Winter held his gaze. “To spend more time with you, of course.”
Peilun let out an aggravated breath. “Your Highness—”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
He clenched his jaw. “You’re infuriating.”
The prince grinned, leaning forward to wipe a drop of sweat from Peilun’s brow. “Do go on.”
?“Why do you act likea girl?”asked a ten-year-old Sky. An older memory then, from childhood. “You know the others make fun of you for it.”
“There are worse things than being made fun of,” said Winter.
Sky wrinkled his nose. “Like what?”
“Like not knowing yourself,” said Winter. “Like being ashamed of who you are.”
And Winter’s sense of selfwasthat strong. It was so strong he recognized he did not need immense power to make others fear and respect him. He did not need lixia to feel satisfied with his life. His contentment and self-acceptance were like poison to the spirits,who picked at any insecurity they could find to tempt him.We can give you eternal beauty. We can offer a life without pain. We can provide fame and consequence and glory beyond your imagination.
“I don’t need any of that,” answered Winter.
Their voices were drowned out by his will to live. His belief in this life, and his desire for it. His qi poured into the rift, a sea with no shore, filling and filling the chasm until the wayward spirits began to shriek, desperate to return home before the rift sealed shut.
The ground beneath us trembled.Our joined hands tightened, each of our attentions fixed inward as we directed our remaining qi into the rift.
“Hold on,” said a once-familiar voice in my head. As if emerging from a hundred-year sleep, I remembered vaguely that I knew that voice. Ming Lei.
“Don’t give it everything. Leave enough to come back.”
The reminder was a jolt to my consciousness.
“Hold back!” I shouted to the others, just as the earth began to tilt, and the chasm sink. “We have to be able to get out!”
They could not hear me. Winter’s music had reached its climax: strings swelling, applause ringing. Kuro’s blade clashed against his brother’s, and the reverberations were felt through the field, so that stalks of sorghum swayed in answer. Rouha and Plum stamped their feet to the beat of the dragon dances, the drums pounding faster and faster. All the memories that made us who we were—we fed them into the veil. Only I kept something back. And now, as I tried to swim to the surface, dragging Kuro and Winter with me, I found their hands slipping through mine, turning translucent and spectral.
“Liu Winter!” I screamed. “Tan Kuro!”
The balance of our world was reasserting itself, and now nothing could stop its passage. I fought the current, struggling to tow Winter and Kuro with me. I was almost to the surface. A single beam of light emanated from above, fracturing as it struck the restless waves.
But I’d forgotten that my enemies existed on both sides of the veil. Before I could plunge my hand through the opening, a massive shadow obscured the light. He peered down at me, and smiled.
Qinglong.
He’d come for me at last.
Forty-Two
Of the four Cardinal Spirits, none are more elusive than the Onyx Tortoise, who sleeps through the passing seasons and stirs but once in a hundred years. Only the arrival of a vessel worthy of his power can draw him from the depths of his lair.
—A History of Lixia, 762
“I underestimated you,”said Qinglong.“I underestimated your ambition.”
I smiled at him, shielding my fear. “There comes a time when the master must bow to the pupil. For it was you who trained me well.” With those words, I called upon my hunger, my want, and the sea rose to meet it.
Qinglong roared as the churning tides swept him from the air. The moons doubled in my vision as he sent haixiao waves whirling toward me, pulling me under. We both fell, through oceans and realms and worlds within worlds. My mother had warned me: the two of us were connected at our core.
We surfaced at the mouth of the Dian River. Where this had all begun—where I’d accepted his bargain and taken his power as my own. It was my insecurity that he’d capitalized on, to make me depend upon his power. But just as I needed him, so too did he need me.
