My boy in the jade, against all odds.
Hào’yáng cranes his neck to look around. “Speaking of ‘here’…where are we?”
I bite back a smile. “The realm of dragons,” I say, and I tell him about my encounter with the dragon just before he woke. Just beyond where we sit is a little spring, the surface of which has begun to bubble. Two teacups surface, wrought in oyster shells and filled with clear water. They drift toward us on a gentle current.
I take one and hand the other to Hào’yáng.
The instant the water touches my lips, an exhilarating rush of warmth fills me. My mind is sharper than I can remember; my body hums with energy, as though I have wokenfrom the best sleep in years and had the most resplendent meal.
Suddenly, everything looks bright and vibrant, the world is once again filled with sunlight and hope…and the heir to our realm is here, alive and well.
We have a chance at restoring our kingdom. At chasing away the night and returning to days in the sun.
Unbidden, a memory resurfaces: Yù’chén lying on the ground, his grip tight around my wrist despite his wounds. The devastation to his voice as he’d said,Àn’ying. Stay.
I swallow as the familiar ache flares in my heart. Choosing Hào’yáng is the only way we can banish the Kingdom of Night’s hold on our home. The only way I can bring back those hazy, golden afternoons with Ma and Méi’zi beneath our plum blossom tree.
Hào’yáng catches my arm. “Àn’ying,” he says. “I made the mistake of letting you go once, and I’m not doing it again.”
The air between us shifts, churning with unfinished conversations and half-answered questions. Yet as I stare back at him, he doesn’t look away, doesn’t evade my gaze.
“I let you fall,” I whisper.
Hào’yáng takes both of my hands in his and pulls me closer. Close enough that our knees touch and I can see my reflection in his eyes.
“You saved my life,” he replies. “I could feel the lotus’s magic as I slipped through your grasp: the whispers of it, ofyou, twining around me and sinking into my blood and bones. When I fell, I was dying, bleeding out from the wound the hellbeast inflicted upon me. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was a glow, like the sun beginning to rise after a long, dark night.
“And then everything froze—as if I had entered a strangesleep filled with dreams, a land of eternal winter. I was cold and alone in that darkness, but…at the end of the night, far away at the edge of the horizon, was a speck of light. I heard a voice in the wind, calling my name…so I kept following that light. Because I knew that if I stopped, it would vanish.Iwould vanish.
“And then, one day, in the phantom wind, I heard you calling my name. Your voice was faint, so faint, and so far away, but…itwasyou.” His voice cracks, and I squeeze his hands. That must have been when I saw him through the spring in the Kingdom of Night. “I was so tired and so cold. But I told myself I had to hold on, just one more heartbeat, and then another…because you were out there, somewhere.
“Sometime later, that glow on the horizon brightened, as if the sun was rising. And then you were there, formed of the light. You held on to me, and I felt my heart begin to beat again, my blood begin to warm…Then I woke up here. And I’m still terrified that it was all a dream. Thatthisis a dream, and that you’ll vanish before my eyes.”
I swallow, blinking away the sting in my eyes. “I’m here,” I say, “and a part of me is terrified of the same. That I’ll wake and you’ll be gone.”
Hào’yáng’s expression grows unfathomably gentle. “I’m here,” he echoes.
I tell him everything that happened in the past weeks, of my time in the Kingdom of Night, of my bargain with Yù’chén, of Sansiran’s plans to marry me to her son and rule all three realms. When Hào’yáng hears the story of my drowning, fury darkens his face as I have never seen.
“I’ll kill her,” he says quietly.
“It awakened my…immortality.” I stumble over the word.“That’s how I was able to escape, and that’s how I was able to get to you.” I run a finger over his palm. “Everything that has happened has led me back to you.”
“And you chose to come back.” It’s a question that he doesn’t ask. “After everything he did for you…you chose to come back.”
The unspoken name lingers between us.
I trace a line on the warm sand, my fingers brushing against the little grasses and pale starflowers that grow there. I can’t think of Yù’chén without that pain in my chest, and I don’t know how to explain the tangle of emotions inside me just yet.
“I made my decisions when I was there because I believed it was the best way out for our realm at the time,” I reply at last. “But my choice, if I’m given one, has never changed, Hào’yáng.” I draw a deep, shuddering breath and lift my gaze to his. “I choose to fight to free our home from the Kingdom of Night. I choose to fight with you.”
Hào’yáng’s gaze sears into mine with an intensity I have never felt from him. “Thank you,” he says. Then, after a pause: “I am speaking not only about kingdoms, Àn’ying.”
His words bring me back to the afternoon with Ma in my kitchen, to his confession that had changed my world.
For all of nine years.
Before I can reply, something in the currents and the air changes. On the shore, the sea begins to part, like a path forming for us.
