Àn’ying, he mouths, and I realize that I, too, am illuminated in the sword’s light.
But the light is dimming. Night rushes in, the wingbeats of the great hellbeast carrying me higher in its claws as Hào’yáng continues to slip down.
I seize Hào’yáng’s arm with my other hand. My fingers are stiff with cold, and his wrist guard cuts into my palm with his weight—but I can’t let go, I can’t.
Hào’yáng gazes up at me. His face is serene.
Àn’ying.His mouth moves in the shape of my name, and Ihear his voice as though he speaks in my ears, as though I am once again eleven years old and lost and alone, drowning in the depths of a frozen pond. Yet this time, the words that come are different.
Àn’ying, he says.Let me go.
“No.” His wrist slides farther down my grasp, the metal of his lamellar armor tearing my flesh. My blood drips on his armor. “No, Hào’yáng, you promised me—”
Even as I speak, I catch the growing shadow behind him. I lift my gaze to find two pinpricks of hellfire red burning through the night, the massive shape eclipsing half the sky.
As Táo’wù slams into us, Hào’yáng’s hand jerks in mine. I don’t comprehend the blood trickling down his chin, nor the dark patch spreading across his armor, until I see the claw protruding from his midriff like a curved sword.
A scream tears through the night as a silver streak rams into the hellbeast: She of the Moon-Frosted Sea, scales flashing and talons out. Táo’wù’s great claw rips from Hào’yáng’s chest as it turns to fight the dragonhorse, blood arcing like crimson beads through the night.
Together, dragon and hellbeast hurl down through the night into the dark.
But the damage is done.
Hào’yáng’s lashes flutter. He lets out a sigh that might have echoed through the realms. His grip loosens in mine even as I dig my nails into his wrist, then his palm, then the tips of his fingers—
And he falls.
Through the night, illuminated by the cold light of stars.
I’m left with only the wind between my fingers, screaming his name until he’s swallowed by the sea of clouds, screaming until my throat is hoarse and my chest is on fire and my heart feels as though it has torn from my rib cage and plummeted into the deep, cold sea with him.
9
Àn’ying
Kingdom of Night
We fly. Onward, rising through the skies, the air around us growing colder, my breath pluming in front of me. We fly, bursting through the layer of clouds to a clear night. Stars reel overhead, and the moon casts all in monochrome.
The moon begins to warp. The full circle shrinks; an invisible darkness eats away at its light, spreading to the skies all around. The shadow grows, black enough to consume the stars, and all that’s left is a hollow crescent, pale as bone, gleaming in the depths—a scythe-like moon I recognize, have seen in all my visions of the demon queen watching me from my nightmares.
That is how I know when we enter the Kingdom of Night.
10
Yù’chén
Palace of the Aurora, Kingdom of Night
The revelry is particularly intolerable tonight.
Since Sansiran and I returned to our realm, the mó at the Court of the Aurora have been throwing a lavish banquet in honor of our progress into the Kingdom of Sky. Sansiran wasted no time parading me around in a magnificent new outfit—one unmarked by the teeth and tongues of the mó that feasted on me back in the Temple of Dawn. My new circlet gleams gold on my forehead:A crown, my mother had crowed, to the roaring approval of her entire court,for the future emperor of the Kingdom of Rivers and heir to the Kingdom of Night!
The Palace of the Aurora is an ancient thing made of nightglass, rock, and old magic. Its main ceremony hall perches on cliffs yawning into shadows, and the rest of it—wings, temples, courtyards, and gardens—is connected by passages formed of demonic magic. Beyond, our realm is a world of jagged mountains and plunging clifftops wreathed in silver fog. Brightlycolored trees choke the landscape, luminous in the eternal night and illuminated by the aurora snaking through the skies.
Moonlight streams into the great banquet hall that opens to worship the night sky, spilling on scenes of debauchery before me. Mortal prisoners, drunk on oleander nectar, follow mó around the dance floor or into shadowy alcoves, where, in the dim lighting, I make out flashes of flesh…and often, dark liquid dripping onto the floor.
I always look away before I can see more.
