But before he could get within a few feet of me, his son barred his path.
“Father,” said Sky. “This is my last warning. Call off your men.”
“You fool!” Liu Zhuo spat. “You think I’ll still name you my successor after this?”
Sky raised his sword. “I couldn’t care less what you name me anymore.”
His father had been an accomplished warrior in his time, but the years had not been kind to him. His movements were sluggish and predictable, and his health was failing. Beads of sweat rolled down his face as his sword clattered against his son’s, his two arms shaking against one of Sky’s. Deftly, Sky drove his sword up to his father’s hilt, so that Liu Zhuo had no choice but to disengage. That was his mistake. As he pulled his blade back, Sky disarmed him with a swift chopping motion.
His once-famous sword clattered to the ground, rendered useless despite all its former glory.
“Call off your men,” commanded Sky. “This is no longer your war to fight.”
His father glared at him, unmoving.
“For the sake of your honor I will not kill you,” said Sky, sword still raised. “But know—”
“Too bad I don’t particularly care about honor,” said a high-pitched voice from behind him. My calm shattered as I recognized Lily’s small figure. With the sword Lei had given her, and with the flying crane maneuver I’d taught her, she leapt across the clearing, a blur of light, and stabbed the Anlai warlord through the chest.
Sky faltered as if stabbed himself. He stared open-mouthed as his father fell to his knees, coughing up blood. Lily smiled down at the warlord, surveying her work. “Mingze was my brother,” she told him. My mind reeled, recalling the spirit summoner executed at the palace gates. “And I promised him I would not die until you did.”
Assured in her victory, she lowered her arm so that her blade dragged in the dirt. “Never drop your guard on the battlefield!” I wanted to scream at her, but I could not move. Still choking on his own blood, Liu Zhuo seized her sword and wrested it out of her hand. She tried to fight him but his sheer size overwhelmed her. In one breath, he’d stolen her blade and beheaded her.
“Lily!” I screamed, or tried to, as her severed head hit the ground. The rest of her body lay crushed beneath Liu Zhuo’s massive corpse. He was so much larger than her that I could not see her in the fray.
Blood pooled on the ground, the silent marker of a life stolen.
How could Lily be gone? How could she be dead after everything—after scheming with me against the princes, after training with me every morning, after helping me escape the palace? I owed her so much. Now I would never be able to fulfill those promises; I would never be able to watch her grow up, to witness the woman she would become.She was sixteen.I had wanted more for her—alifetime of freedom and dreaming, not one shaped by confinement and revenge.
I felt tears gather behind my eyes, tears that had no place to go. Thus the veil became my outlet, so that I fed it my sorrow, my grief, and my rage.
“Did you really think you could hide from me?”
Qinglong’s voice cut through me like a blade of burning ice. Connected as we were, I felt my panic lance through Kuro, disrupting the flow of his qi. I tried to calm us both, to continue channeling our life force into the veil, but the closer we came to sealing the rift, the more fiercely it resisted us.
“I’m coming for you.” It was a threat and a promise.
“We have to hurry,” I told Kuro in the in-between realm. “Qinglong’s realized it’s a diversion.”
“It’s not enough,” said Kuro. “We’renot enough.”
“But…”
I looked down at our joined hands and realized he was right. Here in this liminal space made of shadows, the two of us had become just another silhouette. Our life forces were nearly depleted, and our spirits fading. Still the rift gaped over us, its mouth open as if laughing. Were all our efforts in vain?
My knees buckled; I was so weak already. I would give all of myself, and still it would not be enough. It wasn’t supposed to end like this; I wasn’t meant to sacrifice myself for nothing. Deep down, I had foolishly believed there could only be two outcomes—the selfish one, where I sacrificed the world and saved myself, or the selfless one—where I sacrificed myself and saved the world. But even after choosing the latter, my sacrifice had meant nothing.
A part of me died then—the part that believed the world could still be fair and kind.
This was how it would end. Our lives lost. Our stories forgotten.We had given so much, fought so bravely, and still no one would be saved. No one would remember.
“Neither of us wants it enough,” said Kuro bleakly. “Our will to live—it’s not strong enough.”
The war, it had altered us both. Our hope was not enough; our belief in this world and its people was not enough.
My vision darkening, I began to release Kuro’s hand.
“Then take mine.”
