“Thank you, Fú’yí,” I whisper.
Her eyes soften. “They are safe, in a sunny village, far from the mó. They asked me to send all their love, and they can’t wait to reunite with you.”
An ache rises in my throat as I think of all those feathers Yù’chén brought me, allowing me to glimpse my family for a few moments each day.
It was real.
“Your summons reached quite far and wide,” Hào’yáng says, and cants his head to the skies.
A great bird’s cry echoes through the storm, powerful and melodic, like an ancient song across time and worlds.
Nine brilliant phoenixes soar through the rainclouds, their wings and crowns trailing flames, their feathers shimmering with iridescence. They land before us on the clifftop, each the size of a horse. With a great sweep of their wings, the pink butterflies that had borne my message to them release into the air and return to my sword.
“The Nine Sunbirds of the Western Province,” Hào’yáng tells me. “As creatures of fire and heat, they are threatened by the eternal night, too.”
The myth of Hòu’yì, the divine archer, is one we in the mortal realm grew up with. Legend has it that the mortal realm once had ten suns, which dried up the land and the rivers. Hòu’yì shot down nine of them, and they turned into golden sunbirds that remained in the mortal realm. It is said that they reside in the mystical Kun’lún Mountains of the Western Province, where the great deserts are warmed by the magic of their bodies and they, in turn, can continue inhabiting a land of fire and heat.
“I also present to you,” Lì’líng says proudly, “the nine-tailed fox spirits of the Kingdom of Green Hills.”
Through the trees, a dozen or so pale silhouettes emerge: foxes the size of tigers and the color of snow, eyes a brilliant carmine. Their nine tails fan out behind them, the tips pluming into the same red as their eyes. In the downpour, their fur remains sleek and dry as they watch me with calm elegance.
Then, behind them, more figures step out from the shadows. They resemble us in appearance, yet there issomethinginhuman to each of them, marking them as different: a horn here, a tail there, a flash of canines or a growth of flowers on their cheeks.
Yao’jing.
Tán’mù steps closer to them. “There is a resurgence of hope throughout the mortal realm,” she says. “These yao’jing have gathered from the mountains and forests to support us in thiswar.”
Traditionally, yao’jing have been feared across our realm, with tales of them luring mortals into traps and stealing babies in the night. But after I met Lì’líng and Tán’mù, I’d realized the stories were just stories.
I incline my head deeply to both the fox spirits and the yao’jing. They mirror me, releasing their pink butterflies back to me as well.
“Like Hào’yáng said, your word has spread far and wide across the realms,” Lì’líng says. “The fox spirits tell me they have heard talk of the return of the mortal crown prince; that other realms are speaking of the mortal heir and a Lotus Immortal who are fighting against the Kingdom of Night.”
Hào’yáng turns to me. The light of the sunbirds dances overhis face. “Less than a day’s journey to the Imperial City,” he says, looking westward, in its direction. “Are you ready?”
I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready for what must come next. But I do know that I need this war to end.
I raise my palm to the skies and send a spark of my spirit energy to the Heavens. There’s a flash of corals and a brief illusion of a sunrise through the storm clouds.
Then, through the darkness, hundreds of sparks illuminate the skies. They swirl from the clouds, funneling toward me: butterflies—fragments of my lotus sword—returning to me from having relayed my summons message.
They gather between my fingers, and my lotus sword reappears, jade-green hilt and soft pink blade bright in the rain.
I lift it to the skies. “We fight,” I declare, and amidst the crowd of mortal warriors, sunbirds, fox spirits, and yao’jing gathered, I meet Fú’yí’s gaze. “Today, we show the Kingdom of Night that we are still here. We are still alive. And we are ready to take back our realm.”
—
While I lead on my iridescent cloud, Hào’yáng and our army travel by sunbird and nine-tailed fox, which can cross the mortal realm to the center of the Kingdom of Rivers within a matter of hours. I imagine that the sunbirds’ trails of fire will be seen across the mortal villages as a sign heralding the return of the mortal heir.
A harbinger that the sun is returning to our lands that have long been falling into night.
At noon, when the sun should be highest in the skies, a chill falls upon us. The air shifts, the light dims, and a preternatural cold sinks into my bones.
We descend swiftly into night. Below us, the curve of the Long River vanishes into a swathe of shadows and the skyline of the Imperial City rises, as though out of a different realm.
The nine-tailed foxes land and move in uniformity through the trees, ghostly streaks barely visible from afar.
The sunbirds alight in the trees just before the ancient walls of the city, and I follow on my cloud. Behind us, the nine-tailed foxes slip out from the trees as the rest of our army dismounts.
