by Mimi Yu
I love you, she thought. But that wasn’t right—that wasn’t what—
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Min’s eyes widened.
A blur of blue-gray sailed between them, and Min was gone, bowled over by Nokhai’s mammoth wolf.
Lu! his voice rang out in her head. Go!
“Don’t hurt her!” she cried.
Wolf and girl tumbled apart. The ball of energy flew from her sister’s hands, but her aim was off, and it missed Nokhai, blasting a hole into the ground where he’d been half a breath earlier.
Nokhai rolled, coming to a graceful, deadly crouch. Min landed on her belly, then struggled to her knees.
She lifted her hands toward Nokhai. There was no hesitation in her face anymore. Just fury. Seething and single-minded.
She never saw Vrea coming. The blast took her hard in the back. Min went rigid with it, her arms thrown out like a scarecrow’s. She screamed, barely audible over the electric sputter of the lightning.
“No!” Lu cried. “Vrea! Wait!”
The Oracle dropped her hands and Min fell forward like her spine had been cut. Ropes of white-hot energy still whipped wild around her torso, her arms. They hissed as they lanced in and out of her.
Min lay still, her breath shallow and fast. Then, incredibly, her sister rose up on one leg, then the other. She turned toward Vrea.
The veins spidering across her face had gone deep purple. A patch beneath one eye had burst into a dark splotch like spilled ink. The reddened whites of her eyes were darkening at the corners, the black bleeding inward, making the hazy gray of her irises look white by contrast.
“Enough,” said Vrea, and her voice filled the air, firm and solemn.
“Not quite,” Min said flatly. She flexed her hands, watching the lightning lick around her fingers like flames on kindling. “You’re tired, old woman. You spent your strength destroying our army. Do you think you have enough left for me?”
“The corruption in your soul is consuming you,” Vrea said, thrusting out an arm. “Look! Look around at the madness you’ve wrought.”
Lu rose up on her good arm and followed the Oracle’s gesture. Around them, the walls of the Heart crumbled, billowing dust in their wake like a sandstorm. The trees planted along their edges flared green, then alarmingly greener, so bright it hurt her eyes. Then they dimmed, went golden, then black and gray as though they’d been charred. Their leaves dropped, drifting on the air, white and soft as ash.
“If you don’t stop, we will all die,” Vrea continued. “Help me put an end to this, before it’s too late.”
“It’s already ending,” Min said. “It’s already too late.”
She lunged forward, thrusting with both hands. The energy crackling around her disappeared into her body, sucked down under the skin. There was a pause, and then an enormous ball of light shot out through her palms. It shattered into Vrea’s chest and the priestess flew through the air, limp. She hit the ground, dead weight, and did not move again.
“No!” She could hear Prince Shen’s roar over the melee. “No! Vrea!”
Lu closed her eyes.
There was a rumble—so close, impossibly close, a thunderstorm beneath their feet—followed by a deep moan, as if the world itself were grieving. Half the stone floor fell away, replaced by a terrifying maw of sky.
In an instant, two hundred imperial soldiers on horseback were tumbling down into that abyss of benign, placid blue. The remaining soldiers reined up their horses and broke rank, stampeding away in terror. Most were headed out of the Heart, back from where they’d come, but some were trapped on the other side of the split.
Jin directed what was left of his tiny army back from the widening seam. Lu covered her head with her good hand as they stampeded past. How stupid, after everything else, to die crushed under a pack of panicked horses, she thought.
“Get to the temple!” Jin hollered. “The ground won’t hold without Vrea! Do you hear me? Get to the mountain! To the temple!”
Prince Shen drew Vrea’s broken body tight to him. Thin lines of blood ran from her nose. They left red streaks against Shen’s tunic as he clutched her close.
Jin ran back toward him. “We have to go!”
Shen shook his head. Lu could barely hear him. “She’s gone. She was all we had, and she’s gone.”
