And once, during the third of the Immortality Trials, when I leapt into the Silver Sea.
All three times, I survived not on my own strength but by luck. Or fortune. Or destiny. Whatever it was that had tied my fate to my boy in the jade.
All three times, Hào’yáng had saved me.
I know the futility of fighting against a court of mó. Without my jade pendant and outside help, I am…nothing. A girl caught between greatness and the weight of realms, who has failed everyone she has loved.
Méi’zi.
Ma.
Hào’yáng.
Bà.
The names count down in my mind as the pain in my chesttightens to an unbearable point. The world blurs in a dizzying way, my lungs at once cold and on fire. The commotion of the world above finally fades, replaced by a knifelike pain in my throat as water rushes in.
Weirufeng’s magic loosens from me as I sink, farther and farther from the moonlight and shadows of this realm.
And finally, I die.
22
Àn’ying
Between Realms
Àn’ying.
A voice as ancient as the realms, echoing with the vastness of an ocean.
Colors weave through my consciousness, turquoise, blush, and a glint of gold…movement. I’m in the sea, but I can’t remember how I arrived, as though I simply stepped into a dream and found myself here.
I am nothing, no one. A speck of consciousness between the currents.
Àn’ying, that voice calls again, and something large moves behind me. I spin, but I find nothing, just ocean currents and the deep shift of aquamarines and blues fading into darkness.
In the distance, far below: a glow. It pulses, as though calling out to me in a language of its own.
I move toward it.
Its source grows clearer as I approach.
A great lotus drifts in the middle of the ocean. Its blush-colored petals are closed, pulsing like a heartbeat, cradled by the gentle currents.
I reach out, but I am formless—a wisp of a spirit, perhaps an echo of my own soul. I feel where my fingers would have brushed its petals. Feel a part of me resonate in this connection, as though…as though this flower is a part ofme.
With a sigh, its petals unfurl.
Time ebbs to a stop.
Heis there, lying at its heart, his white dragonhorse curled protectively around him.
Hào’yáng looks to be in a deep sleep, only his chest does not move, his lashes do not flutter. His skin is as pale as snow, his cheeks and lips are drained of blood, and his hair is now a dark shade of silver—it’s as though all color and life have leached from him. Yet his body is healthy and whole, as though the lotus petals preserved him in a perfect cocoon.
Hào’yáng!I cry, but I have no voice, no body. I can’t reach him, can’t touch him, can’t take his shoulders and shake him awake.
Meadowsweet appears to slumber with him in her dragon form. Her serpentine body is carved of ice up to her head, though rime has spread to her neck and coats her antlers and lashes.
