He blinks rapidly, and I’m close enough to see my reflection in his eyes—the lotus’s light dancing over my skin and radiating from me. “You’re…beautiful.”
A sob bubbles in my chest, which I turn into a laugh. “You tell me this now? When my wedding gown is ruined and our banquet destroyed?”
He slumps against me. His breathing is shallow, fast, and I am suddenly more terrified than words can describe as I holdhim.
I press my fingers to my lips and whistle.
From somewhere nearby comes a responding whinny—followed by a roar.
Hào’yáng’s grip tightens against my back. “Go,” he breathes. “They’re after me. Go, Àn’ying.”
Beyond us, Táo’wù is stirring from the wreckage of a house. Behind us, the ground shakes as Qióng’qí closes in. Yet the world seems to slow and fall away as I hold my boy in the jade.
There are a handful of moments in life when the meaning of destiny becomes clear. As Hào’yáng’s blood warms me and his life energy ebbs away, my mother’s words to him come back to me:
Your life will be a vessel through which the good of the Kingdom of Rivers is governed. Your heart and your soul will be buried under this vast decree beneath the Heavens, child.
There will be no space for love or a life for you.
And yet, Hào’yáng is here with me, so alive and so human.To most, he is the heir and the captain, cold and distant and powerful—yet to me, he is so much more. He is my guardian in the jade, with the warmth in his eyes reserved only for me, the rare smiles I’ve come to love coaxing from him, lighting my skies like a glimpse of the sun. He is my political ally: When his brows crease, his gaze goes unfocused and a calculating look appears in his eyes, a look I’ve come to recognize when his brilliant mind is at work.
And then there are the parts of him that have threaded into my heart like the currents of a sunlit river. The Hào’yáng whose touch stirs those tides, whose gaze sets my world on fire like the sun burning flames into the sea.
The one whose kiss slammed the waves of an entire ocean into my chest.
If he must hold the weight of realms on his shoulders now and for the rest of his life, I will not let him do so alone.
As She of the Moon-Frosted Sea stops before us, I clasp his chin between my hands, forcing his eyes to meet mine. “I’m not going anywhere without you,” I tell him, and without waiting for a response, I hoist him onto the dragonhorse’s scaly back. I loop my brocade belt around her and strap Hào’yáng down. Then I slide on behind him and we’re off, gaining speed as we rise into the air. Behind us, roars of the two hellbeasts follow us into the night.
Red seeps from Hào’yáng onto the dragonhorse’s scales.
I brush a thumb along the hilt of my birth mother’s lotus sword, feeling the grooves of its etchings against my skin, an ancient calling that might have been the start of my destiny.
“We make for the immortal realm tonight,” I say, glancing to the distant horizon. She of the Moon-Frosted Sea’s ears twitchback to me; her scales ripple dimly in the cloud-swathed night as she gallops. I grip my lotus sword tightly, its blade trailing an aurora glow through the darkness. “My mother’s lotus vessel has recognized me. It’s time I declare myself as Yi’lín Shi’ya’s heir and summon her army.”
8
Àn’ying
Kingdom of Rivers
I glance back as we fly. Xi’lín is falling away from us, a speck of jagged lights emanating from lamps in windows and the lanterns at the ruins of our banquet that never was. A fire has spread, illuminating two great, shadowy figures that prowl the streets. One spreads its wings to take flight.
Desperately, I search the vanishing realm for traces of my mother and sister. I must have bought them enough time to escape. Ma had already gone with Fú’yí, and Méi’zi was with Tán’mù and Lì’líng—they’ll be all right.
They’ll be all right.
Adrenaline yields to waves of fear and helplessness that threaten to drown me. Méi’zi’s tear-streaked face, lips forming the shape of my name as she reaches for me, surfaces again and again in my mind’s eye.
When was the last time we were all together as a family? Irecall the early afternoon, sunlight slanting through our house’s paper shutters, thrown open to the fragrance of plum blossoms. Ma and Méi’zi beaming at me as I twirl in my wedding gown. The memory is only a few hours old but feels as though it is from another lifetime.
I don’t know when I’ll see them again.
“Àn’ying.” Hào’yáng’s voice is quieter than I have ever heardit.
I avert my gaze, preoccupying myself with fashioning a makeshift saddle out of the brocades and satins of my wedding gown to strap us in more tightly. Hào’yáng’s breaths are hitched; his face is ashen and lips are bloodless in a way that frightens me.
I slide my lotus sword into my belt, making sure it’s secured, before turning back to him. “I’m going to take a look at your wound,” I tell him, my hand hovering over the buckles of his armor. “May I?”
