“They are fighting.” He could sense the clashes of their energies.
“And Dilaya, the masters, the disciples—”
“—will be safe. My Forty-Four will protect them.” Zen took Lan’s hand. Her head snapped back to him, her eyes wide.
“All Four Demon Gods are here tonight,” she said. Her thumb gave an involuntary stroke of her ocarina as she gazed back to the city, her face outlined in the red and blue glow of the Demon Gods as they clashed.
“Yes,” Zen said steadily. “Sòng Lián.” Perhaps it was the way he spoke her name that made her look at him again. “I have one more favor to ask you.”
Lan searched his face. “What is it?” she asked, a small crease between her brows.
“Make sure your Demon God is not listening,” he said.
Her frown deepened, but she pressed her lips together and gave a small nod.
He had thought this through a hundred times; there was no fault to his plan. “A demonic bargain can be broken upon mutual agreement between the binder and the demon,” Zen began carefully. “You found this out through Hóng’yì’s memory: his father and the Phoenix broke the bargain by mutual agreement, knowing the emperor’s health was frail and the Phoenix could move on to a stronger soul. And the Phoenix relinquished the emperor’s soul.” He paused a beat, then made his demand. “Give me the Silver Dragon.”
“You’re mad,” she said.
“The Dragon’s bargain is formed with the soul of your mother. Not yours.”
“I changed the terms of the bargain—”
“When you reach the end of your bargain, it will releaseyour mother’s soul and take yours instead,” he said, and her eyes flashed. “You told me this in Shaklahira.”
“That’s right. It will takemysoul.”
“But you will never reach the end of your bargain,” Zen replied. “With the Godslayer, you willbreakthe bargain. Don’t you see, Lan?” He brushed back a lock of her hair that had fallen in her face. “Your soul was never the one the Dragon would take with it when the Godslayer released it. Your mother’s soul is the one still bound to it—until the end of your bargain.”
Her eyes grew wide as his meaning began to sink in. “I could end it now,” Lan said quietly. “Isay when it ends;Itell the Dragon when I am done, when I am ready to give up my soul. Those were the conditions.”
“End it and jeopardize conjuring the Godslayer?” He kept his voice soft. “All for what?”
Her throat bobbed. “Zen—”
He leaned forward. “Relinquish the Silver Dragon, and let me bind it instead to take down Hóng’yì and the remaining Elantian army. Once I am done, conjure the Godslayer and release the Four. Their cores—along with all the souls they have consumed—will become one with the qì of this world again.”
She stared at him, the implications of his offer clear. She would live; he would die. She would become known as the Ruin of Gods, the one who vanquished their conquerors and defeated another Mansorian demonic practitioner who had nearly destroyed the world.
“Why are you doing this?” Lan whispered.
“Because this is how it was always meant to be.” He had seen it, so clearly, like all the pieces of a puzzle fitting together. Everything they had been taught in their life, from the principles of practitioning to the lore of the Demon Gods—all of it pointed to this. “Creation and destruction, birth anddeath—everything in this world is a cycle, Lan. Two parts of a whole. And we are a part of it as well. If I am the creation of power, you must be its destruction. If I must use the power ofthe Demon Gods, you must end it.” His throat grew tight at his next words. “You are meant to live, Lan, and I am meant to die. Let me finish in the shadows so that you may continue in the light.”
Her eyes were liquid, her breath coming rapidly. Lan shook her head, a tear spilling down her cheek as she reached for him. “No, no I won’t—”
Demonic qì exploded from the capital. Against the night sky, an arc of blue cut across the black, streaking toward them like a shooting star. In a blink, Zen had drawn Lan to him and leapt back a dozen steps, toward the pines that grew on this mountaintop.
Erascius crashed onto the cliffs in a maelstrom of demonic and metallic energies. The Azure Tiger’s outline flickered overhead, like stars winking. Both were badly wounded.
Erascius looked up, wearing a very ugly expression beneath the glow of his Demon God. His eyes found them, and it was the first time Zen had seen the magician look wildly out of control. Desperate.
Erascius pointed a finger at them. “The Dragon first,” he panted. “Get the Dragon first—”
A second burst of qì cut off his words. It was as though a seam had split in the sky and the fires of the Ten Hells themselves poured upon the earth. Erascius looked up and screamed as flames consumed him, flames so powerful that even his Demon God could not defend against them.
Zen and Lan knelt in the snow, hidden amongst the pines. They held each other tightly, hearts beating in the same rhythm. But she did not tear her gaze from the Elantianmagician. And Zen, too, gazed upon the man who had carved scars across his body, and whose regime was responsible for brutalizing all the peoples of this land.
A golden glow had appeared from somewhere behind Erascius. A blood-red whip radiating fire extended from it, slashing through the air and coiling around the magician’s neck.
