“The attack will begin soon,” her mother said, her voice oppressively sweet. “Butyoucan change things.”
The attack? Was her mother talking about Feng?
Her mother’s smile grew disturbingly wide. “If you take my place, you will never feel guilty again. You’ll never feel any sadness or regret about what happened.”
“Take... your place?” Rui whispered, breaths ragged.
The woman with her mother’s face came closer, and she cupped Rui’s chin, cold fingers digging in. “You are broken, my child. So, so broken. But down here, you can be whole again.”
Rui couldn’t speak. She didn’t know—didn’twantto know what the woman was saying.
“I don’t have to be the one who dies. Take my place, and your father won’t have to suffer the way he did. Take my place, and your grief, your guilt, it will all leave you.” The woman leaned in, whispering in Rui’s ear, “Take my place, and you can stop hating yourself.”
“Stop... hating?” If she took her mother’s place now, would she finally be released from her guilt? Would the broken parts of her be mended, piece by piece?
She felt herself drifting, as if her soul’s anchor to the world had loosened and its light was fading. Darkness fell, but the shadows did not take her all at once. They seeped into the cracks of her being, weaving through her sorrow, her grief, weighing her down and engulfing her.
Your mother protected you because she loved you.
A pinprick of light appeared. She snatched at it desperately, clinging to it, clinging to life. To hope. Her world brightened, and she gasped.
“You’re not my mother—she would never ask this of me!” She shoved the woman away.
“Iamyour mother,” the woman said with a ghoulish grin. Her dark hair was turning stringy, the ends writhing like worms. “I’m your mother’s soul, trapped forever in the underworld because ofyou.”
“You arenother,” Rui repeated, backing away.
“Don’t go!” the woman cried. Tears streamed down her face, her features contorted in despair as she reached out. “Ru-er, Xiao Ru, don’t go—”
“You can’t have me!” Rui shouted, willing her strength into each word.
The woman seemed to shrivel, her limbs wasting away as she fell to the ground. “Don’t go, please...” she wailed.
For the briefest of moments, Rui hesitated. Whatever that thing was, it stilllookedlike her mother.
Your mother protected you because she loved you.
Rui turned and ran.
“Selfish girl! Rotten seed of my womb!”
Something sharp struck her, like knives slicing her flesh and bone. But she kept running, mustering whatever strength she had left. The alleyway went on forever, and the screaming echoed around her, each word carving pain into her soul.
“You couldn’t even avenge me yourself. Instead you had someone else get their hands dirty for you. Unfilial child—it should have been you who died. It should have been you!”
A cry escaped Rui’s throat when she realized the screaming voice sounded like her own.
Her mother was dead, her soul either in one of the Courts or reborn. Rui wasn’t here to meet her. It was never meant to be. Rui had her own purpose in life, her own reasons to go on. She pictured her father’s face in her mind, then Zizi and Ada and Ash and her friends, and she covered her ears and kept running. The screaming continued, the words cutting so deeply she thought she was going to black out from the pain.
Red flashed in the corner of her eye. The string on her wrist wasglowing again. There was a rhythm to it, like a pulse. She didn’t know why, but she held up her arm as she ran. She felt a sudden tug, as though someone had hooked a finger around the string, pulling her arm to the right.
Something flashed against the brick wall up ahead.
A mirror.
Was it an entrance or an exit?
She took a deep breath and threw herself into the glass.
