“Àn’ying carries my title,” she whispers. “No matter how tenuous it is…she holds that right to the High Court. Hào’yáng, you understand…you must finish this.” She looks at both of us, at our joined hands. “The key to taking back the Kingdom of Rivers…is with the two of you.Together.”
“Niáng’qin.” Hào’yáng is so tense, I realize, his knuckles white against mine. “I will search for you across the realms. I will not stop looking for you—I willneverstop.”
“Promise me,” Shi’ya breathes. Her core is embers and ashes now. “Promise me you’ll stay with each other.”
And because I have nothing else to give, I give my word. “I promise.”
“I promise,” Hào’yáng echoes.
Shi’ya closes her eyes. The last light of her core flickers and dies, and as the radiance begins to drain from her skin, she starts to fade. Hào’yáng holds very still, both of us gripping her hands until they dissolve from between our fingers.
“Niáng’qin, wait for me,” he says, his voice breaking. “I will find you.Niáng!”
But she is gone. On the silks of her bed, there is nothing but a faint warmth and the fragrance of lotuses, carried away by the wind. Hào’yáng’s and my hands remain clasped together, palm to palm, fingers interlaced now that Shi’ya’s are no longer here.
Between our hands sit the last items our mother left us. Her magic lotus, pulsing gently with enchantment and power…and, in my palm, as round as a bead, is the pill of immortality she gifted me. The one that will save Ma’s life.
Outside, from beyond the cover of clouds, come flashes of bright light and sounds of battle, dulled by the wards around Shi’ya’s courtyard house.
Hào’yáng and I sit very still in the now-empty chambers. And though I have the answers to the questions I have been asking my entire life, I have never felt more lost. I am daughter to an immortal and a mortal: a halfling that should not be in existence, according to the Heavenly Order.
And my birth mother, on her deathbed, has asked the impossible of me.Ihave agreed to the impossible: to enlist in a rebellion against one of the most powerful realms in existence, against a demon queen who was able to slay one of the Eight Immortals.
When I first began this journey, I was just a mortal girl, fighting for a way to save my mother’s life. Now…the enormity of the truth threatens to crush me.
“Àn’ying.”
I blink. Hào’yáng’s voice pulls me back, grounds me in the present. He kneels by my side, one hand still outstretched on the cooling silks. As he lifts his gaze to mine, the unguarded grief in them hits me harder than any of my own fears. He has always been the infallible warrior, the captain of the guard, the heir to our kingdom—cool and collected and unbreakable. But now…now, he looks just as lost as I am.
I wonder if this was how he felt nine years ago, when his father died and his kingdom fell. I had my family, at least; I had Méi’zi and the hope of rescuing Ma all these long years. But Hào’yáng has had only Shi’ya. And now she is gone, too.
He seems to gather himself in the span of a few heartbeats. The grief in his eyes vanishes, the walls go up, and his featuressettle into that practiced blankness I have seen him wear like a shield.
“You should take the pill home to your mother,” Hào’yáng says, and he pulls his hands back from mine. My fingers are cold where his once were. “That is why you were competing in the Immortality Trials in the first place. I know how much your family means to you. I know you committed to fighting with us to restore the Kingdom of Rivers…but now that we’ve lost Lady Shi’ya, things will change. It will be much, much harder. So…” He exhales. “I understand if you need to reconsider.”
He looks away. His expression is indecipherable, his stance neutral, but I have since learned to look beyond them. I observe the tightness of his shoulders, the way he clasps his hands together so that his knuckles are white. And I recognize all too well the pain he quietly hides under an armor of steel. I know the signs, because they are a mirror to my life over the past nine years, hiding my pain beneath the armor I’ve built to survive.
Promise me you’ll stay with each other.
I know the answer—I know what it has always been, since I was a child clinging to the broken piece of jade in the aftermath of Sansiran’s destruction of my realm and my family. I know where I am meant to be and what I am meant to do.
The path I was born to walk.
I pull Hào’yáng to me and wrap my arms around him, breathing in his scent, of sunlight on river water, of meadowsweet on the beach. My guardian in the jade.
“I’m here now,” I whisper to him. “Every step of the way, Hào’yáng.”
He stiffens, as if he does not know how to react to someone else’s touch. But as I hold on to him, our heartbeats whiling away the seconds, something shifts. His arms fall against my back, his cheek comes to rest on my shoulder, and he holds me, truly holds me, for the first time since we met.
I close my eyes. I am ten years old again, small and frightened and alone, left to fend for myself in this world with a voice that spoke to me through the jade. I have imagined this moment for so long. In my arms, I hold my boy in the jade.
Hào’yáng draws back. There is something unrestrained to the way he gazes at me now. His hand comes to touch my temple, just a feather’s brush, before his expression closes off and he straightens. “We need to get back to the Hall of Radiant Sun,” he says, his tone steeling as he shifts back into the warrior. The heir.
“The candidates,” I say. “I have to go help them.” I know that in the chaos, no one will be looking out for them; I know they will be as trapped as fish in a net, waiting for their deaths. Lì’líng, Tán’mù—I haven’t seen them since before the Second Trial, which was just several days ago, but it feels like an eternity. An ache blooms in my throat as I think of the memorial banquet the immortals held, of my friends finding out about the loss of Fán’xuan in that manner.
“Go,” I tell Hào’yáng. “You’re needed at the Hall of Radiant Sun, with the immortals.”
Carefully, he tucks Shi’ya’s lotus into the pouch at his belt and holds out his hand to me. Together, we stand. “I’m coming with you, Àn’ying,” he says. “I am not losing you again.”
