Lan cut Zen a glance. “Prove it, then.”
“Prove what?”
“Prove that you tell the truth.” She did not need to further press on the memory of his betrayal. “If you agree that the Demon Gods must be destroyed in the end, you must agree that I have to conjure the Godslayer. I failed today. Help me.”
Zen studied her for several heartbeats. “Tell me how,” he said, simply and readily, as though he had been prepared to offer this all along.
She pointed. “That book in your hands can guide me to conjure a full Godslayer. The Yuè immortal told me that I needed to understand the truth of it before I could wield it.”
Zen’s thumb brushed a caress over theClassic of Gods and Demons.Then he drew a breath and held it out to her. A tentative invitation. A fragile truce.
Lan stared at it. Once she would have approached him without a second thought. Now that trust, that certainty that he would never do anything to harm her, was gone. Broken in a single night, when it had taken so many nights to build.
But perhaps there was truth to what he’d said. Perhaps the act of taking a Seed of Clarity had shaken his faith in the path he had been so ardently pursuing at the expense of everything else in his life.
And perhaps…
How else are we meant to take down the Elantians?
The question she hadn’t been able to answer had nagged at her throughout their conversation. If they held the only beings powerful enough to stand against the Elantian regime, could they truly throw all that away without trying? If there was a chance she could conjure the Godslayer, didn’t that mean she could put an end to it all?
The first shamans gifted the Godslayer to a keeper, intending for them to use it as a last resort should the power of the Demon Gods ever spiral out of control,Dé’zihad once told her.The Godslayer was a means to maintain balance in this world.
She had been so adamant about pursuing the path that did not involve using the Demon Gods’ power that she hadn’t paused to consider whether there was something she had missed.
Yin and yáng. Good and evil. Great and terrible. Two sides of the same coin, Lián’ér, and somewhere in the center of it all liespower.The solution is to find the balance between them.
She looked at Zen, the moonlight carving him into shadows and light. Her gaze flicked to the rosewood sliding doors. Beyond, Dilaya and the residents of Shaklahira would be cleaning up after dinner and taking turns patrolling the perimeters of the palace. She thought of Tai’s declaration of hownormalthings had seemed. In a sense, Sòng Lián wanted nothing more than to run past Zen and bury herself in thenormalcyof it all, in the dishes to be washed and the water to be changed and the sheets to be cleaned. And for a heartbeat, she wondered whether, given the choice, she would return to the teahouse in Haak’gong as an obscure songgirl dreaming of a freedom she could never have.
No.She was hereforthe common songgirls. For the ones who had died at the hands of the Elantians, the villagers whosehomes had been destroyed, the masters at Skies’ End who had died to protect a sliver of a chance at freedom, whose hopes and deaths she carried.
And what a heavy weight it was.
Lan exhaled and moved forward in the same beat, closing the distance between her and Zen. Setting her hand against his fingers, the book beneath both their palms, felt like touching fire and ice at the same time.
“All right,” she said softly.
“This tome I discovered in the palace that once belonged to my ancestors,” he said. “I confess, I have not yet read through its entirety, as half was in Hóng’yì’s possession. But I would be willing to read it with you.” Zen looked out the open floor-to-ceiling shutters. When his gaze returned to her, it was gentle. Hopeful.
“It’s a beautiful night,” he said. “Would you take a walk with me?”
It was a beautiful night, Lan had to agree. She wondered how many more nights like these they had left. “All right,” she repeated.
The sand was soft beneath their boots, the desert air cooling. Constellations burned in the sky, so much more visible now that the palace lights were out and they were surrounded by nothing but vast dunes for miles and miles. As Lan fell into step by Zen’s side, it was as though time flowed backward, their rift mending. Their sleeves brushed against each other, the silence comfortable, almost familiar. The breeze carried to her his familiar scent of night and flame, and she realized how much she had ached for it.
For the first time in a long time, Sòng Lián looked at Xan Temurezen and saw, in his silhouette, the boy she had fallen in love with once upon a misty mountain.
All endings are found in beginnings.
—Hin proverb
They made conversation as they walked together across the sand. Lan was quieter at first, hesitant to reveal anything more about her travels with the memory of his betrayal still at the front of her mind. So, for the first time since they had known each other, Zen talked more.
He talked about his childhood on the steppes, of how the cousins would steal each other’s prized fermented mare’s milk, of how they would sneak out of their yurts and read the constellations at night. She listened to the steady, low timbre of his voice, darting glances at him every so often. His profile was limned in moonlight, and his eyes seemed to dance with stars when he spoke of his homeland.
“I’ve never learned the constellations,” Lan said. “I learned poems and sonnets—and arithmetic.” She made a face.
Zen looked at her. “The stars are full of stories,” he said. “Come, I’ll teach you.” To her astonishment, he flopped down where he stood, sinking into the soft white sand. He smiled up at her. “Lie down.”
