Red inhales sharply—just as Qióng’qí turns its dripping maw toward me.
“It smells blood.” Red’s mouth is by my ear, his breath tickling my cheek. I hear what he doesn’t say:You’ve just exposed us.
“Got a better idea?” I hiss.
He draws back, flicks a glance at the forest ahead of us. “Stay here,” he says, and then with that too-light movement typical of a well-trained practitioner, he leaps up away from me…and takes off.
I roll to my elbows, heart pounding as I search the darkness between the cathayas. He’s gone.
And I’m left, alone and defenseless, against one of the four foulest mythological beasts to ever grace the Kingdom of Night.
As a snarl rumbles like thunder behind me, I think of an old joke my father told me.It is night, and a group of merchants is traveling deep in the mountains. Suddenly, they happen upon a tiger. They are not fast enough to outrun it, not strong enough to fight it. What do they do?
You don’t need to outrun the tiger,I said,so long as you can outrun the slowest merchant.
Méi’zi was horrified at my answer, but my father roared with laughter.
I don’t need to outrun Qióng’qí. I just need to outrun the slowest practitioner in these mountains.
I think of Yán’lù, of where he and his cronies disappeared. They can’t have gotten far. And I may not be as strong as him or as powerful as that bastard Red, but I’m fast.
I’m on my feet in an instant, Fleet in my hand. This time, in my other, I palm my strangest and least used seventh blade, Heart.
Heart bears a talisman that my father invented: a spell of true aim according to the fiercest desire of the wielder’s heart. Over the years, I’ve used it to lead me to the light lotuses and to guide my hand where my skill was lacking. But Bà warned me that the talisman can be unreliable: sometimes the mind doesn’t know what the heart wants.
I know what I want in this moment. I want to see that brute Yán’lù torn to shreds by Qióng’qí.
I’m running already, my senses in overdrive. Fleet powers each of my steps so that my strides are longer, faster—but it’s still not enough to shake the beast. I hear it crashing through the trees just steps behind me, feel the ground shake beneath each of its great paws.
I jam my bleeding thumb into Heart.
Irritatingly, Red’s face pops into my mind first, impossibly beautiful and sharply elegant. I focus my thoughts to Yán’lù’s twisted smile, the practitioners he killed, and how I want him to pay for what he did.
I feel a slight pull at my blade as it begins to direct me—into the darkness between trees, into the unknown. Gusts of wind from the beast’s great wings slam into my back,knocking my knees together. Desperately, I blink the sweat from my eyes, but the forest around me blurs into a mass of shadows and echoes of the beast’s vicious snarls.
This could be my last few seconds in this realm, in this life, and all I feel is anger and burning shame that I couldn’t do better, that I’ve failed and that my failure means sentencing my mother and my sister to death.
Something tugs sharply at my foot, and the world veers off balance. I blink and I’m on the forest floor, supporting myself on my hands and knees, my left ankle twisted at an unnatural angle. As pain sears up my leg, I have strength enough to lift my head and meet my death.
That skeletal tiger’s face greets me, hollow red eyes burning. It opens its maw, each tooth longer than my crescent blades, dripping with saliva.
In the shadow of my death, I glimpse her again: the Higher One of nine years past. She appears as a red silhouette beneath the darkness of the pines, watching me calmly as she always does in my hallucinations. Drifting, as always, just out of sight. Reminding me that, in spite of all the years of training I have done, I am still powerless.
She’s gone in a blink. Above me, Qióng’qí’s tongue unfurls, a spiked thing said to scrape the flesh from victims’ bodies.
Then, it pauses. Lifts its head, attention pulled by something out in the forest.
I flip my blade in my palms and am about to aim a strike when the unimaginable happens.
Qióng’qí straightens and, like a scolded dog, backs several steps away.
The wind shifts, followed by the sound of near-undetectable footsteps approaching me. A hand slides across my back. Ifeel a ripple of a talisman warm my chest, soothing my frantic heartbeat.
“Think of the one wish you hold in your heart,” comes a voice, deep and melodic and strangely familiar. “The one thing you’d wish for before you leave this world.”
It is a bizarre thing to ask in the face of death, but I obey. My fear abates slightly as I speak. “I want my mother and Méi’zi to be safe.”
My vision is settling. A face emerges from the darkness, one of heartbreaking beauty, like the legendary heroes in our childhood stories. “What else?” he murmurs. “Something thatyouwant, for you.”
