Now I looked into his yellow eyes and saw his vulnerability. I saw his jealousy, his lack, the way he always hungered for more.
“You don’t belong here,” I told him. “You will never belong here.”
He laughed at me, at my paltry attempts at compulsion. “You think you can compel the Azure Dragon?” he asked, still roaring with laughter.
He set upon me as I dove away, rolling into a crouch. Before he could turn, I jumped onto his back and clung to his scales. Outraged, he tried to shake me off, but I held on with maniacal stubbornness. He leapt into flight, thinking to frighten me, but instead I used the opportunity to scrabble up to his head. Gritting my teeth against the fierce wind in my face, I withdrew a dagger from my belt and stabbed him through the eye.
He roared in agony, flinging me off his back with a violent twist. I tumbled through the air, not knowing up from down, before I summoned my power and called upon the sea to cushion my fall.
“How dare you?” the dragon snarled. “You think you can slay a dragon? Don’t you know your life is tied to mine?”
He was right in that I could not kill him, for his death would destroy me. In the same way, Qinglong did not want me dead, only ensnared and under his control.
“I don’t need to slay you,” I said. “I only need to make you see reason. Our worlds depend upon balance. It was your greed that tempted you to disrupt the equilibrium of all living things. But this time, you went too far.
“Look around,” I said, gesturing to the roaring Dian River rapids beneath us. “Your hubris is your undoing. In this realm, I have the upper hand. And you are not what you once were in your world.”
He lunged for me, but his immense size made him slow. I slashed at his side with my sword, black ink pouring from the open wound. He bellowed and smashed his tail into me, so that I went careening off the riverbank.
Wood, fire, earth, metal, water.I forced calm through my thoughts and directed a wave to ease my descent. The wave brought me backto the mouth of the river, where I sent knives of ice spinning toward him. He dissolved the blades in a single breath, turning them into a dense fog that obscured my vision.
“It was you who agreed to the bargain,” hissed Qinglong. “You who decided my power was worth its price.”
“You deceived me,” I said. “You tried to use me as your puppet.”
“Funny,” he growled. “Your mother said the same thing. But even she accepted her fate.”
My anger knew no end. I screamed, throwing open my arms, and the fog dissipated, revealing the dragon once more.
“Leave this world behind,” I said, staring into his punctured eye. “Leave.”
And the Azure Dragon went still, unblinking, and I thought—perhaps my compulsion had worked. Perhaps I had truly overpowered a Cardinal Spirit.
But then I tried to step back, and I could not. I tried to blink, and I could not. Rather than him falling into my trap, I had fallen into his.
His eye seized me, captured me whole. I fell into his will, a bottomless pit with no end. My own will stolen, I could not move as ice crystallized around my limbs, locking me in place. Cold, I was so cold.
“Now you are mine,” promised Qinglong. “For you, my slippery little rat, I will put on a show.”
The ice fogged my breath, my sight, so that when Qinglong’s vision infiltrated my mind, it was the only thing I saw.
Diaochan was running, her long hair loose over her shoulders, her feet bare and her robes open. Her robes were her downfall; she tripped over their long hem and went tumbling, so that the soldier fell upon her, slitting her throat. Her last thought was of her sisters and the promise she would never fulfill for them. For she had promised them she would return home one day.
Little did she know her sisters were already dead.
“No,” I tried to say. “No!”
Qinglong brought me next to Chuang Ning, to my childhood home in Willow District. Dread flooded my being as I heard Xiuying’s familiar cry.
A stranger with yellow eyes had pinned Xiuying against the wall. “My vessel is weak,” said the man, his voice echoing with the boom of another. “I am tired of this broken shell. I want you, Yu Xiuying. You will be my rightful vessel.”
The man was trying to press a glowing jade seal into her hand, but she resisted him with improbable strength. “Never,” she spat out. “You will never have me.”
But then the door creaked open. “Ma?” said Plum, his eyes as round as his nickname. “What’s wrong?”
The vessel smiled. “If you do not accept my bargain,” he said, “I will make your boy take it.”
Xiuying’s shoulders slumped forward, her surrender reflected in the hollowness of her gaze. “I’ll accept it,” she said softly. “Don’t take him. I’ll accept your bargain.”
