Lan looked up, her hand on the hilt of That Which Cuts Stars. The blade wedged between his ribs. Her hands red with blood.
“You told me not to miss,” she said. “I didn’t.”
She twisted, then pulled the blade out.
Emotion must never drive war, for anger will fade and vanity is empty, yet kingdoms lost and lives destroyed will never come to be again.
—General Nuru Ala Šuzhan of the Jorshen Steel clan,Classic of War
Zen slumped forward. Blood dripped from his mouth and from the wound in his chest, running in rivulets through the soil at the base of Skies’ End. The shadows in his eyes cleared, and when he looked up at her, hair slicked to his face from rain, she knew with certainty she gazed at the boy she had fallen for back in a mist-cloaked village.
His lips curved into a slow, faint smile. “Better…than teacups,” he whispered.
Then Zen collapsed in the mud. His eyes fluttered shut.
Lan’s hands shook; the knife she clutched wept red. It was these last words that had unhinged her. A reminder of the good times, the future she had hoped for before their fates had become a tangle of star-crossed lines.
You aim for the demon’s core of qì —the equivalent to our hearts.His hand, once so gentle and steady on hers. Pointing the tip at his own chest.Then you pierce.
The question was, had she cut the demon’s core, or had she pierced Zen’s heart? Or both?
What have I done?Lan thrust That Which Cuts Stars to the ground as though burned. It landed in a puddle by Zen’s motionless body.What have I done?
“Lan’mèi!”
Shàn’jun’s voice jolted her from her reverie. The Medicine disciple emerged from the rain, hands bloody, face ashen. Behind him, Tai appeared, hair plastered to his forehead and out of breath from having come down the steps.
“Everyone felt it,” the Spirit Summoner panted. “Two massive bursts of qì, exploding from the base. I came to find Shàn’jun. What happened?”
“Please, help him,” Lan whispered.
Shàn’jun knelt by Zen. “There is a pulse,” he said, and drew out his satchel. “And so there is a way. Tài’ge, light, please.”
The Spirit Summoner knelt by Lan and held up a lotus lamp. With a few gestures, he drew a Seal for fire. His gaze was steady as he watched Shàn’jun work. “Shàn’jun,” he said. “The Boundary Seal. We must get behind the Boundary Seal.”
“I cannot,” came the Medicine disciple’s faint reply. His lips were pressed together, his brows furrowed, his hands flitting between vials and needles and packs of herbs. “The Boundary Seal has closed itself against Zen.”
Lan thought again of Zen ripping open her mother’s Seal, as that brilliant white light—the same she had seen at Mama’s death, at the Teahouse, and then when she first met Dilaya at the Chamber of a Hundred Healings—exploded from her. This time when she reached inside herself, she could feel its presence coiled over her heart, its core of qì pulsing lightly as it sent energies through her blood and flesh.
All along, there was a final secret that Mama Sealed inside me.The fact wrapped itself around her and squeezed so tight that she could barely breathe.The Silver Dragon.
Looking up at the Demon God, she’d felt a sense of fear,yet beneath it there had been a thrumming undercurrent of awe. She might have understood, then, Zen’s decision. How the power and majesty of the Black Tortoise had seduced him, won him over in the end.
But Lan knew that Mama hadn’t Sealed the Silver Dragon within her for her to wield its power.
She had given Lan this Demon God for Lan todestroyit.
“Shàn’jun, listen. Listen to me,” Tai said. “The masters have set up the lines of defense according to the Thirty-Fifth Stratagem inside the Boundary Seal. Do not ask me to watch you risk your life.”
“And do not ask me to abandon my duty,” Shàn’jun replied. His tone was soft, his eyes steady as he looked at Tai. “Zen holds the Black Tortoise within him, Tài’ge. I must save him…I must try.”
“He will heal,” Tai said stubbornly. “His Demon God will heal him.”
“He won’t.” Lan’s voice cracked. She held up That Which Cuts Stars. “I used this.”
Tai’s expression immediately tightened. “You,” he said in a hollow tone. “You have done the worst thing possible. That blade. That blade does not destroy a demon’s core. It merely cuts off its demonic qì temporarily. It maims both binder and demon. Do you know—do you know what happens if Zen dies?”
Lan did not wish to know.