Lu looked behind her as yet more pavement crumbled. Set’s body was still lying there. For a moment, she met his dead, unseeing eyes with her own.
Then a crack widened beneath him and he too was gone.
“Can you stand?” Jin stooped at her side. His face was twisted in grief and all at once, Lu saw the old man in it, the young man, and the little boy—so many faces flickering like candlelight buffeted in the wind. She looked to where he’d been and saw Shen still crouched on the ground, holding Vrea.
Lu struggled to her knees.
“No time.” Jin’s face resettled into the one she knew as he lifted her into his arms.
“Wait!” she shouted, struggling against him, but he was already running in retreat. Pain seared from her shoulder, through her ribs every time his feet slammed against the ground. “Wait, wait. Put me down! The others—Nokhai!”
“They’re coming,” Jin panted.
Lu looked over his shoulder and saw Nasan blazing on their heels, her face twisted, straining. Her staff was clenched in her right hand, and in her left, Lu saw the glint of steel. Her sword.
“Retreat!” The cry came from the remaining Hana soldiers. “Retreat! Back to the gate!”
Lu, Nokhai’s voice came urgent in her head. She cast about wildly for him, then saw him standing by Min—near the epicenter of the crumbling ground.
Lu, I don’t think she can walk—
“Nok, don’t be an idiot! Leave her!” Nasan waved at him frantically with her staff.
“Let me go!” Lu pounded on Jin’s back with her good hand. “Let me go! My sister—”
He stopped, but before Lu could free herself from his grasp, a stallion thundered up alongside Nokhai and its rider slid off. A small figure in dun-colored robes. With some effort, he lifted Min into his arms. As he turned to regard Nok, his hood slid off.
Brother.
“Him,” Nasan cried in shock, and it took Lu a moment to understand she was talking about the monk, not Nokhai. “It’s him! That monster …”
Nokhai and the monk stared at one another, man and wolf. Two sets of keen, watchful black eyes. As though they had reached some unspoken agreement, the monk threw Min onto his saddle and clambered on after her. A blink, and his stallion was riding away across the fast-disintegrating ground.
“Nokhai, come on!” Lu shouted as Jin began moving again.
The wolf jerked, finally turning from the place where the monk had been, and ran.
They were halfway up the temple steps when the widening split in the ground reached them. Jin stumbled as the stones beneath his feet began to break, to dissolve and fall away. Lu staggered out of his arms, barely kept her balance, ran for her life.
“Faster!” Nasan shouted from somewhere beside her. Pandemonium. Lu could scarcely see anything in the blanketing dust, could scarcely sense anything but the consuming roar of the world breaking around her. Of the made being unmade.
She looked back for Nokhai and saw the dark shape of his wolf leaping its way up the collapsing stairs.
Up ahead, Jin pulled open the heavy doors to the temple. “Get in!” he bellowed. Nasan glanced back, but Lu waved her on.
“Go!” she screamed.
“My brother—”
“I’ve got him!”
Nasan hesitated, then nodded. “You better, Princess.” She raced through the doors as Lu turned back down the stairs.
“Lu, no!” Jin called.
“Nokhai!” Lu ran toward him. The wolf was close now, wending a twisting path over what ground remained. One more leap and he would …
The stones beneath his feet caved.
A cry tore itself from Lu’s throat,
but as Nokhai jumped through the empty air, his shape changed. The wolf twisted, and all at once the dark fur drew back, the claws retracted, and Nokhai grabbed the bottom remaining stair with two human hands, breaking his fall.
“I’ve got you!” Lu shouted, taking the stairs between them in a single leap, falling to her knees. She extended her good hand to him, felt his fingers catch, tangling hot and urgent against her own.
The stair dissolved.
He didn’t scream. The weight in her hand was there, and then it was too much, and just as fast, it was gone.
“Nokhai!”
