Kuro didn’t look at me. “It is, and you know it.”
I shook my head. “You once asked me to destroy the foundations of the old world with you, and build a new one from its ashes. Remember that? These are its ashes, Kuro. The new world is ready for the taking.” I sat up. “Imagine how much good you can do. You can create that world you envisioned—a world forallpeople. Wouldn’t Jinya have wanted that?”
“Jinya wanted to live,” he snarled. He withdrew his seal from beneath his shirt, thumbing the smooth jade for comfort. More quietly, he said, “I’m ready to move on, to tell the truth. I’m ready to go to her.”
“Don’t say that,” I said, alarmed. “The people need you.”
Kuro laughed. “They don’t needme. They need a hero they can adore—and shunt responsibility to.” He shook his head. “Plenty of those to choose from.”
Jinya’s death had changed him, irrevocably. He was no longer the same man I’d met in a Canyuan cellar: charismatic, confident, effervescent with energy. Now he was losing his will to live, which, if my suspicions were correct, was exactly what we needed to succeed.
“Is anyone out there?”
Kuro and I both turned toward the door, though neither of us made a move to rise. The speaker sounded like a young woman, her voice panicked and near tears.
“Please—please save us!”
We’d covered all the windows and doors, and now we could notrisk looking outside without alerting the spirits to our presence. “It’s likely a trap,” I said, through gritted teeth.
Kuro nodded. With a stray stick, he began to draw a sketch in the dirt.
“No—no!” There was a sound like a baby’s wail, and I winced, a hollowness expanding in my chest. Then abruptly, the screams stopped, replaced by the whistling of the wind.
You did this. You started this.
“Kuro,” I asked, forcibly changing the subject. “How did you open your gates?”
“What do you mean?” He yawned. I saw he’d drawn a rudimentary picture of a smiling girl with pigtails.
“The spirit gates you created—how did you do it?”
He sat back, frowning as he tried to remember. “It happened naturally. I didn’t think much about it. I used my power…”
“What power?”
“Lixia, of course.”
“And how did you draw on your lixia?” I asked, knowing my own answer.
His frown deepened. “I called on my belief—that I was worth more than this. That I deserved to be known, known and remembered…”
I nodded. Kuro had drawn on his pride, the pride that the Ivory Tiger fed and bolstered. It was the same way I accessed the dragon’s power. Through my greed.
These emotions drew the spirits to us, who then fed and nurtured these desires, until we became nothing but shells of our former selves. But there was more to us too. We were more than our pride and greed and our desire for vengeance; we were joy, and kindness, and wonder too. Perhaps more than blood, our qi existed in this inherent state of humanness.
I thought of how I’d managed to escape the spirit realm last time, when Qinglong had come for me. I’d drawn on my memories, and they had enabled my escape. Perhaps those same memories could fuel the qi needed to restore the veil. A reverse impulsion, a process of giving rather than taking.
Slowly, I explained my plan to Kuro.
“The veilisa living thing, of sorts,” Kuro said, when I was done. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t take impulsion, just as other beings do. But have you ever tried to manipulate a spirit?”
“I’ve shielded my mind against the dragon,” I said. “But I don’t know if I’ve ever compelled him. Perhaps…once,” I amended, remembering how I’d distracted Qinglong with the bird spirit.
“Look how she dares defy you,” I’d told the dragon. “You would let her take me from you?”
Had it been the fact that his vessel had taken another spirit’s seal that had driven him into a frenzy? Or had it been more than that—had my compulsion actually worked on him?
If spirits could indeed transfer some of their abilities to their human vessels, then was it so far-fetched to believe that humans could usurp their spirit masters? I could believe it. If this ability of mine led to the dragon’s demise, then only he was to blame. By nurturing my ambition, Qinglong had taught me to dream greater dreams, to aspire to a greatness beyond even what he had bestowed upon me.
