“If you will not give me your power, then I will take it for myself.”
Even the purest of love is not immune to poison. It can twist and mutate into something monstrous with enough obsession and control. Human hearts are far more susceptible to rot. And when love gives way to possession—it is no longer love at all.
The emperor draws his blade and carves out the young prince’s heart. He devours it whole, consuming the blue dragon’s magic and every fragment of his soul in a mere four bites. He is unfazed when their red thread of fate suddenly cuts clean through, their connection broken now, an ugly, unfeeling gray.
After all, who needs their Fated One when they can have wealth and power and immortality?
Where once he was regarded as a hero to his people, the emperor’s reign begins to take a darker turn. Without his Fated One, he is erratic, teetering on the edge of madness. He tries and fails to fill the void where the blue dragon once stood, instead filling his life with riches and with those who will serve his every whim. The emperor craves total domination over his subjects, over his lands, and even the kingdoms just beyond his reach….
But he realizes slowly, and all too late, that nothing will ever satisfy his now-fractured heart. He consumes everything in his path, the well-being of others be damned, all in the hopes that he will one day be free of the insidious, self-inflicted emptiness within.
Part 4The Emperor
35
It isn’t true,” Jyn says.“They say red threads of fate can stretch and tangle, but never break—but that’s not true.”
I hold my breath. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a way to sever the connection.”
My heart lodges in my throat. I think back, remembering the emperor’s severed gray thread. I didn’t understand back then, but now I fear the worst.
“Tell me,” I whisper, my voice raspy and foreign to my own ears.
“It’s a deliberate choice,” she explains, impossibly soft. “A permanent one.”
I grasp Jyn by the shoulders, pressing my forehead to hers. “Please, just tell me.”
She takes a deep breath, a long pause. “It happens when one half of a soul chooses to reject the other by their own hands. The level of malice it takes to carry out the task… It’s enough to destroy any divine bond.”
The words fall from my lips. “You meanmurder.”
“Yes. That monster murdered our son. His love of power was far more intoxicating than his love for his Fated One. A-Qian gaveand gave and gave himself away to that beast, and it still wasn’t enough to keep him satisfied.”
I take a step back, aghast. “Then the emperor and the stranger…”
Tears stream down her reddened cheeks. “The soul resides in the heart. That demon carved it out from our son while he was still alive and swallowed every last bite. Even if A-Qian wished to return, his soul was fragmented, the pieces trapped within he who consumed him.”
My stomach roils—I worry that I might be sick. “No.”
Jyn runs her fingers through her hair, distress radiating off her in racking sobs. “His thirst for power couldn’t be quenched. He could no longer use our son for his own gain, so he came for us. He arrived with an army of a thousand men near six millennia ago. They tore off your tail, ripped your tongue from your mouth. They pummeled us with cannon fire and speared you through the chest.”
It feels as though I have swallowed a million tiny shards of glass. “What happened next? How did we escape?” I cup her face in my hands, everything in the current moment falling away. “I must know,” I murmur. “Please, tell me.”
The guilt that shadows her expression nearly rips me in two.
“I don’t know how we managed it,” she blurts out. “We fled to the mountains, but your injuries… You bled to death in my arms, Sai. I watched our connection turn black and crumble away as your body turned cold. And when I had to leave you behind, humans swarmed your body like ants. I had to watch as they took pieces of you, bit by bit, all for themselves.”
My soul aches. I can’t imagine living with this tragedy for as long as she has.
“But I came back, did I not?” I ask gently. “At the Steps of Heaven, I chose to come back. Every time.”
Jyn nods, but she refuses to meet my eyes. “You did. The first time you were reborn, I discovered a new red thread wrappedaround my finger. I knew it was you in an instant, so I set out to find you—but that was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re cursed to relive an eternal tragedy.”