She stared into the empty air, disbelieving. Some part of her registered the stone beneath her giving way. In a moment she too would fall. Good. It’s what I deserve. It’s—
“It’s too late!” Strong hands grabbed her.
“No!” She kicked and writhed, but Jin hauled her into his arms and held fast.
“We have to go. It’s too late.”
“No!” she insisted, her voice breaking. But he was running again, toward the temple, racing the disintegration. But that was wrong, she thought—Nokhai had gone the other way.
“We have to go back!” she screamed. “Nokhai!”
“It’s too late, Lu,” Jin whispered into her hair as they passed into the temple. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He laid her on the floor, pulling the door tight behind them. The roar of the breaking pavement dulled. Lu blinked in the darkness, saw the vague shapes of people crowding around her. Stupidly, desperately, she searched for Nokhai, but he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t ever going to be there.
“What should we do, Jin?” Nasan was asking. “How—where … where’s my brother? Lu? Lu! Where’s Nok?”
She should stand. She should open her eyes. She needed to face Nasan. Her body wouldn’t move, though. She swallowed hard, unable to hold back the tears streaming from her eyes. “Nokhai. He’s—”
The temple plummeted.
CHAPTER 36
Disintegration
The ground was still moving. Min’s body seized with the expectation, the terror. The earth was breaking apart, and it was all her doing—she had to stop it. Couldn’t. How could she—
She sat up and found herself in the small box of her carriage. Beautifully appointed as ever, with its silk-upholstered walls and gilded hardware.
It felt like a coffin.
“You’re awake.”
Panting, Min threw off the covers and found Brother sitting across from her. Butterfly was crouched at his side, pale and shivering despite the heat.
“Shh,” the old man tutted, pressing Min back down. “Rest. You must rest.”
“No!” she cried, recoiling at his touch. The ground was still shaking—she had to get out. Had to get away, had to go, had to run, had to find Set. Only Set was … he was …
“There’s nowhere to go,” the old man said softly. Perhaps he meant it as a comfort; it felt like a threat.
Min’s heart still raced. She felt the force of it alone might throw her off the bed. Someone let out a sob. Butterfly. When Min looked at her, the nuna buried her face into the filthy orange sleeves of her robe.
“None of that,” Brother snapped. It was the harshest voice Min had ever heard him use. “You’re upsetting your princess. Go—tell the driver to halt the column.”
The nuna ran to the front of the carriage. Moments later, they slowed and stilled.
“You’re disoriented,” Brother said. “I’ll give you something to help you sleep.”
It wasn’t an offer. He looked tired, nearly as dazed as she felt. She wanted to kick him in the throat. Lu would. Lu would—
Lu.
All at once she remembered her sister’s face, the way the older girl had looked at her. Her shock. The sense that all she had held to be true was unmoored.
She’d looked at Min like she was someone—something—she didn’t know anymore. Didn’t recognize.
You never knew me at all, sister. But no, not sister anymore.
What have I done?
Brother placed a cup in her hands. She looked down at its milky contents and recalled the poison her mother had forced her father to swallow. It hadn’t been a dream; she could admit that much now. She looked up at the monk. He had cut her with his knife, made her bleed.
He had also saved her. Clumsily thrown her up onto his saddle. Ridden her through the gate between this world and the Inbetween, just before it collapsed behind them.
There had been such terrible noise, and a break in the ground that looked like the sky, and everyone had run. Everyone except her. And the wolf. The boy. She wondered vaguely what had become of him.
“Set is dead,” she whispered. There had been blood coming out of his neck. So much blood.
“Yes,” Brother sighed. “He is.”
What will happen now?
“The terrain has changed,” Brother said as he drew back a curtain and looked outside. Min flinched at the flare of daylight.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Not long enough. You need more rest, Princess.”
Empress, she thought. But was she? With her husband dead, what did that leave her?
