The feather tips of his fan grow sharp, their shafts taking on a steely quality. By his side, Tie’guai raises his gourd, its smoke pouring out thicker as his spirit energies build.
“Thank you for coming,” I say to the two immortals, and when I bow deeply to them, I am thinking, too, of Jing’xiù.
Without another word, they leap forward to greet the two Higher Ones in battle.
Hào’yáng turns to me as a gap opens in the mó’s guard—a chance we may not have again. I raise my sword and, side by side, we plunge through the gates into the heart of the fallen Imperial City.
30
Àn’ying
Imperial Palace, Kingdom of Rivers
Silence and shadows wrap around us, thick and oppressive, as we draw away from the main scene of battle. Hào’yáng conjures a concealment talisman similar to the one my lost blade Shadow had.
With the majority of the Kingdom of Night’s forces occupied in the battles at the Temple of Dawn and outside the Imperial City’s gates, the streets of their stronghold in the mortal realm are now eerily empty.
We keep beneath the houses’ curved eaves. Broken doors and torn paper windows gape at us; here and there, I spot signs that mortals—families—once inhabited this place. Children’s zodiac figurines line a windowsill; an open door shows a meal set upon an elegant table, the porcelain now coated in dust, untouched for a decade. Unbidden, a dozen different scenes play out in my mind as I imagine the fate of the family who prepared the meal.
Hào’yáng, too, takes this all in, his eyes raking across the devastation left of his home city by the Kingdom of Night. “I can hear them still,” he says quietly. “From the day this city fell.”
“You did the only thing you could that day, the only thing that would give our kingdom any hope of fighting back as we are now,” I tell him. “You lived.”
“Sometimes, I wonder—why me? Why my life? I’m worth no more than any of the people who died here.”
I consider him, and I think of another who asked me the same question, with the same pain and grief raw in his crimson eyes.
“But isn’t that the greatest burden of all to bear?” I say softly. “The knowledge that others died while you lived?” I take Hào’yáng’s hand, forcing him to look at me. “When we are born,” I continue, “we are set on a path to walk. That is our fate. But how wechooseto walk it—that becomes our destiny. I don’t think we should question why we are given the lives we are but, rather, how we should live them.”
“How…romantic.”
The words ring out in the night, echoing across the streets as a surge of demonic energies hits us: wrath incarnate, laced through with centuries of hatred.
Sansiran.
I step forward, sword raised, shielding Hào’yáng behind me as we both turn to face the source of her voice: the Imperial Palace itself.
I can make out the marble steps leading up to the palace doors, which is writhing with shadows; the golden roofs and vermillion pillars, the jade-green and mother-of-pearl signs cast in night. A familiar scythe moon hangs over it inside a vortex of black:
The gateway.
It seems to have expanded since I escaped a few days ago. Now it has widened beyond the palace, spilling down toward the city crouched in its shadows.
My chest tightens as I think of what it takes to maintain that gateway—of whose blood wet the stones at the base of the pái’fang, of the resignation on his face as he was forced to his knees. Of the blankness to his eyes as they cut him up like livestock.
I need to know that he’s all right, that he’s not hurting. Even if I know the ending to our tale, I don’t want him to be in pain any longer.
“Come greet me face to face, Crown Prince.”Sansiran speaks as though right next to us, her voice resonating through every street and alley, the sheer power of her energies shuddering through the derelict buildings all around.“Let me see what it is that renderedyouthe chosen one.”
Hào’yáng makes to move forward, but I catch his arm, tugging him back into the shadows of the house beneath which we are hiding.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “It’s a trap.”
His gaze lingers on my face. “There is no way around it,” he replies quietly.
“Hào’yáng, wait—”
“Àn’ying, you must be the one to close the gateway.” Hào’yáng lifts his gaze to the city walls, where bursts of light and the clamor of battle fill the air. His expression hardens. “While I engage her in battle, you need to find Yù’chén and end this once and for all.”
