach.

He fell forward and lay still.

Nezha met Rin’s eyes, and then wrenched his sword out of the soldier’s back. With his other hand he flung a spare weapon at her.

She pulled it from the air. Her fingers closed with familiarity around the hilt. A wave of relief shot through her. She had a weapon.

“Thanks,” she said.

“On your left,” he responded.

Without thinking they sank into a formation; back to back, fighting while covering each other’s blind spots. They made a startlingly good team. Rin covered for Nezha’s overstretched attacks; Nezha guarded Rin’s lower corners. They were each intimately familiar with the other’s weaknesses: Rin knew Nezha was slow to bring his guard back up after missed blows; Nezha parried from above while Rin ducked in low for close-quarters attacks.

It wasn’t as if she could read his mind. She had simply spent so much time observing him that she knew exactly how he was going to attack. They were like a well-oiled machine. They were a spontaneously coordinated dance. They weren’t two parts of a whole, not quite, but they came close.

If they hadn’t spent so much time hating each other, Rin thought, they might have trained together.

Backs to each other, swords at the enemy, they fought with savage desperation. They fought better than men twice their age. They drew on each other’s strengths; as long as Nezha was fighting, wasn’t flagging, Rin didn’t feel fatigued, either. Because she wasn’t just fighting to keep herself alive now, she was fighting with a partner. They fought so well that they half-convinced themselves they might emerge intact. The onslaught was, in fact, thinning.

“They’re retreating,” Nezha said in disbelief.

Rin’s chest flooded with hope for one short, blissful moment, until she realized that Nezha was wrong. The soldiers weren’t backing away from them. They were making way for their general.

The general stood a head taller than the tallest man Rin had ever seen. His limbs were like tree trunks, his armor made of enough metal to coat three smaller men. He sat astride a warhorse as massive as he was; a monstrous creature, decked in steel. His face was hidden behind a metal helmet that covered all but his eyes.

“What is this?” His voice sounded with an unnatural reverberation, as if the very ground shook when he spoke. “Why have you stopped? ”

He brought his warhorse to a halt before Rin and Nezha.

“Two puppies,” he said, his voice low in amusement. “Two Nikara puppies, holding an entire gate by themselves. Has Sinegard fallen so low that the city must be defended by children?”

Nezha was trembling. Rin was too scared to tremble.

“Watch closely,” the general said to his soldiers. “This is how we deal with Nikara scum.”

Rin reached out and grasped Nezha’s wrist.

Nezha nodded curtly in response to her unspoken question.

Together?

Together.

The general reared his monstrous horse back and charged them.

There was nothing they could do now. In that moment, Rin could only squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the end.

It didn’t come.

A deafening clang shattered the air—the sound of metal against metal. The air itself shook with the unnatural vibration of a great force stopped in its tracks.

When Rin realized she hadn’t been cut in half or trampled to death, she opened her eyes.

“What the fuck,” Nezha said.

Jiang stood before them, his white hair hanging still in the air as if he had been struck by lightning. His feet did not touch the ground. Both his arms were flung out, blocking the tremendous force of the general’s halberd with his own iron staff.

The general tried to force Jiang’s staff out of the way, and his arms trembled with a mighty pressure, but Jiang did not look like he was exerting any force at all. The air crackled unnaturally, like a prolonged rumble of thunder. The Federation soldiers fell back, as if they could sense an impending explosion.

“Jiang Ziya,” said the general. “So you live after all.”

“Do I know you?” Jiang asked.

The general responded with another massive swing of his halberd. Jiang waved his staff and blocked the blow as effortlessly as if he were swatting away a fly. He dispelled the force of the blow into the air and the ground below them. The paving stones shuddered from the impact, nearly knocking Rin and Nezha off their feet.

“Call off your men.”

Though Jiang spoke calmly, his voice echoed as if he had shouted. He appeared to have grown taller; not larger, but extended somehow, just as his shadow was extended against the wall behind them. No longer willowy and fidgety, Jiang seemed an entirely different person—someone younger, someone infinitely more powerful.

Rin stared at him in awe. The man before her was not the doddering, eccentric embarrassment of the Academy. This man was a soldier.

This man was a shaman.

When Jiang spoke again, his voice contained the echo of itself; he spoke in two pitches, one normal and one far lower, as if his shadow shouted back everything he said at double the volume. “Call off your men, or I will summon into existence things that should not be in this world.”

Nezha grabbed at Rin’s arm. His eyes were wide. “Look.”

The air behind Jiang was warping, shimmering, turning darker than the night itself. Jiang’s eyes had rolled up into the back of his head. He chanted loudly, singing in that unfamiliar language that Rin had heard him use only once before.

“You are Sealed!” the general bellowed. But he backed rapidly away from the void and clutched his halberd close.

“Am I now?” Jiang spread his arms.

Behind him sounded a keening wail, too high-pitched for any beast known to man.

