Hands shaking, I reached for the key to my irons. The rain was thickening now, and it would become my instrument.
“No,” said Lei immediately, his hand closing around my wrist. “I won’t steal more of your life force.” He stepped forward and sheathed his sword. “I’m the one that you want,” he said to the soldiers, making his voice heard above the rain. “Let her go.”
This had to be Zihuan’s doing, I realized. He saw his younger brother as a formidable threat and was determined to eliminate him before he could rise to power. In that way, we were in agreement: Ming Lei was a formidable threat.
“Lei,” I ground out. “Don’t do this.”
“You paid your debt,” he told me lowly. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Then not out of debt,” I decided, “but friendship.” And I slid the key into its lock.
But before I could act, an arrow whizzed past me, embedding itself in the shoulder of a Ximing soldier.
The soldiers, lulled by our apparent defeat, were slow to react. In the time it took for them to draw their weapons, Lei cleaved one of them in two. I wondered if he’d known the soldier.
A girl with a black scarf yelled as she swung down into the longtang, skewering another soldier with a long spear. Could it be the Black Scarves? But the rebels had abandoned us, and there was no love lost between their leader and me.
“Friends of yours?” Lei asked, as he took down another soldier who’d come at me from behind. Before I could respond, I saw the knife whizzing toward me and ducked, tripping the soldier to my side so that he took the brunt of the blade.
More and more Black Scarves joined the fray, fighting with shoddily made spears, cheap throwing stars, and even rocks. But one girl—I recognized her by her gap-toothed grin.
“Lily?” I gasped, astonishment surging through me, closely tailed by fear. “What are you doing here?”
“The rebellion!” she shouted. “It’s begun!”
A migraine pounded at my temples. I squinted against it as I struck, dodged, slashed. It was a numbers game now, and this time, we had the advantage. As the rain cleared, the remaining Ximing soldiers began to retreat, and then run.
“After them!” a rebel cried out.
“No!” said Lily. “Remember Kuro’s orders!”
“Kuro?” I tensed, the sting of betrayal sharper than any battle wound. “You’re working for him now?”
“He’s the one who sent reinforcements. He’s been looking all over for you, Phoenix-Slayer.” She yanked off her drenched scarf impatiently. Her face had tanned from time spent outside the palace, and she seemed to have grown even taller in the past few months. Lily was so young, no more than sixteen. And already she was out here, killing in the name of the rebellion.
“I want a different sort of childhood for them,” I’d said to Lei the night before. “Not like the kind we had.”
And yet, what was I willing to do about it? Nothing.
“Come with me, my lady,” said Lily, before laughing. “I mean, Meilin. I’ll bring you two to meet him.” She grinned conspiratorially. “We’re planning something monumental. A way to take down every tyrant at once. Now that they’re all gathered at First Crossing, they’ve made it so easy…”
But when the other rebels surrounded us, I pulled away uneasily. “I don’t think I should go with you, Lily,” I said, taking Lei’s hand. If they were targeting monarchs, then Lei would also be in their sights. “You see, we didn’t exactly end things on good terms.”
“Nonsense,” said Lily. She leaned in, lowering her voice. “I think you’ll find Kuro’s much changed.”
I frowned. “It’s only been a month since we last saw him.”
“A lot can happen in a month.”
Kuro’s Black Scarves had setup their own camp in the network of secret catacombs running beneath the city. I hadn’t known about them, but Lei clearly had. I watched his face as we descended, and I could see the mental calculation in his gaze as he tallied up the hidden tunnels and their capacities.
Inside, the air was dank and chilly, an ever-present drip-drop of water coming from far away. Without warning, Kuro appeared in a tunnel doorway like a ghost. I jumped in fright as his giant body leered over us, the top of his head nearly skimming the ceiling.
“Phoenix-Slayer!” he exclaimed, lumbering forward with a limp he hadn’t had a month ago. He made as if to reach for me, but I drew my sword, creating distance between us.
“No, no,” he said, waving a hand in the air. “I mean no disrespect. Come in.Please.”
Lily was right—Kurohadchanged. His previous confidence and charisma had been replaced with nervous twitching. His complexion, once tawny and vigorous, was now sapped of color. Most strikingly, his eyes, formerly a vivid gold, had darkened in hue, with streaks of black now threading through the brilliance.
