Hóng’yì blinked slowly. “Practitioning cannot be without the three layers of qì,” he said, and she noticed he avoided her question. “Your qì comes from your core, your soul. You layer a Seal with will, intent, and emotions—which come from the mind. The last layer is the actual performance of the Seal, drawing upon our physical world. This is why certain monksand practitioners spend lifetimes cultivating their minds and souls, seeking out the sutras across various disciplines of practitioning to achieve enlightenment.” The lantern flickered red against his cheekbones, his lashes, as he leaned forward. “I’d like you to learn this, Lán’ér, because I’d like us to be allies, at the very least. And I want you to be powerful.”
She thought of what he had said last night: that he wished to be allies, that he wished to fight to take their kingdom back and change the future. There were still parts of the picture missing, but she would find them piece by piece.
Lan looked into the prince’s eyes. “Again,” she said.
A smile broke on his face, as though he had found something both surprising and delightful in her. Hóng’yì reached forward and tipped her face to his. This time, she sensed the exact moment his qì wove into her thoughts.
And she was still powerless to stop it.
A torrent of sounds and colors swept her away, but in their midst, a pair of hands found her. Crimson billowed in her vision, and Hóng’yì appeared again. He drew her toward him, and together, they fell backward into a source of light.
She stood on smooth pine floors. A gentle breeze drifted through the bamboo blinds between rosewood pillars, moonlight pouring in like a river. From outside came the sound of cicadas and a waterfall.
The Chamber of Waterfall Thoughts. She was at the School of the White Pines.
For some reason, Lan felt a surge of unimaginable grief.
“You’re holding it too tightly.”
Suddenly there was a young man sitting next to her. She realized she was clutching a horsetail brush in her hand, a pot of ground black ink shimmering before her. His fingers were curved over hers, and her heart skipped a beat before she evenrealized what was happening. They were so close that she could see the freckles on his skin, smell the scent of roses on his breath. Roses…and smoke.
The fragrance stirred something inside her.
“How did you best my water demon?” he asked.
The pot of ink swelled, and suddenly before them was a crescent-shaped spring the color of sapphire, reflecting the moon and stars. The reflections glowed brighter and brighter, the silver fluorescence gathering into a long, serpentine shape; the surface of the water began to ripple, qì surging from it—
The Silver Dragon burst from the spring, scales shimmering like snow. It reared to encompass the night sky, brighter than any moon or stars. As water sluiced off its body, demonic qì rolled from it in waves.
The young man’s lips had parted. He had let her hand fall from his grasp as he gazed up at the Demon God—at Lan’s greatest secret—with rapture on his face.
Wake up.The Silver Dragon turned its pale blue eyes to Lan.WAKE UP.
Its words jolted through her. She looked at the young man next to her—Hóng’yì, the imperial heir—just as the Dragon dove at them, its qì smashing through the illusion like a blade through paper. Hóng’yì was flung back, caught off guard—and Lan followed him.
This time, she grasped the strands of qì he had woven into her own thoughts—and she flung them back at him.
It was like being on the other side of the looking glass. As Lan fell into the qì of Hóng’yì’s mind, his streams of consciousness swirled around her. She saw a palace in flames against the night, a tangle of desert roses dancing in fire without burning. In the acrid smoke and searing heat, there was a shadow in the shape of a young man cloaked in a crimson páo. Behind him, through her watering eyes, Lan saw great, fiery wingsunfolding against a black night sky. A phoenix—the Crimson Phoenix—rising from ashes like a plume of heavenly fire, its qì so massive she could feel herself burning from the inside. It turned its gaze to her, and it was like looking into the sun. Its beak opened in a deafening screech—
—and just like that, it was over. She had fallen onto the floor and was staring at the legs of expensive yellow rosewood chairs. Her páo stuck to her body. She was gasping.
She had glimpsed the fourth and final Demon God, the Crimson Phoenix.
And Hóng’yì had seen the Silver Dragon hidden within her.
He was still in his seat, bent over his desk and gripping its edges so hard his knuckles had turned white. He, too, was panting, and as he lifted his gaze to meet hers, the truth sizzled between them like lightning.
Hóng’yì swiped a hand across his forehead. “I think I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life,” he said softly.
She stared at him, her head swimming. He had lied about almost everything. About how his father had died and the Crimson Phoenix—the power of the imperial household—had been lost that night. How he had fled the Elantian invasion, weakened and sick.
All along, the Crimson Phoenix had been bound to him.
Lan had assumed that those preceding Hóng’yì in the imperial family had been corrupted by the influence of the Phoenix, much as Xan Tolürigin had lost his mind to the Black Tortoise. Lan studied this prince’s face in all its shadows and light. How much of him was truly him, and how much of his will had been taken over by his Demon God? She recalled, with an ache in her chest, how Zen had fought against the Black Tortoise’s possession. How there had been moments of lucidity that werehim…and stretches of time when she’d known the being looking back at her was inhuman.
In the lantern light, Hóng’yì’s face had grown wan. His qì flickered; beneath that was the slow rumbling of another, greater power. Demonic qì.
The prince stumbled to a cabinet at the back of his study. He traced a burning Seal in the air to unlock it. Lan heard the clink of porcelain as he opened the lid to a small jar. She recognized it: a servant had brought it out to him the first night of their dinner.
