Behind me, Sansiran has risen from her throne, her hands stretched toward me as though prepared to unleash her magic. The wrath in her blood-red gaze promises retribution, and I know this isn’t the last I’ll see of her.
But my attention is on Yù’chén.
He’s lying where I left him, by the spring. Black veins spiral up the cords of his neck. His fingers have turned to claws, his skin to scales—the cost for his magic to heal him.
His eyes, though, have never left me. It isn’t fury, or anger, or vengeance in his expression. It is heartbreak and a bleak, knowing exhaustion.
I’m sorry that I can’t change everything, Àn’ying. But I swear to you, I’ll do everything in my power to give you what I can of the world you wanted.
I’ll never know the extent of what he’s done for me in the shadows of his realm, but I know that within the confines of his birth in this lifetime, it is more than I can ever repay.
The gateway flickers again.
I know that if I hesitate any longer, I may not have the strength to leave.
So I turn and step through.
—
The air of my realm greets me, the smell of pines and mountain wind and impending snow drifting through the ImperialPalace’s open doors at the far end of the hallway. It’s colder here than in my village, though I don’t think I’ve been gone long enough for the turn of a new season.
And it’s dark.
I look back through the gateway into the throne room of the Kingdom of Night, bright flowers twisting around tree branches that fracture the night sky. The chamber’s obsidian pillars meld into the marble and lapis of my world, and shadows drift out through the gateway.
A silhouette steps into view: Niefuzan. Dark magic explodes from him, tendrils sharper than knives reaching for me—
I fling my hands up, pushing spirit energies through my palms as I conjure the first talisman I learned from my father.
A shield blooms from my hands, blush-colored, like the warmth of spring. Niefuzan’s power slams against it, and I almost expect it to shatter. Yet as his shadows refract, dissolving beneath my shield’s gentle glow, I realize that the mó’s magic, strong though it is, does not work the same way in my realm…and that the extent of my own power has grown with the awakening of my immortal half.
I turn and run, Fleet and Striker instantly in my hands. I feel it so strongly now, the hum of something new inside me, a strength both foreign and familiar that sings in my blood. The hallway of the palace blurs by, yet somehow I’m aware of every pillar, every fallen silk banner and piece of rubble strewn on the ground—all the carnage and destruction that the Kingdom of Night brought upon our palace when they poured through the gateway and launched their war against my realm.
I think of Hào’yáng, barely older than me, watching the slaughter of his family. Waiting, in the aftermath, for death to claim him as mó prowled the ruins of his beloved home.
I’m coming, Hào’yáng.The doors are in sight, flung open at the end of this grand hallway.Don’t you dare leave me behind again.
I burst into open air and twilight skies. Ahead of me stretches a long marble walkway, cracked, and pillars crumbling from the battle that took place here a decade ago. The grand steps leading down from it are falling to ruin, but beyond that, gleaming beneath the last rays of light, is the Long River. It roars past the palace, the purest shade of turquoise, bifurcating the Imperial City that clusters around it.
Thisis the realm I wish to save. The realm I won’t let fall into eternal night, into the power of the mó.
I take one last glance behind me. The gateway looms, as if a piece of our realm’s skies has been carved away. Darkness leaks out; the Kingdom of Night’s scythe moon and stars drift between clouds of the mortal realm.
My breath plumes before me as I run. It is instinct to gather spirit energies in my hands and fling them into the air. They unfurl into mist, swirling into an iridescent cloud around my feet, my legs, twining around my body. And as a wind gusts up, I am airborne. Iamthe wind and the clouds.
I am immortal.
The ground falls away beneath me as I fly, the mortal realm turned to a glittering stretch of abandoned cities and towns, and then to an expanse of red and gold pine forests. Beyond the horizon is where my realm ends and the Four Seas begin: the seam between the mortal realm and the dragon realm.
Make haste, daughter of immortals, for time runs out…
I travel through the night on a wisp of iridescent cloud. And at long last, when dawn tints the skies, I see it: the sapphire sea reaching all the way to the edge of the world. The risingsun paints a path of gold across the water straight to me—and somehow, I know that therein, my path awaits.
I let go of the spirit energies, my mortal body disentangling itself from the wind and the clouds.
And I fall toward the sea.
Toward Hào’yáng.
