Lan turned her head, ignoring the sharp streaks of pain that shot through her teeth. Next to her, half a cheek in the mud, black hair spilling like streaks of ink over his face, was the boy.
He was utterly still but for the shallow rise and fall of his back. Blood trickled gently from his temple and from his nose; his skin was ashen. His coat pooled around him like a puddle of dark water.
They were alive.
Yet there was something different, somethingclearerabout the world, as though she’d held a cracked-glass view of it her entire life and the fall had jolted everything into alignment. She couldfeeleach raindrop spiraling from the sky, the dampness soaking into the earth beneath her, the cold currents of wind brushing between bamboo leaves that were now somehow, impossibly,alive.A strange hum of energies from the forest, the water, the clouds that came together into the purest harmony of a song.
It was as though the world had finally awakened…or perhapsshehad been the one asleep all along.
Lan closed her eyes, pressing her fingers to her temple. She must have hit her head hard.
She pushed herself into a sitting position, her bones protesting. With some difficulty, she turned the boy over onto his back.
It was when she grabbed a portion of her sleeve to clean his wounds that she caught sight of her left arm. The world slipped from her, and she had to grasp her midriff to keep from throwing up.
It looked as though someone had injected molten silver into her veins and her scar: it puckered from her flesh, grayand glinting beneath a thin layer of skin, bleeding out into the rest of her arm like the roots of a sick, twisted tree. Rain slicking her hair and streaking down her face, she sat staring at her mangled arm until a shadow stirred by her side.
The boy had awoken and sat up. He wiped mud and rainwater from his face and blinked blearily at her. His gaze sharpened. “Four Gods,” he whispered. “Your qì…”
“What?” she croaked.
He stared at her a few moments more, then his gaze caught on her arm.
“Let me see that.” His voice was husky from exhaustion, yet still carefully controlled. Giving away nothing.
Lan swallowed and held her arm out to him. She tried not to flinch as his fingers brushed her skin.
The boy’s eyes flicked up to hers. Without a word, he drew his hands back and let them rest in his lap. He leaned over her arm, staring at it for a very long time. When he spoke, his expression was inscrutable. “I believe the Elantian magician injected a metalwork spell into your veins in an attempt to break the Seal on your arm. If not treated, it will seep into your blood and eventually kill you.”
The words fell dully against her ears. Lan squeezed her eyes shut briefly, but that did not stop the flashes of images that ran through her mind: Ying, her body splitting beneath the Winter Magician’s magic. The White Angel’s hands all over her, tearing into the fabric of her dress.
Her mother, bleeding to death on the rosewood floor of their home.
After twelve cycles of her running and hiding, the Elantians had, once again, destroyed a small piece of refuge she’d found in the storm. They’d killed the only people left in this world she cared for. Her clothes hung like rags over her, bareshoulders and back exposed, her body having come within a hairsbreadth of being violated.
If she lived, that was the kind of life that awaited her: splintered fragments of a half existence in a pillaged land, at the mercy of the Elantian conquerors like rats in a cage.
The rain on her cheeks warmed. “I don’t”—she choked—“Idon’t want this life…”
Something heavy draped over her shoulders. The boy crouched before her; he’d wrapped his cloak around her. With one sleeve, he began to dab at her face, pausing every now and then to gauge her reaction. She let him, let the rain wash over her and numb her as he wiped away the blood from her cheeks and her split lip. He was gentle, careful, and efficient, each swipe of fabric cleansing away the memory of Elantian hands.
When he finished, the boy drew back and folded his fingers together. “I know how it feels,” he said quietly. “I know how it feels to have everything taken from you. And I know how difficult it is…to continue to live.”
She looked up at him then, arms wrapped tightly around herself. There was nothing of the foreign, ancient blackness to his eyes as he gazed back, face marshaled and restrained. There was no kindness either, only a hard, bladed empathy.
“But you must remember that, should you choose to live, you do not live only for yourself.” He made a gesture as though to touch his heart. “You live for those you have lost. You carry their legacies inside you. You see, the Elantians destroyed everything that made the roots of our kingdom: our culture, our education, our families and principles. They wish to take us out on our knees, to subdue us so that we will never lift our heads again.
“But what they do not know is that, so long as we live on,we carry inside us all that they have destroyed. And that is our triumph; that is our rebellion.” Rain clung to his lashes as neither of them broke their gaze. “Do not let them win today.”
She closed her eyes, and he let her cry in silence, the rain muffling any sound she might have made. When her shoulders stilled and her ragged breaths grew calm, Lan lifted her head again. She drew the cloak tighter over her shoulders and glanced at the boy, suddenly aware that he was sitting in nothing but a thin white shirt in the rain. The broadcloth was soaked and semi-transparent, outlining the lean, corded muscles of his torso like a charcoal sketch. One side was torn; blood had spread across it like an ugly inkblot.
“Can you fix my arm?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
His gaze snapped back to her, and she saw thoughts of his own dissipating like smoke from his eyes. “I cannot. But if youtrust me, I can put a temporary Seal on the metal—and your qì.”
“My…qì?”
His expression was shrewd. “You really do not know?”