Something was coming through the darkness.

Beyond the void, Rin saw silhouettes that should exist only in puppetry, outlines of beasts that belonged to story. A three-headed lion. A nine-tailed vixen. A mass of serpents tangled into one another, its multitude of heads snapping and biting in every direction.

“Rin. Nezha.” Jiang didn’t turn around to look at them. “Run.”

Then Rin understood. Whatever was being summoned, Jiang couldn’t control them. The gods will not be called willingly into battle. The gods will always demand something in return. He was doing precisely what he had forbidden her to do.

Nezha pulled Rin to her feet. Her left leg felt as if white-hot knives had been jammed into her kneecap. She cried out and staggered against him.

He steadied her. His eyes were wide with terror. There was no time to run.

Jiang convulsed in the air before them, and then lost control altogether. The void burst outward, ripping the fabric of the world, collapsing the gated wall around them. He slammed his staff into the air. A wave of force emitted from the site of contact and exploded outward in a visible ring. For a moment everything was still.

And then the east wall came down.

Rin moaned and rolled onto her side. She could barely see, barely feel. None of her senses worked; she was wrapped in a cocoon of darkness penetrated only by shards of pain. Her leg rubbed against something soft and human, and she reached for it. It was Nezha.

She groaned and forced her eyes open. Nezha lay slumped against her, bleeding profusely from a cut on his forehead. His eyes were closed.

Rin sat up, wincing, and shook his shoulder. “Nezha?”

He stirred faintly. Relief washed over her.

“We have to get up—Nezha, come on, we have to—”

A shower of debris erupted in the far corner by the gate.

Something was buried there under the rubble. Something was alive.

She clung to Nezha’s hand and watched the shifting rubble, hoping wildly it would be Jiang, that he would have survived whatever terror he had called and that he was all right, and he would be himself again, and he would save the—

The hand that clawed out from beneath the rubble was bloody, massive, and heavily armored.

Rin should have killed the general before he pulled himself out of the rubble. She should have taken Nezha and run. She should have done something.

But her limbs would not obey the commands that her brain sent; her nerves could not register anything but that same fear and despair. She lay paralyzed on the ground, heart slamming against her ribs.

The general staggered to his feet, took one lopsided step forward and then another. His helmet was gone. When he turned toward them, Rin’s breath caught. Half of his face had been scraped away in the explosion, revealing an awful skeletal smile underneath peeling skin.

“Nikara scum,” he snarled as he advanced. His foot caught against the limp form of one of his own soldiers. Without looking, he kicked it aside in disgust. His furious gaze remained fixed on Rin and Nezha. “I will bury you.”

Nezha gave a low moan of terror.

Rin’s arms were finally responding to her commands. She tried to haul Nezha up, but her own legs were weak with fear and she could not stand.

The general loomed over them. He raised his halberd.

Half-crazed with panic, Rin swung her sword upward in a great, wild arc. Her blade clattered uselessly against the general’s armored torso.

The general closed his gauntleted fingers around her thin blade and wrenched it out of her hands. His fingers bent grooves into the steel.

Trembling, she let go of her sword. He dragged her up by the collar and flung her at what was left of the wall. Her head cracked against stone; her vision erupted in black, then spots of light, then a fuzzy nothing. She blinked slowly, and whatever vision was restored showed the general raising his halberd slowly over Nezha’s limp form.

Rin opened her mouth to scream just as the general jammed the bladed tip into Nezha’s stomach. Nezha made a high, keening noise. A second thrust silenced him.

Sobbing with fear, Rin scrabbled in her pocket for the poppy seeds. She seized a handful and brought them to her mouth, choked them down just as the general noticed she was still moving.

“No, you don’t,” he snarled, hauling her back up by the front of her robes. He dragged her close to his face, leering down at her with his horrific half-smile. “No more of that Nikara witchcraft. Even the gods won’t inhabit dead vessels.”

Rin shook madly in his grasp, tears leaking down her face as she choked for air. Her head throbbed where he’d slammed it against the stone. She felt as if she were floating, swimming in darkness, whether from the poppy seeds or her head injury, she didn’t know. She was either dying or going to see the gods. Maybe both.

Please, she prayed. Please come to me. I’ll do anything.

Then she tipped forward into the void; she was in that tunnel to the heavens again, spirited upward, hurtling at a tremendous speed to a place unknown. The edges of her vision turned black and then a familiar red, a sheet of crimson that spread across her entire field of vision like a glass lens.

In her mind’s eye she saw the Woman appear before her. The Woman reached a hand toward her, but—

“Get out of my way!” Rin screamed. She didn’t have time for a guardian, she didn’t have time for warnings—she needed the gods, she needed her god.

To her shock, the Woman obeyed.

And then she was through the barrier, she was hurtling upward again, and she was in the throne room of the gods, the Pantheon. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

All the plinths were empty except one.