The Girl King, Min thought deliriously. Ridiculous. They’d never let her rule in her own right, not truly. Even if they did, she wouldn’t want it—would she? How could she? She didn’t know the first thing about ruling, leading. Not like her sister …
“Do you think—is it possible she survived?” Min blurted.
“Lu? It’s possible. The Yunians surely had protections for themselves. And since she was under their care, well …”
Lu is alive. Min was sure of it. If there was ever a chance, Lu found it. It frightened her that she didn’t know how that made her feel.
“Your claim is safe,” assured the monk, misreading her thoughts. “Even if Lu survived, she has nothing now. Fewer than a handful of broken-down soldiers at her back and the alliance of a city that doesn’t exist anymore. The remnants of which we destroyed.”
You don’t know her.
“What’s important now is that you heal,” the monk continued. “You have exhausted yourself. Set—we—asked too much of you, too soon. You can build your strength up at your aunt and uncle’s estate before we head back to Yulan City, where we will learn to better control your powers.”
Min shuddered. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to use those powers again—not after all that had happened. Besides, what good would it be? Set was dead, Yunis had collapsed into ruin, and—
“What about the prophecy?” she blurted. “The prophecy foretold—”
“Prophecies,” Brother said, “can be malleable. In accordance with what is needed. As the world changes, so does truth.”
Min wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Perhaps your cousin’s reign was never meant to be,” Brother continued. “Perhaps he was merely a tool of the heavens, to bring me to you. Who’s to say?”
Me?
“Poor Set,” the monk sighed. “I thought his passion, his fervor for what was real could sustain him. But he was young and reckless. In the end, he was seduced by the promise of fast power. Of revenge on your sister. He wanted that short-term, earthly glory too much. I thought he wanted to plumb the depths of what time has forgotten. What men have lost, and what they have yet to discover. Power like nothing the world has ever seen …”
His dark eyes fixed beadily on her. Min folded her arms protectively across her chest.
Me. I am the knowledge. I am the power. He wanted what she had. Wanted what she was.
What about what I want?
She didn’t say the words aloud, though. It wouldn’t be fair. Asking him a question to which she knew there was no answer.
Brother bowed his head. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with the captain—I will return shortly. In the meantime, drink that draft I gave you and try to rest, Princess.”
When he’d gone, she set aside the dra
ft and lifted the curtain hanging over the window by her bed. Outside, she counted perhaps thirty soldiers on horseback. Thirty men out of near a thousand.
Brother’s stallion had stumbled. As they’d ridden back out of the glowing slit she’d rent in the air, where the lake met the shore, the horse’s hooves had scrabbled for purchase. When Min looked down she’d seen the stones below were slick with blood. Blood, and lumps of something soft and pink and boneless—for that was what remained of men when they fell from such a great height.
Was Set’s blood, his bits of flesh, among them?
She closed her eyes.
What have I done?
What you were born to do.
The voice was thin this time, too weary for mocking. Min hadn’t even felt her appear, as though she hadn’t come at all—or as though she had been present the whole time.
“Tsai,” she blurted aloud, not caring if anyone heard. Butterfly hadn’t returned, and Min suspected she wouldn’t until she was forced to. “You’re her mother, aren’t you? You’re Lu’s mother but you let me … do that to her.”
“I told you,” she murmured. “I’m not her anymore, not truly.”
“I know!” Min snapped. “You’re an echo, a shade, a memory. But why would you help me hurt her daughter?”
There was a pause. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Tsai cursed you out of love for her child, but all that remains is me. A thing that seeks revenge like a snake seeks the warmth of a beating heart. I was born out of love. I was born of rightful fury. But what does that become when the love is gone?”
Min didn’t know. “I don’t care,” she said, and realized it was true. “Why do you sound so weak?”
“I just told you. What I am wasn’t meant to last in this world. I’m tired.”
“Why don’t you leave me, then?” Min demanded. “Our deal was that I would bring you to Yunis—but I’m headed back home now, and you’re still here.”
