I’m suddenly shaking, nausea churning inside me. Wasthe vision I dismissed as a hallucination real? If so, how many others were, too?
Yù’chén’s fingers tighten against me, but he can summon no response.
“You want her, and you know exactly who she is,” the female purrs. “But the question is, Yù’chén, have you told her whoyouare?”
“Stop,” he begs.
“Does she know why you approached her in the first place? Why you’ve protected her all along?” She speaks faster, and I can tell she delights in this.“Why you helped her through the First Trial, why you did everything in your power to gain her trust, stole that sewing box and helped her send those gloves to her sister, all just to win her poor, gullible little mortal heart?”
I’m reeling from her words. Because those are memories that should be private, that should be mine, and mine alone. It is as if I am listening to a story told from another’s perspective, the truth between the lines now irrevocably written out. The moment I ran into Yù’chén in that clearing; when he saved me from Yán’lù and his cronies and accepted my ask of alliance; the cliff at Heavens’ Gates, when I thought I hallucinated her between the trees, and Yù’chén called out to me in fear and desperation as he used his magic to command me for the first time.
The sewing box. The gloves, the dance on the ocean, the journey to my home to save Méi’zi…I recall it all now, but differently. I see the hands holding the strings.
“If I let her go, would she still come running to you, Yù’chén?” The Higher One utters something, and the magicbinding me in place, holding me against Yù’chén, loosens its grasp. I stumble back, ripping my hands from him, steadying my legs and my shaking breaths.
“Have you told her why you’re here and who you are,” the Higher One drawls, relishing her words, “my son?”
Whatever hope was left on Yù’chén’s face flickers out; his expression goes blank. I’m shaking so hard, I need to hold on to the wall to stop myself from falling down. As I look at him, I suddenly see everything that I have missed—the shadow ofheron his face: the impossibly sharp angles to their jaws and cheekbones, the full red curves to their lips, her delicate arched brows rendered stronger and more masculine on him. I see it so clearly I do not know how I could have missed it in the first place.
Yù’chén is her son.
He is the son of the Higher One who killed my father. Who maimed my mother. The monster who has shaped my life and who is the reason I am here, in these trials, fighting to regain some semblance of it back.
It is a twisted circle, a sick hand of fate.
“Àn’ying,” he begins.
“Don’t,”I spit out,“say my name.”
The Higher One is watching with that same smile. “What a beautifully tragic ending to this love story,” she murmurs, stepping forward. The moon has shifted, I suddenly realize; the wards on this chamber are back up again, and I am trapped in here with them.
Good. Because I’m going to fucking kill them both.
The Higher One’s eyes flick toward me, almost lazily, as a cat might watch a sparrow.“Don’t move,”she says, and I’mfrozen again, my blades halfway to my palms. She’s looking at Yù’chén, dark triumph on her face. “I think it’s time we finished this tale and began our new one, don’t you, my son? The one we’ve been waiting for your entire life?”
Yù’chén stares back at her coldly. “What if I told you I’ve changed my mind?”
The Higher One’s smile widens. I feel a sudden lash of magic directed at Yù’chén, and the next moment, he’s doubling over, his veins bulging from his forehead and his neck, his breaths heavy. He groans and bares his teeth, but the mó’s hand twitches, and he falls to his knees, his muscles locked and twitching against his will. She’s inflicting some sort of pain on him; a lot, from the way he’s shaking.
She watches him a few moments longer, and then I sense the magic fade. Yù’chén gasps and slumps over, barely holding himself up with his hands. His breaths grow ragged.
When I was small, the first time I saw this female, I’d had no experience with the mó. To me, they were all the same: beings with power so far beyond my imagination. As I learned about them throughout the years, I began to realize that there were different levels even within the mó. I understood why some were newborn, some were ordinary, and some the practitioners of my town named the Higher Ones.
This female is the most powerful mó I have ever seen.
She glances over at me as though sensing my thoughts. Her smile is heartbreakingly beautiful as she speaks: “I ought to introduce myself properly, as I have been waiting nine years for this moment, Àn’ying. My name is Sansiran.”
The name is like lightning in the tight space of this chamber.Sansiran.I know that name, spoken in hushed whispers by the greatest practitioners of the mortal realms. I know itfor the fear that has haunted me day and night for the past nine years, sometimes distant and sometimes near, that the queen of the demon realm will come for us all.
Sansiran, the Demon Queen. Sansiran, the Empress of Fallen Darkness.
Sansiran, the Ruler of the Kingdom of Night.
“Thank you, my son, for creating gates through the immortals’ wards for our army to enter,” Sansiran continues, and I feel ice cracking in my veins, freezing me until my teeth chatter. The gate he lied to me about; the one he hadn’t destroyed the first time I asked him. The one we left open after returning this morning. And from what she said, it sounds like he made more.
The Kingdom of Night’s army is coming—through those gates.
“I was going to destroy them,” Yù’chén says. He’s looking at me as he speaks. “After tonight, once I was strong enough. But I never had the chance.”
