“You won’t be able to stand within half a minute,” Yán’lù says. He takes another step toward me and his two remaining cronies close in from the other sides, their silhouettes blurred in my vision. “Then I’ll be able to do whatever I want with you.”
I back away one more step and hear rocks skid off the edge behind me.
“Tell me, my flower,” Yán’lù croons. “Tell me who your guardian is.”
My guardian.My guardian in the jade. Hào’yáng. Yù’chén. Their names blur in my head as the poison in my body spreads. I remember the last time Yán’lù had me cornered, the horrors my body still cannot forget.
As my legs begin to numb, I do the only thing I can think of. I turn and leap off the edge of the cliff into the darkness below.
—
My body yields to the poison, and I have no hope of controlling my fall. Clouds swallow me, and the world turns to swirling gray and blurred silhouettes, terrifyingly disorientating. Flashes of lightning illuminate shadows everywhere, followed by deafening thunder.
But the harsh impact of hitting the surface of the ocean never comes. Instead, the waters envelop me in a gentle caress. Everything goes quiet, and as I sink, I have the feeling I’m floating instead.
My chest burns. I turn my gaze up again, to the disappearing surface of the ocean, and I think of Ma and Méi’zi and all whom I have failed. I’m paralyzed by poison, drowning a realm away from them, and I can only pray that the gods will watch over them.
A tug around my throat: my jade pendant has freed itself from my collar. It rises, as though it, too, yearns for the surface, perhaps for the guardian within its other half that I will never meet.
In the darkness, something sparks. A tiny glow, approaching quickly, like a falling star. My vision is blurred, but I can make out a silhouette now, gold glinting off what looks like scales…
Not scales.Lamellar armor.
Hào’yáng.
He dives after me, cutting through the water with unnatural speed, the pale silk of his shift flying, armor glimmering—but here, in the water, he is haloed bylight.He is as beautiful as the gods I imagined as a little girl in a world of nightmares. As beautiful as the first time I saw him in the depths of a different sea.
Water rushes into my mouth. I feel his arms wrap around me, drawing me to him, and then the warmth of his palm on the back of my head.
Gently, as naturally as though it was always meant to be, Hào’yáng lowers his face to mine.
He exhales.
Golden life energy pours from his lips to mine, driving the cold from my limbs and dulling my pain. The ocean water is pulled from my lungs. Fresh air floods them, and I inhale deeply. I can’t move from the poison in my system, but I see him through my lashes, illuminated by the light of his life energy: his eyes closed, his hair flowing around him like currents of the ocean.
Most of all, I see the glow radiating from the object around his neck. I see the jade pendant rising from his shirt as bright as a star, drifting between us with the pull of the tides…and perhaps the pull of its other half around my own neck.
Time seems to slow as the broken piece of jade around Hào’yáng’s throat meets mine. Every one of my pendant’s jagged edges fits perfectly against his, until the pendant is at last made whole.
The world shifts. The ocean surges. Numb shock fills me,followed by relief and joy so profound it is as though my soul weeps.
My guardian in the jade.
Hào’yáng draws back. There is a terrible grief in his eyes as he presses a palm to my cheek, searching my face. He speaks my name into the silence of the sea, and I understand why it has always sounded so natural coming from him. As he holds me tightly to him and touches his lips to mine again, breathing life and air into me, I know that I have finally come full circle with the destiny I have searched for throughout half my life.
“Àn’ying, stay with me.”His voice echoes into the deep, the last thing I hear as I sink into the darkness closing in on my mind.“I’m here now.”
20
When I wake, it is night. I am on a bed of soft silks, in a chamber lit with a silvery glow. The wooden shutters are open, letting in a warm, fragrant breeze and yielding a perfect view of the night sky between the branches of a great osmanthus tree. Moonlight spills in, pooling on the rosewood floors.
I am alive.
I flex my fingers and wriggle my toes. The pain in my side is gone…from the life energy Hào’yáng breathed into me beneath the ocean.
I turn my head, and he is there by my bedside. He’s asleep, cheek resting against the golden cuffs on his wrists, lashes fluttering as he dreams. Like this, he looks so young.
My guardian in the jade.
