Lan spun. On the ground several paces from her lay Zen. In the faint light of a moon hidden behind clouds, she could make out the odd angles to his body, the blood pooling like ink beneath him, soaking into the ground.
Lan recalled the cliff’s edge where Erascius had held her, the crack of pain as he’d rammed the hilt of his knife into her head. He must have pushed her off, in a cowardly bid to flee once he’d forced the star maps from her. Must have known that Zen would have had to choose between fighting him and going after her.
And Zen had chosen her.
She knelt by him. His chest was still, his body broken in a hundred places, yet his expression was peaceful. The dim moonlight rendered him in shades of black and white. He might have simply fallen asleep.
Her breath came in shards. She couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that a lock of hair had fallen in his face, as it so often did, and how she’d always wished to brush it back for him. How she’d refrained in the past. Now her hand shook as she tucked it behind his ear. Her fingers rested against his smooth cheek, dotted with blood and growing cold.
That was how she felt the exact moment when he drew breath.
Lan started, her other hand flying to the hilt of her dagger. Zen’s lips had parted, and the second breath he gasped in was violent, shuddering through his entire broken body. Blood welled from his mouth. His eyes flew open, and they were unfathomably, endlessly black, the whites swallowed by darkness. Demonic qì billowed from him as the presence of a Demon God stirred within. The qì intensified, pulling together until she could almostseeit: a great eye the crimson of blood and war and death cracking open. A shadow looming over Zen’s body.
“No.” The word tumbled from her lips as she realized what the Black Tortoise meant to do.“Stop!”
Zen’s body had begun to mend. Cuts smoothed over as flesh knitted over wounds; the parts of him that had been bentat odd angles jerked, righting themselves, as bone rejoined bone and tendons tied together. It was nauseating—violating.
Lan unsheathed That Which Cuts Stars. The qì shifted; she sensed the being’s attention flick to her. In response, she reached out to her own Demon God.
Inside her, the Silver Dragon’s icy-blue eye opened. It took in the scene with a semblance of detached curiosity. Lan flinched as its voice wound through her mind.It would not do to interfere in this demonic bargain.
Her grip tightened on her dagger. “He didn’t agree to this,” she choked out, her voice cracking.
So long as his heart beats, their bargain holds. Unless…
Lan inhaled sharply. “Unless what?”
But the Silver Dragon’s cunning gaze turned away from her and vanished, leaving Lan alone in an ocean of demonic qì.
Their bargain.Each time Zen used the Black Tortoise’s power, the Demon God gained more control over his body, then his mind, then his soul. The Black Tortoise could have used its power to prevent Zen from hitting the ground. Instead, it had chosen to leave Zen to the brink of death and then flood him with its qì to heal him. This required the heaviest use of its power and was thus the quickest path toward gaining complete command over Zen.
Lan pressed the tip of her blade to Zen’s heart. If she severed the Demon God’s qì right now, Zen would die.
Her hands trembled. Her dagger remained where it was until the last cut on Zen’s face had healed. He lay in the moonlight, skin like porcelain against the dark pool of his own blood. Chest rising and falling against her knife.
When he opened his eyes, still completely black, Lan knew it was too late as she slid her dagger into the soft flesh of his side. He looked at her, blood trickling from his lips, and there was nothing of the Zen she’d known in that face. It was aDemon God staring back at her, its vengeful fury tempered by an age-old cunning that curved Zen’s eyes. The truth remained between them: the stars might burn and ash might rain from the skies, but Lan had not the strength to take, with her own hands, the life of the boy she had once loved.
And she hated herself for it.
The demonic qì stuttered. The black leached from Zen’s eyes until it was him, truly him, gazing up at her through a mist of pain. His lips parted; he reached out to her.
She froze. Her mind told her to pull away, to run and never look back, but her heart commanded otherwise. As his fingers, sticky with blood, cupped her cheek, she shuddered and closed her eyes. Let herself lean into his touch, even as a litany of his crimes went through her mind:Traitor. Murderer. Demonic practitioner.
As if reminding herself of all the terrible things he was and had done could bring her to hate him as she should.
His palm was gentle and warm against her skin. She knew this touch, these hands—achingly familiar and tender—that would never hurt her. This was the boy she had fallen in love with, and as Lan clasped her own hand to his, her tears might have become the rain from a memory, a distant dream.
It was simple, really.
She had given her heart to a boy.
And he had given his soul to a demon.
He no longer existed.
Energy pulsed through the air. Zen hissed a breath. Something was wrong. The shadows and darkness were seeping back into the whites of his eyes. The demonic power that had been fading was now steadily returning. The familiarity of Zen’s qì faded, drowned out as that of the Black Tortoise thrummed through his veins.
A cold, sick feeling slicked Lan’s stomach. That Which CutsStars was a dagger capable of severing demonic qì. So why hadn’t the Black Tortoise gone, as it had the last time she’d cut Zen and cut herself? Why was his qì still overpowered by that of his Demon God?
