Yiran took a step back. “You’re batshit insane.”
“On the contrary, I prefer to think I have been enlightened.”
He’s serious.Song Liming hadn’t been influenced by the Hybrids nor persuaded to help them.Hewas the grand mastermind of the revolution.
Liming gestured at the assembly hall. “Believe it or not, what happened earlier in the Simulator was all you.”
“That’s not possible,” Yiran insisted.
“Amazing how your mind refuses to accept that you are indeed capable of more—of greatness. What did your grandfather do to you? How did he take a child so full of life and potential and turn him into someone so full of doubt? Think carefully about what he did to you. Was he really trying to draw magic from you?”
Yiran didn’t have a response. His feelings toward his grandfather were too complex to parse.
“Perhaps you are not yet ready to open your eyes to see yourself,” Song Liming said, almost sadly. He pointed at the exit. “You won your fight. I’m a man of my word. You are free to go; no Hybrid will stop you.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Yiran stumbled through the exit, reeling from everything he’d just witnessed.
28
Rui
The door opened before Rui could complete the turn of her key.
Matthias Lin was standing in the doorway, visibly relieved to see her.
“Hi,” she mumbled, pushing past him, refusing to call him Baba like she always did.
Everything in the apartment looked in place. Her father’s clothes were clean, his eyes clear behind his spectacles. Their fight and her precipitous departure hadn’t derailed him, and for that she was glad. Her father might have kept secrets from her, but didn’t she keep secrets from him too? And wasn’t she keeping an important one from him now? She had come to make amends because she might not remember him if things went south in the underworld.
Arms crossed, she leaned against the dining table, trying to keep her expression businesslike. “I’m calling a truce—” she began.
“I’m sorry I lied—” her father said at the same time.
“You’re sorry?”
“A truce?”
Her father sighed. “Iamsorry. I said some things a parent should never say to their child. I wasn’t ready to talk about my past, but it doesn’t excuse what I said.”
The apology felt raw. Rui nodded gruffly, uncrossing her arms. “Apology accepted. Now will you tell me everything?”
“Wait here,” her father said, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Her phone buzzed as she was grabbing two sodas from the fridge. Multiple text messages were coming in from Ash, which could only mean something bad had happened.
We found more bodies.
Rui’s chest grew tighter with each message. The Hybrids were continuingtheir experiments with the rogue talisman and acting with impunity because there was no one to stop them.Youcan, she reminded herself. But the sacrifice she had to make scared her.
Her phone buzzed again.
You’re not seriously considering Madam Meng’s ritual, are you? I don’t like the sound of it. We’ll come up with another plan.
“Is everything all right?” Her father had returned.
Rui put her phone away quickly. “Yeah.”
Her father placed something on the table: the photograph of him and Song Liming in their Xingshan Academy uniforms.
