Page 47 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

“No,” said Kuro, raising a hand to stop me. I tensed, preparing to fight, but he said, “I-I’ll do it. It’s my—” His voice broke. “It’s my responsibility.”

He knelt beside her, cradling her face in his hands.

He tried to speak, but only a strangled sound emerged from his throat.

He tried again; still nothing came. Jinya’s body twitched like a trapped animal, unable to escape.

My eyes stung with tears, but I couldn’t look away.

With trembling hands, Kuro pressed his knife to her neck.

He was shaking so hard the knife would not stay still.

Jinya was writhing again. “Kuro—” I began.

He slit her throat.

It was not cleanly done. Blood spurted everywhere as he hit an artery, and Jinya bucked, her eyes rolling back in her head. Kuro held her as Jinya’s spirit released a final defiant hiss, before surrendering at last, fading into oblivion. The sudden silence in her absence felt like condemnation.

You did this. You started this.

Numbly, Kuro got to his feet, staring at his bloody knife. I struggled for breath, but the thick grief and guilt hanging over us seemed to suck all air from this place.

Without warning, Kuro let out a bellow of pure rage, and the spirits hovering near us dispersed like flies.

“Kuro—” I tried.

“Leave me!” he roared.

“It’s not your—”

He swung toward me with murderous intent. “Get out of my sight!”

I ran. I ran as far as I could, but still I could not escape my guilt, which followed me as a shadow.

My throat closed and I wheezed for breath, trying to draw air.

The lixia swarmed in my bones, my veins, seeking an outlet, a release.

The war had not ended with Chancellor Sima’s death, as I’d once foolishly believed.

No, the war was ongoing, and the death toll only rising as the beasts we’d let out to play stole more and more from the lives we’d once deemed commonplace.

I had hated my former life. I had been so ready to give it up, to trade it for six months of freedom and a roll of the dice.

But I had not realized then what a luxury it was to trust your own mind, to know that your loved ones slept soundly beside you, to know that the days would go on and that you were not responsible for the destruction of the world.

I had always sought to prove myself, to become the best, to have my name recorded in the annals of history. But I had never considered the possibility that it might be as a villain.

All at once, I found myself standing before the Wen River. The place my mother had drowned. White plum blossoms drifted down from the overhanging branches into the river. From above, it looked as though the trees were crying.

It was spring, I saw. It was spring, and the world was weeping.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” I said.

A cold, slender hand slid into mine. Kuro? No.

“Ma?”

She searched my gaze, as I searched hers. How young she looked, younger even than my own reflection. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted to her. “You know I was searching for the eternal spring. To save myself. To finish what you began.”

She did not speak.

“But now…now I wonder if I shouldn’t go.

If I give up my power…who will stop the dragon?

Will the world as we know it be forever changed?

” I thought of Princess Ruihua dragging her broken nails across a tree, Jinya burying herself deep in the sand.

“ You can’t go back ,” I had told Kuro. Had the rebellion been worth it to him?

If he could change the past, would he do it all over again?

“Why did we give up so much for the sake of power? Why did we make such a bargain, thinking it a worthy trade? Why didn’t we suspect we’d lose ourselves in the process? And why must I feel this guilt now—why can’t I run and save myself?”

I was beginning to cry, so I nearly missed her answer. “You could run and save yourself,” she said, voice level, calm. “But what would be the world you returned to?”

I trembled, crying harder.

“You sought the dragon’s power, and the power corrupted you.

Now you wish to forsake it, and return to who you once were.

But the world itself is irrevocably changed.

Even if you find the spring, qinaide, and even if you succeed in relinquishing your powers, do you really think you can go back to the person you once were?

You will live with what you have done, for the rest of your life. ”

I shook my head in desperation. “All I wanted was power for myself,” I said in a small voice. “Not to hurt others. I just…I didn’t want to be hurt again.”

But my mind, the traitor, conjured memories of irrefutable violence.

The way I’d laughed as I’d tortured Red, my own squad member; the way I’d brutalized and maimed a rebel from the Black Scarves, because he’d reminded me of a certain general from the war.

The way I’d even tried my best to make Sky suffer.

My mother seemed to read my thoughts. “But then, with your power,” she said softly, “you hurt others. You became what you once feared.”

I breathed in the fragrance of plum blossoms as they floated in the air for a few precious seconds before drowning in the water below. For how could a flower petal stand against the river?

How had I ever believed this world would not corrupt me?

“Shh,” she said. “It’s okay. There’s still time. Remember: history is always being rewritten.”

“Ma,” I cried, reaching for her. “I-I need you.”

She did not let me cling to her. She had never been one for physical affection, even when I was a child.

Instead, she drew back, disentangling her hand from mine.

“You must go,” she said, and I fought against the sharp sting of disappointment.

“Why do you think the dragon has not noticed your presence in the spirit realm?”

I hiccupped. If his attention wasn’t on the spirit realm…“He’s found a way into the human realm?” I asked in astonishment. My mother did not answer. The river below stirred with fallen petals, and I was, once again, alone.