Halfway through my strike, the blade changes direction. It is subtle, just a slight shift in the angle, but it makes all the difference in the world.
The tip of my blade meets Yù’chén’s skin, an inch away from his heart. And it slows, pulled back by my own traitorous will.
Yù’chén’s hand snaps out. His fingers wrap around mine, around the hilt of my crescent blade.
There is a split second, a half breath, between when he grips my hands tightly in his and when my blade pierces his flesh. A fraction of a moment when he could have stopped me.
I feel resistance—but only in the form of metal slicing through flesh, sliding between bone, and coming to pierce the soft, slick texture of his lungs.
Yù’chén exhales, his breath wet. Blood dribbles down his chin, splattering onto our joined hands; onto his fingers, wrapped around mine; onto mine, wrapped around the hilt of the crescent blade. His body pitches forward and his head slumps, thudding against the wall. I feel his body against mine, the heat of his blood, the shallow hitches to his breathing. His hands tremble as he draws shuddering breaths.
And I think…I think I hear him whisper a word:
“Go.”
Behind us, Sansiran screams.
Shadows wrap around me, and the next moment, I’m dangling in the air. Sansiran’s magic tightens over me, rushing upmy nose and my lips, suffocating me. The pain is the worst I have ever felt: as though my skin is peeling from me and my bones are melting from within, as though ten thousand daggers pierce my flesh. I hear my own scream reverberating inside my skull, and another voice echoes in my ears.
“You dare threaten the life of my heir,”Sansiran snarls at me.“I will destroy you so that your bones burn and scatter as ashes.”
“No!”
This time, though, the cry comes from a familiar figure: Shi’ya.
Warmth envelops me. The pain lessens, and the darkness retreats, yielding to a lambent light. I feel I am drifting, but the surroundings of the chamber are gradually returning to me. When I look up, it is as though the world has cleaved into night and day.
Sansiran’s darkness, which shackled me, has broken. A shield of light shimmers between me and the dark magic, emanating from Shi’ya. Her teeth are clenched, her expression is tight—and her magic wavers. Sparks fall like ashes as her shield begins to dissolve, swallowed bit by bit by Sansiran’s encroaching darkness.
Hands wrap around my shoulders. Hào’yáng crouches next to me, his sword pulsing that blue light of ocean waves I saw earlier. As he draws me under the cover of its magic, the pain recedes and my head clears.
“Hold on to me,” he says, and with one hand around my waist, he lifts me, supporting me as I find my footing.
Somehow, we make it to the doors. I glance back one more time. Beneath Shi’ya’s fading light and Sansiran’s growing darkness, Yù’chén is slumped against the wall where I left him. His chest rises and falls in shallow breaths, and veinsspiderweb across his skin as his dark magic counters the wound I gave him. His hand is on the hilt of Heart. His gaze never leaves me.
I turn away and hold on to Hào’yáng as we stumble outside, into the gardens of rock and water and chrysanthemums. The clear night air fills my lungs—but instead of silence and stillness, the courtyardwritheswith movement. Beings that are not immortal guards or candidates stalk through the trees and between the pillars of the open-air pavilions.
The mó army is here, in the Kingdom of Sky.
Hào’yáng lets go of me. “Defend us,” he tells me. His spirit energy stirs as he begins to conjure a talisman.
A demon appears at his side, lunging at us.
I greet it with my blades. The tip of Poison tears a gash across the mó’s chest. As he stumbles back, stunned, I follow through by driving Striker into his core. His cry of pain is disturbingly human, and I can’t help but think of Yù’chén and his hands around mine as I cut my blade through him. The sound he made, the way his body twitched against me.
I rip Striker through the mó’s chest. He—it—dissolves into shadows and smoke. The last to go are its red eyes.
The next one is on me before I can draw a breath. I spin, my body in overdrive, adrenaline fueling my every slash, every duck, every move.
There’s a trilling sound behind me. A spark shoots into the skies and blooms like a firework, showering the courtyard with gold illumination. Hào’yáng’s talisman flares brightly in the night, strands of light weaving into a sun over clouds: the symbol of the Kingdom of Sky.
A distress signal.
Hào’yáng places two fingers in his mouth and whistles.Then he turns and he’s moving, his sword flashing, a deep blue light in the darkness. I have trained with him, but I have never truly seen him in action. He isincredible.I didn’t think a mortal could fight as he does, as though not only his body but his entire soul as well moves to the rhythm of his sword. Spirit energy sings from him, so powerful that it creates flashes of gold in the night as he clashes with demons.
I place myself behind him. We are in this together, our bodies in tune with each other’s movements, as if we are melodies of the same song, threads of the same tapestry, two souls with the same fate, winding together.
But Sansiran’s spell has weakened me. My legs shake, and my slashes slow in spite of everything I throw into the fight. And the mó—they keep coming, all emerging from the direction of the Celestial Gardens. From the gates Yù’chén created.
