Its residual light spilled onto Erascius’s face as he stared at the sky: high brows and nose, blue eyes limned with the eerie, fading glow, pale hair slicked back with rain.
Lan pulled him to her, dug her heels into the edge of the mountain, and pushed off. The ground disappeared beneath them into a spiral of fog, rain, and darkness.
They fell.
She thought she heard Dilaya scream, Tai shouting after her, but the world had shifted into a blur of gray and the roar of wind. Hands, slippery with rain, wrestling with each other. Lan hooked her leg over Erascius’s, pressing her face close to his so that, in the maelstrom all around them,shewas one thing he would not forget before his death.
Holding tightly to her ocarina, she fumbled for her dagger with her other hand. Yet in the vertigo of their fall, it was impossible to get a good grip. The tip of That Which Cuts Stars pressed against Erascius’s armor, and slid off.
Elantian metal—impenetrable.
Rushing up to meet them was the cold, hard ground, the promise of swift death. He had armor on and she, nothing—but just like practitioners, even an Elantian Royal Magician could not fly.
In the end, neither of them were gods.
Lan lifted her gaze to the man who had killed her mother and destroyed her kingdom. “Look at me,” she hissed in their language, “so even when we pass into the next world, you’ll not forget my face.”
Erascius’s expression was contorted in sheer fury.
Through the fog they tumbled, toward the forest of pines and evergreens beneath Skies’ End.
Kingdom before life,Lan thought,honor into death.She would go into her death with her eyes wide open.
That was how she saw the night itself carve open before her to swallow her whole.
—
Arms made of shadows encircled her, pulling her back, slowing her fall. Her limbs were pried away from Erascius’s. She heard the magician shout in fury, but the wind was roaring tooloudly in her ears, and the streaks of black in her vision had taken on the shape of…flames. The jagged pines and sharp crags beneath her drew distant as her trajectory changed.
She was no longer falling. She was flying.
Steady hands cradled her head, turning her away from the ending that awaited Erascius.
Zen’s face was pale, expressionless, like a porcelain figure etched in black and white. His eyes were downcast, perhaps closed, lashes and eyebrows a curved sweep of ink. Those dark flames wreathed his body, burning him with a fire Lan could not feel.
They soared, and even the rain parted to let them through. Overhead, a shadow the size of a mountain obscured the stars. Its qì enveloped her in an ocean. All too soon, they were falling, sinking slowly and impossibly. Lan was soaked through with rain, and the wind at her back should have been freezing—yet Zen’s arms around her shielded her, lending her warmth.
She closed her eyes and let her cheek rest against his shoulder. He was alive, he wasalive.She could not be sure whether it was boy or god in control—but from the way he held her, she wanted to think there was some form of the boy who had loved her inside after all.
They landed in the shadow of a cliff, softly. Zen knelt. Hispractitioner’s robes rippled around him in an invisible breeze, and Lan felt the qì surrounding them retreat.
Lan drew her hand back from his side. His bleeding had slowed. There was a healing Seal on the wound where she had stabbed him—and she knew its owner.
“Shàn’jun.” Her voice cracked. “Is he alive?”
Zen gave no indication he heard her.
“Zen,” Lan said. No response. She raised her voice, and it broke in her desperation. “Zen.ZEN.”
She grabbed his face, hard enough so that her nails dug into his skin. Tipped his chin up to look at her.
His eyes were black. Blank. His face, unmoving, might have been the most beautiful statue wrought. Rain carved a trail down his cheeks. And yet, Lan suddenly noticed, the air was dry. This was the power of a god: to stop even the spin of clouds, the nature of the earth itself.
Those practitioners who borrowed the power of the Demon Gods paid the price with their bodies, minds, and souls.
“Stop it,” Lan said suddenly, and struck him squarely on his face. “Zen,stop it.” Again. “Stop channeling its power!” And again. Over and over, until her palms stung and her blows grew weak. Zen knelt without response, taking her blows without a single blink.
The demonic qì, filled with a terrifying amount of yin and raw power, continued to pulse from him.
