Page 56 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

The last thing I saw was a finely dressed woman, her red-tinted lips parted in a wide, open-mouthed smile.

A dark cloth suddenly covered my face, choking me.

My training kicked in—I held my breath, twisting to drive my elbow into my captor’s stomach.

But before I could summon the dragon’s power, nimble fingers struck my qi points with a precision few could match.

I gasped, and my body went limp as I breathed in the cloth’s poison, my mind rejecting what my body already knew: I had walked into a trap.

I woke to a splitting headache, the lixia withdrawal so brutal I felt on the precipice of death. I tugged weakly at my hands, before realizing they were secured by what must be iron manacles. This again.

Despite my many injuries, the lixia in the aftermath of the quake had been enough to buoy me, lending me a false strength that resulted in overconfidence and conceit.

Now, stripped of lixia, I felt like nothing more than an animated corpse.

I ached everywhere; there was no muscle in my body that did not throb; my skin hurt as if stretched too tight; and beneath it all, ever present, coursed an undercurrent of violent lack.

My body had grown to depend on spirit power, like a warped tree that requires a stake to stand.

I needed Qinglong’s power now to breathe, to live, to even wish to live .

Belatedly, I understood that the only thing keeping me from keeling over was my chains.

Without them, I would be fetal on the floor.

It was in this moment of weakness that Sky’s long-ago admonition came to mind: “ You’re a good fighter, Ren, but you’re a terrible soldier. You think for yourself. You don’t obey orders. And you look out for your own agenda over your platoon’s. ”

He was right, of course. It was my instinct to act alone that had led me straight into this trap.

“How weak you are,” said a new voice. “I always wondered—however did you last in the Three Kingdoms War?”

With effort, I forced my eyes open. I was chained to a tapering column rising from the floor of the cave, my arms tied behind me and an iron collar fastened around my throat, which felt excessive. Because my captives are afraid of me , I saw. They were afraid of the power I possessed.

I raised my head and met the smiling gaze of Princess Yifeng. Of course. The Anlai messenger had even warned me at the trading post, but distracted as I’d been, I had ignored the threat.

“Hello again, Lady Hai.”

“Come to finish the job?” I rasped, remembering the last time she’d tried to kill me. I squinted at her. “Why are you even here? Were you banished from the Forbidden City?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed, though I could tell I’d offended her at the suggestion. “The crown prince is sick. I was simply accompanying him to the treaty signing to ensure his health and well-being.”

“If you’re speaking of your husband, you know he’s no longer the crown prince.”

Her neck flushed. “He will be once I bring your severed head to the Imperial Commander!”

I was so tired. “And how will that help anything?”

“You are a black magic practitioner,” she spat. “There’s no point in denying it. I have proof.”

And then, to my utter horror, she beckoned forward none other than Luo Tao, Sky’s former personal guard. I remembered glimpsing his face amid the wreckage after the veil’s collapse, and it struck me—he must have been spying on me for days.

“Your prince banished him under threat of death, but he returned after recognizing the danger your existence posed.”

Looking into the familiar lines of his face brought memories of the war flooding back to me.

I recalled the sheer dread I’d felt, kneeling before the Imperial Commander’s throne as I awaited my sentence.

I recalled guards dragging me below ground into the dungeons, losing the warmth of sun on my skin, the scent of pine trees, the song of morning larks.

Losing my sense of self, my will to live.

“If only I had killed you at the end of the war—instead of leaving you to the justice of the throne,” Tao spat. “But now I see that you are too dangerous to be left to live.”

I was struck by the force of his animosity.

It was true that if he had killed me then, perhaps the veil between realms never would have torn.

And yet I had tried to save the Three Kingdoms then, just as I was trying to now.

I had always been trying to save the Three Kingdoms. Couldn’t they see that?

Was intention not worth something? Or was it only the echoes of your mistakes that history remembered?

I drew a ragged breath, trying for calm. “If you kill me now, you are ruining our last chance at closing the spirit gates,” I said. “I am trying to restore the veil.”

“The audacity of your lies,” he snarled. “You were the one who opened the gates in the first place.”

Desperate, I shifted tactics, appealing to his sense of duty as a soldier. “Do you think Sky will forgive you for this?” I asked.

“That boy is lost in his romantic delusions,” Princess Yifeng interrupted. “But he will understand and step aside when the Imperial Commander selects Keyan as his successor.” Her expression was one of pride. “My heroism will ensure that.”

Tao had backed away in disgust, but Princess Yifeng, conversely, drew near, lowering her voice as if sharing a juicy morsel of gossip.

“You know, Lady Hai, as deviant as it is, I think I rather understand you. We women do tend to draw the short end of the stick, do we not? We do all the dirty work, and the men get to claim the reward. But you know what your mistake was? You got too greedy. You should’ve learned from me and pulled the strings backstage.

” She clucked her tongue like a scolding schoolteacher.

“You could’ve had a good thing going. And we could’ve been friends.

” She shook her head. “But that time has passed now.”