I smiled at him, then attacked. This time he fought to win, shoving me to the ground and capturing me with his superior strength. But he underestimated me. They always did.
Tightening my grip on his dagger, I aimed upward and plunged it into his chest. His eyes went wide in shock as my blade met flesh. He coughed, and blood sprayed from his mouth.
“Qinaide,” he gasped.Beloved.
My mother used to call me that. My mother, who sought the eternal spring. My mother, who had been too late.
I stared in shock, consumed by the horror of what I had done. Lei’s face was growing pale from blood loss, his fingers pressing against the wound, slick with crimson. And yet, beneath the haze of pain in his eyes, his love for me endured, unbroken. He loved me, even now. And this was how I repaid him.
My hunger for power poisoned everything it touched, driving me to destroy the very things that mattered most.
It struck me then how foolish I’d been. All along, I’d had a life outside my power. Those who loved me loved me regardless of my strength. When I died, and we would all die, it did not matter if I was remembered as a hero or as a villain, or if I was remembered at all. This was the true price of power—that no matter how pure your intentions, relinquishing it was the hardest thing in the world.
So I didn’t think about it. I didn’t try to make the rational decision, or kneel and beg, or fight and inflict pain. I simply seized Lei, and then, as he’d once done, I threw us both into the water.
I was burning, burning andfreezing all at once. Sensations crashed over me, too manifold to isolate. I felt my jade splinter, and my bones unravel. I heard the dragon’s hoarse screams in my ears, his childlike pleas for relief as he curled deeper upon himself, trying to hide from the pain of severance. I screamed until I could not scream any longer. All the while, my memories blazed through me like falling stars.
“You’re a sharp one, aren’t you? Remember, beauty is the wisdom of women. You have a pretty face. Be grateful to the gods. Your mouth will be prettier if you keep it shut.”
“We’re going to war tomorrow. And I’ll be damned if I die because one of the soldiers who was supposed to have my back was off getting smashed instead. You can sabotage yourself in your own time. But don’t bring the rest of us into this.”
“Then you should have died an honorable death, instead of shaming your family name. There is no mercy for those who forsake their duty.”
“Winter told me to look after you. That you could become Anlai’s most important weapon one day.”
“You hate me, but you’re the only one who understands me. Do you know—the greatest injustice the warlord did to me was not in murdering my family? It was in letting me live. Do you know what agony it is to live at the expense of others? No? I will show you.”
“Everyone wants change, but no one wants to pay the price of revolution.”
“I told you what I am. But what I didn’t tell you is this—if they had taken your life today, I would have hunted down every last one of them. Iwould have scoured the Three Kingdoms for every soul responsible—and I would have given each of them a slow, slow death. And then, once I was finished, I would have followed you to the afterlife. I would have found you, and dragged you back from the hands of Death itself.”
I felt myself descend deeper and deeper into myself. I saw myself in the Forbidden City, wondering if I could use Sky as my means to the throne. I saw myself in the Three Kingdoms War, wondering if I could save all of Anlai to prove myself a hero. And I saw myself as a little girl, wondering what it felt like for the entire world to surrender at your feet. That little girl had been the first to aspire for more. To crave, deep down, fame and respect and power. It had been her voice that had called to the dragon, that had felt his greed—and matched it.
Since then, my ambition had lifted me to soaring heights—and plunged me into the blackest depths. It had once been just a part of me, but now, under the dragon’s influence, who was I without it? Could I be more than my ambition again? Could I be my kindness, my loyalty, my fondness for the sun? Could I be the little girl who once loved freely, who gave without expecting anything in return?
I plummeted into the depths of the spring, which ran so deep it blurred into the spirit realm. Blinking awake at the flickering lights around me, I understood that I would miss this place. It was beautiful and terrifying, gentle and unknowable. Never again would I return to this realm of shadow and light, this realm that knew all my secrets and still treasured them, hid them, guarded them with all the secrecy of a jealous mistress.
At the mountain’s peak, I came upon a pool of golden water. A young woman was swimming within it.
And I would never see my mother again.
She emerged from the water, her skin glistening like polished stone. When she saw me, she smiled, slicking her damp hair back.Her face, forever youthful in this world, now appeared younger than mine.
I would age. I would age and grow old and die, and still she would remain here, separated from time.
And I would never see her again.
“Qinaide,” she said. “So you’ve come to say goodbye.”
She was both the mother I’d known and the young woman I never knew. She was wise and loving but also reckless and fickle. There was still so much I did not know about her. There was so much I would never know.
“I don’t want to go,” I told her imploringly. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“Everything has its time, Meilin,” my mother said, and I remembered how stern she could be, even when I only wished for comfort. “It’s time for you to let go.”
“But how can I live without my power? How can I live without you?”
She pushed herself up to sit beside me on the bank, our legs dangling in the golden water. Here in the spirit world, the pool was a warped reflection of its twin in the human realm. Like yin to yang, the two would touch, but never cross.
