In a sudden and violent rush, my memories filter back.
The wedding. The hellbeasts. My lotus sword, shattering into a million pieces.
Hào’yáng, slipping through my fingers.
I make a choked sound, stumbling back until my shoulders hit the bedpost. “You,” I gasp. “How—what did you—”
Yù’chén is silent, eerily still in that mó way of his. His expression is inscrutable.
Fear kicks my old instincts into high gear. But when I flex my fingers, my hands draw up empty instead of grasping the familiar grooves of my crescent blades’ hilts.
I feel naked. Violated.
“Give me my blades.” My voice shakes.
Yù’chén blinks slowly. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Realization after realization hits me, knocking the breath from my lungs.
Hào’yáng is dead.
My village is burned.
I don’t know if my family, the villagers, and Lì’líng and Tán’mù and the rest of our allies are alive. Even if they are, I don’t know where they would be or how to reach them. And as I turn to take in my surroundings—this unnatural night, the cold obsidian floor and gnarled trees out on the pavilion, all imbued with a twisted and terrifying foreignness…I realize with a bone-deep knowing that this can’t be anywhere in the mortal realm.
Which means…
I’m in the Kingdom of Night.
“Àn’ying,” Yù’chén begins, but I’ve fallen to my knees, the floor before me spinning. When I blink again, he’s kneeling by my side, his hands on my shoulders to steady me.
I strike out. The slap echoes across the chamber; the force of it sends him sprawling backward.
Slowly, Yù’chén straightens and looks at me again. Three vivid slashes of red streak across his cheek. When I look down, my nails are coated in his blood.
“Get away from me,” I gasp.
Yù’chén wipes at the blood dripping down his face. Then he inclines his head. “As you wish.”
Without a word, he turns and walks away, vanishing into the dark.
I wait until I’m certain he is gone before I slump against the wall, drawing my knees to my chest. Everything that happened over the past day hits me like a tidal wave: the insurmountable weight and irreparable cost of my failures.
I press my palms over my mouth to silence any sounds I might make as my tears come.
—
It’s been minutes, or hours—I can’t tell, for there is no sun here, only an eternal night. I’m alone in the dark, the cold beginning to settle into my bones and making me shiver.
I’ve thought through endless ways out, and each plan I’ve discarded. The chamber is sprawling, the pavilion outside like a maze of eerie, barren trees and a cold spring. Yet the rocky crags of the pavilion end at a sharp drop. Beneath is only darkness, with mist clinging to sharp cliffs and jutting mountains. When I reached a hand out toward the ledge, I encountered pressure, as though the air itself resisted me. It eased when I backed away.
Wards. I’m being kept here as a prisoner.
I look everywhere, but my three remaining blades are gone. They must have been removed along with my wedding dress.A scorpion without a stinger, I think—but there is a chance they haven’t been discarded yet.
A chance I can still get to them.
My lotus, though, is a different story.
