“Thank you, my friend.” Kuro rose to his feet unsteadily. “You won’t regret this.”
I thought of the last time I’d tried to enter the spirit realm with another summoner. It had not ended the way I’d planned, with Chancellor Sima and I somehow falling into a third realm, the space between realms.
“The safest way to enter together,” I said, thinking aloud, “would be through a physical gate.”
Kuro nodded, glancing down at his arm, which I saw was covered in cuts. Rather than entering through a gate, he’d been drawing his own blood to enter. For efficiency, perhaps. And because up there, with the imperial families congregating in First Crossing, he was a wanted man.
“Lei,” I said, turning to him. “Will you stand guard? My body will be…unprotected.”
He nodded curtly, and I made to leave before he caught my wrist. “Are you sure about this?” he asked lowly, his familiar scent enveloping me in a cloud of cedar and jasmine. “You know the cost.”
His gaze held mine. For a moment, he let his mask slip. Worry, concern, fear, and understanding all flashed through the luminous amber of his eyes. I did not know the full extent of his Ruan abilities, and I guessed I’d never know, but I understood then that he could not truly predict the future. That he was as vulnerable and ignorant to fate as the rest of us, living day to day with nothing more than our feeble hopes and prayers to keep us from sinking underwater.
“I know the cost” was all I said.
Thirty-One
If a man dies in the realm of light, his spirit can pass on. But if he dies in the realm of dark, his spirit is destined to wander forever.
—Winter and Spring Annals, 483
We left at dusk, undercover of growing night. Our enemies were myriad: the Ximing warlord, the Anlai warlord, and everyone who hated the Black Scarves.
When we neared the spirit gate, I refused to let Lily venture any farther. She claimed to have resisted the lure before, but I was not taking chances. I allowed only Lei to accompany us, and even Kuro’s eyes went wide at the casual and effortless way the Ximing prince approached the gate, undaunted by the whisperings of the spirit realm or the teasing wind scented with lixia. The gate lay directly within a small pond, which was so clear it looked like a mirror, reflecting the darkening sky. The surface of the water shimmered, seeming to wink at us.Come in, the waters murmured.We’ve been waiting for you.
I shivered with want, with need.
Lei helped me unfasten my manacles, his hand lingering on my wrist a moment too long before letting go. I gave him a questioning look, but he only responded with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“This isn’t goodbye,” I said sternly.
“I know,” he said, though I couldn’t help but notice the way his gaze strayed to the many bodies lining the lake, some writhing, others still. All unable to enter the spirit realm, yet lost to our world. That this had become commonplace was the most disturbing fact of our new reality. No one had come to clean up the bodies. No one had dared.
Kuro and I locked eyes. His guilt was unequivocal, scarred into the drooping lines of his face. “We’ll find her,” I told him.
We stepped through together.
The immediate calm of thespirit realm washed over me, the tension of the past few weeks melting from my limbs. For the first time in what felt like ages, I took a deep, unburdened breath.
The glittering lights seemed to welcome me home. I looked wonderingly from the stirring bamboo groves to the glimmering mirror lake, which reflected the golden stars in the sky. It was a world so beautiful I wanted to weep.
It was a world so beautiful I could not bear to give it up.
“I’ve already searched all the bamboo forests,” said Kuro. “I heard that spirits like to congregate there.”
I tensed as an aimless wind drifted through the bamboo grove, so that the leaves murmured around us. Was the dragon nearing? No, I could not sense him anywhere. We were safe, for now.
“Come with me,” I said, taking Kuro’s hand.
I pulled him with me as I began to listen and search, sifting through the medley of noise to find the voice I was looking for.
Time and space moved differently here, and within seconds or days we journeyed through alpine forests, rolling grasslands and salt lakes, hot springs and humid marshes and cold, high plateaus.We heard the cries of lost children, the ramblings of madmen, the screams of terrified prey, and occasionally, the gleeful exultations of spirit summoners, reveling in their newfound power. Still Jinya was nowhere to be found.
It was in a thicket of cherry blossoms on a high mountaintop that I heard a familiar voice, but not one I had been searching for. She was sobbing profusely, clawing at the trunk of a cherry blossom tree and leaving red streaks in the wood. Her once perfect nails were now cracked and bleeding, and her pale skin marred with spidery black veins.
I went still. “Princess Ruihua.”
The composure I once admired in her had vanished. Now she reminded me of a thinly frozen pond, fragile and on the precipice of shattering.