She saw it then in all of its glorious fire. A great and terrible voice echoed in her mind. It echoed throughout the universe.

I can give you the power you seek.

She struggled wildly to breathe, but the general’s grip only tightened around her neck.

I can give you the strength to topple empires. To burn your enemies until their bones are nothing but ash. All this I will give you and more. You know the trade. You know the terms.

“Anything,” Rin whispered. “Anything at all.”

Everything.

Something like a gust of wind blew through the chamber. She thought she heard something cackling.

Rin opened her eyes. She was not light-headed anymore. She reached up and clasped the general’s wrists. She was deathly weak; her grasp should have been like a feather’s touch. But the general howled. He dropped her, and when he raised his arms to strike her, she saw that both his wrists were a mottled, bubbling red.

She crouched, raised her elbows over her head to form a pathetic shield.

And a great sheet of flame erupted before her. The heat of it hit her in the face. The general stumbled backward.

“No . . .” His mouth opened wide in disbelief. He looked at her like he was seeing someone else. “Not you.”

Rin struggled to her feet. Flames continued to pour out before her, flames she had no control over.

“You’re dead!” the general shouted. “I killed you!”

She rose slowly, flames streaming from her hands, rivulets that ensconced them, gave no escape. The general howled in pain as the fire licked at his open wounds, the gaping holes on his face, all across his body.

“I watched you burn! I watched you all burn!”

“Not me,” she whispered, and opened her hands toward him.

The fire billowed outward with a vengeance. She felt a tearing sensation, as if it were being ripped from her gut, from somewhere inside her. It coursed through her, not harming her but immobilizing her. It used her as a conduit. She controlled the flame no more than the wick of a candle might; it rallied to her and enveloped her.

In her mind’s eye she saw the Phoenix, undulating from its plinth in the Pantheon. Watching. Laughing.

She couldn’t see the general through the flame, only a silhouette, an outline of armor collapsing and folding in on itself, a kneeling pile of something that was less a man than it was a chunk of charred flesh, carbon, and metal.

“Stop,” she whispered. Please, make it stop.

But the fire kept burning. The lump that had been the general staggered back and crumpled, a ball of flame that grew smaller and smaller and then was extinguished.

Her lips were dry, cracked; when she moved them, they bled. “Please, stop.”

The fire roared louder and louder. She couldn’t hear; she couldn’t breathe through the heat. She sank to her knees, eyes squeezed shut, grabbing her face with her hands.

I’m begging you.

In her mind’s eye she saw the Phoenix recoil, as if irritated. It opened its wings in a huge, fiery expanse and then folded them.

The way to the Pantheon shut.

Rin swayed and fell.

Time ceased to hold meaning. There was a battle around her and then there wasn’t. Rin was enveloped in a silo of nothing, insulated from anything that happened around her. Nothing else existed, until it did.

“She’s burning,” she heard Niang say. “Feverish . . . I checked for poison in her wounds, but there’s nothing.”

It’s not a fever, Rin wanted to say, it’s a god. The water that Niang dripped on her forehead did nothing to quench the flames still coursing inside her.

She tried to ask for Jiang, but her mouth would not obey. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move.

She thought she could see, but she didn’t know if she was dreaming, because when she opened her eyes next she saw a face so lovely she almost cried.

Arched eyebrows, a porcelain smoothness. Lips like blood.

The Empress?

But the Empress was far away, with the Third Division, still marching in from the north. They could not have arrived so soon, before daybreak.

Was it daybreak already? She thought she could see the first rays of the rising sun, the break of dawn on this long, horrible night.

“What do they call her?” the Empress demanded.

“Her”? Is the Empress talking about me?

“Runin.” Irjah’s voice. “Fang Runin.”

“Runin,” the Empress repeated. Her voice was like a plucked string on a table harp, sharp and penetrating and beautiful all at once. “Runin, look at me.”

Rin felt the Empress’s fingers on her cheeks. They were cool, like snow, like a winter breeze. She opened her eyes to the Empress, looked into those lovely eyes. How could anyone possess such beautiful eyes? They were nothing like a viper’s eyes. They were not the eyes of a snake; they were wild and dark and strange, but beautiful, like a deer’s.

And the visions . . . she saw a cloud of butterflies, silk sheets of ribbon fluttering in the wind. She saw a world that consisted only of beauty and color and rhythm. She would have done anything to stay trapped within that gaze.

The Empress inhaled sharply, and the visions fell away.

Her grasp on Rin’s face tightened.

“I watched you burn,” she said. “I thought I watched you die.”

“I’m not dead,” Rin tried to say, but her tongue was too heavy in her mouth and all she made was a gagging noise.

“Shhh.” The Empress held an icy finger against her lips. “Don’t speak. It’s all right. I know what you are.”

Then there was a cool press of lips against her forehead, the same coolness that Jiang had forced into her during her Trials, and the fire inside her died.

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