Xan Tolürigin had lost his mind to this being and killed thousands of innocent Hin. Kneeling at the cliff’s edge, clutching his stomach as he retched, Zen finally understood something. When he had chosen the Black Tortoise, he had chosen unbridled power, and unbridled power was destruction. He would win the war, perhaps, but only by destroying everything around him, beginning with himself. His soul.
Then so be it. He had made his choice, set down this path. There was no turning back now.
Trembling, Zen dragged himself up and wiped his mouth against his sleeve. He picked up the seed from the ground. It pulsed beneath his touch, beating like a heart, like a thingalive.
He lifted it to his lips. His hand was shaking so hard, he thought he might miss.
Then he tipped his head back and swallowed.
It began with a burning sensation in his stomach. It spread through his veins, until he thought his bones would melt from the heat. And then that heat shifted, becoming a rush of what could only be described as vitality. His cuts and bruises glossed over, leaving alabaster-smooth skin; the scar on his abdomen from the wound Lan had inflicted shrank until there was nothing left but corded muscle. He felt it, too, in his mind and in his core: an intoxicating sense of strength, as though he’d been born anew.
The ominous presence that always lingered at the edges of his consciousness flared, the Black Tortoise’s great eye settling on him.
It seems I underestimated you, Xan Temurezen,it said. The golden glow was beginning to eat away at the Demon God’s shadow, too, like a piece of parchment burning to its end.Of allthe deeds my other binders have committed, this perhaps outranks them all. The question is: Will you submit to a lifetime of this? Will you reap more souls than you have bargained to me, for the sake of your own life?
There was a low rumble of a laugh, and then the shadow vanished as Zen’s core overpowered the Demon God’s with his newfound golden vitality.
Zen breathed in deeply. His head was clearer than it had been in a long time, his body fully healed and strong, his qì replenished to the brim.
He was himself again.
And he hated every bit of it.
If you strike the grass, you startle the snake.
—Lady Nuru AlaŠuraya of the Jorshen Steel clan,Classic of War
Lan awoke early the next morning to a feeling she couldn’t quite place. Darkness poured through the cracks of her wooden shutters, dawn still a bell or so away. In these ghost hours between night and day, the desert was so silent, it was almost stifling—no chirp of crickets, no song of birds, not even sandsong to break the stillness. There was something in the air that was deeply unsettling to her core.
A shadow by her bed moved. Lan had just grabbed her ocarina when a hand clapped over her mouth. It smelled familiar: sword steel. A gray eye flashed in the darkness, a curved crimson mouth.
“It’s me,” Dilaya hissed.
Lan rolled her eyes as her friend withdrew her hand. “Rather than descending upon me like an assassin in the night, did you think of knocking on the doors first?”
“No, but I think of knockingyouout with every clever retort you give.” Dilaya’s tone turned urgent. “Where have youbeen?”
Quickly, Lan filled her friend in on how she had spent the day learning the practitioning art that allowed access to the mind and to thoughts. How this art had been passed down through Hóng’yì’s bloodline. Dilaya’s mouth grew slacker and slacker with disbelief until finally she let out an audible noise when Lan spoke of her betrothal to the imperial heir.
“This is an alliance we need,” Lan said, and drove her point home: “He has the Crimson Phoenix, Dilaya.”
Dilaya drew Falcon’s Claw in a flash of steel. “That rabbit-whelpedbastardof a coward! He’s had a Demon God bound to him all along, and he chose to stay holed up in this delusional realm of comforts?”
“He’s at the mercy of the Phoenix, Dilaya. He must be. We don’t know how much control it already holds over him.” Lan’s fingers twisted on her silk bedsheets as she thought of Zen, of his great-grandfather the Nightslayer. “The Demon Gods corrupt their binders over time as the binders continue to call on the gods’ power.”
“Peoplemake those choices, Sòng Lián,” Dilaya retorted, pointing her sword dramatically at Lan. “No matter how much you still love him,Temurezenmade the choice to bind the Black Tortoise. Hechoseto betray and forsake you for power.”
Lan inhaled sharply and looked away.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Dilaya mumbled, as close to an apology as she would get. Awkwardly, she sheathed her sword. “By way of example, you have the Silver Dragon bound to you, but you are not in danger of losing yourself to it.”
Lan made sure the Dragon’s access to her thoughts was cutoff before she responded. “My bargain with it is different,”she said quietly. “The Dragon is sworn to my mother’s soul. She made it promise to protect me.” Lan made no mention of the new bargain she had made with the Dragon: thatshe had promised her own soul in exchange for freedom for her mother’s. When Lan died—as all demonic bargains ended—the Dragon would consume her soul and let go of her mother’s. “I’ve seen it, Dilaya. Zen made the choice he made, and I hate him for that, but…when I saw him again in Nakkar, he was fighting the Black Tortoise’s grasp with every fiber of his being.”
“Regardless, the people who bind these Demon Gods have a say in how much power they use from their bargains,” Dilaya said stubbornly. “Not to mention, Hóng’yì lied to us when he spoke of his escape from the Elantian invasion twelve cycles ago. He’s hiding something.”
“That’s why I agreed to the engagement,” Lan said. “I need him to trust me. He is the living heir to the imperial line. Whatever secrets they carried, he is our last hope. I plan to get closer to him so I can find out what he knows.”
Dilaya pursed her lips but gave no counterargument. She looked distracted. Worried. “Chó Tài’s missing,” she said, blinking, then turned her face to the fretwork shutters.
