Which would you choose? A long, easy life without agency, or a short, difficult one—with freedom?
I recalled the young woman who had endeavored to change her fate—who had joined the war simply for a chance at independence. And I knew my answer, always.
“Never,” I said aloud, before my eyes darted to the bird of prey, who cowered beside me beneath the Cardinal Spirit’s aura. Before she could guess my intent, I whirled toward her and seized her beak with my bare hands. I felt her resistance but forced her beak open, never mind that her razor-sharp jaws cut into my palms. The blood drove her into a frenzy, so that she could not protect herself when I reached into her mouth and withdrew her pulsating jade seal.
“Look how she dares defy you,” I said to the dragon, but this time, I spoke with compulsion. “You would let her take me from you?”
My instincts had not led me astray: both the bird and the dragon flew into an uproar. The dragon’s jealousy swept through the air like a tidal wave. Even if he was enraged at my disobedience, I would belong to no other spirit. He bellowed and lunged for the bird, who escaped in the nick of time, flapping her wings and soaring into the air. Qinglong followed in hot pursuit, as I’d suspected.
The bird’s frantic cries resounded in my mind. “Help me, help me, help me—”
Gritting my teeth, I focused my qi and returned silence to my thoughts. Then I crawled toward the rubble, searching for Sky in the shadows.
“Sky?” I hissed. “Where are you?”
I shoved aside a wooden plank and caught sight of a pale face crouched behind the debris. It was like seeing a ghost from the dead.
“Tao?” I said hoarsely, incredulous. I had not seen him since the day I’d been thrown in jail.
Firm hands grabbed me from behind. I screamed.
“It’s me!” said Sky, as I tried to wrestle free from his grasp. Twisting, I saw that it was indeed him—his sharp jaw, his messy hair, his scarred palms. But my heart still raced wildly.
“I thought I saw…” I glanced back; there was no one there.
Shaking my head, I let Sky guide me to the entrance of a partially caved-in bunker.
“Is it safe?” I asked, eyeing the murky opening dubiously.
Sky nodded. “The bunkers were built during the Wu Dynasty to ward off spirits—they’re reinforced with iron.” He urged me forward. “Winter is down there already.”
I took a tentative step into the bunker. Still dazed from the dragon’s brilliance, I tripped on a shard of rubble, but Sky caught me before I fell.
“What you did,” he said, clearing his throat, “that was incredibly foolish.”
“The usual compliments from you,” I retorted, before glancing back at him, remembering the state in which we’d left things. As if he was following my train of thought, his hands tightened around me, and I wondered if I’d inadvertently made myself his prisoner again.
How easy it was to slip into former habits.
“Lei?” I asked silently, searching for him in my mind’s eye. I felt silly, not quite knowing what I was doing. “Can you find me?”
Silence, and then: “Yes. I’m coming.”
It was, unmistakably, the feeling of him. I felt relief crash through me, followed by terrible fatigue. If Sky brought me to the Anlai warlord now, there was nothing I could do to protect myself. And if I tried to run from him in my current state, Sky would most certainly catch me.
“Don’t,” said Sky, and the catch in his voice surprised me. It was hard to recognize his expression in the half-light. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
His voice dropped. “Like you’re afraid of me.”
I met his eyes then, flickering against the dark. I understood how I’d hurt him, just as he’d hurt me. Foolishly, I wished there were a way to erase this broken history between us. How was it that we hurt the ones we loved the most?
“But then, with your power,” my mother had said, “you hurt others. You became what you once feared.”
“Sky,” I said, overtaken with weariness. “I don’t want to be your prisoner.”
He swallowed thickly. I could feel him struggling to rein in his emotions, his insistence that he was right, that his way was the right way. He had imagined a future for us, and in doing so could not conceive of a different path beyond that one. And how could he—when everything had always gone as planned before?
