Page 59 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

Forty

The sword of Liu Zhuo was known as the dragon’s sword, for there was no blade as tremendous or as costly.

Forged by the famed blacksmiths of the Runong Desert, it was said to be made of the finest diamond and steel.

Its blade was three mi long, and its weight over twenty jin.

Indeed, it was said that to even lift his sword was a feat of considerable strength.

The next morning, I awoke to an empty bed; Lei was gone.

At the sound of rumbling wheels beyond, I hurriedly returned to my room, but not before Kuro caught me in the corridor, shouting good morning with a cheery wink. I ignored him.

In my room I dressed and armed myself to the teeth, then touched my jade for good luck. I could no longer feel Qinglong’s attention, but that did not mean he had given up on me. Just as I’d been biding my time, so too had he.

Just like the moons in the sky, the two of us cannot exist in this world , I told myself. One of us has to go. And it won’t be me.

“Phoenix-Slayer, are you ready?” At the sound of a young woman’s voice, I threw open the door. But it was not Lily.

“Where’s Duan Lily?” I asked, for I’d expected her to come see me before I departed.

“She left yesterday to gather provisions outside the city,” replied the Leyuan rebel. “She still hasn’t returned.”

My frown deepened. “Shouldn’t you send someone after her—”

“We can’t spare the manpower right now.”

I saw the reality of it in the woman’s eyes; they were stretched too thin as it was. I prayed Lily had simply been taken captive by the Anlai army. At least in the brig, she stood a chance at escape. If she’d been possessed by a spirit, there was no going back.

I felt it was my responsibility to find her, as I had been the one to teach her how to fight. But there was simply no time. I thought of her gap-toothed smile, her sincere delight in swordplay. If she had been taken, it was my fault.

Another item to add to my long list of crimes.

Sky was waiting for us aboveground. He too was heavily armed, surrounded by a platoon of veteran soldiers on horseback. To my surprise, Winter was beside Captain Tong, mounted on a white stallion.

“You’re coming too?” I asked Winter, who had never been known to fight.

Winter nodded, and Sky looked away, tight-jawed. I had the feeling I’d walked in on the tail end of an argument.

Kuro, who was taller than any man I knew, could only ride his own horse, which he’d brought with him from Leyuan.

The rebels had tried to find me a suitable mount, but they were all too skittish and untrained.

So Sky had decided to lend me his stallion, which he never parted with.

Now he held the reins as I mounted his steed, and I tried not to listen as he whispered words of comfort to his faithful companion.

I was trying and failing not to think of the worst-case scenario—that every person and animal we brought with us to the chasm might never return.

Kuro’s soldiers gathered around him as we prepared to depart.

Though a few had deserted after Jinya’s passing, the majority had remained, pledging their allegiances until death.

Now, most of the rebels would aid Lei and the southern monks in staging their diversion, to lead the more violent spirits away from the site of the rift.

Knowing Kuro, we all expected a grand speech. Instead, he only lifted one fist in the air, his face unexpectedly grave. “My life for the rebellion,” he said. His voice, though low and somber, boomed through the crowd.

“ Everyone wants change ,” he’d once told me, “ but no one wants to pay the price of revolution .”

If he knew the true price , I wondered, would he still be willing to pay it?

“My life for the rebellion!” they echoed. Out of curiosity I glanced at Sky to catch his reaction; he was acting as though he couldn’t hear them. This cease-fire was makeshift at best, and would end the moment the veil was restored. If we lived that long, anyway.

There were so many things that could go wrong, I thought, not for the first time. So many ways this could end in bloodshed and suffering. But I was a gambler’s daughter, and I had inherited my father’s penchant for risk.

“Move out!” shouted Sky, and he was once again every ounce the commander I knew him to be. His men surrounded us in perfect synchronization as we rode out toward the city center.

Leaving the tunnels, I could tell Lei had already made his move.

The streets and skies were deserted, but I could sense traces of a fight brewing elsewhere, just beyond First Crossing’s southern border.

Although the battle was too far for its sound to carry, I could feel its reverberations in the earth, the way the mountains seemed to shake with every meeting of qi and lixia.

Lei would be okay, I told myself. He was immune to spirit corruption, and his qi was strong.

But what if his brother had recovered from his poisoning? What if the monks turned on him? What if—

“There’s nothing you can do for him now,” said Kuro knowingly. “He chose this path for himself.”

I tightened my grip on my reins. “And are you afraid?” I asked the rebel leader, looking at him astride his stallion, his face turned up to the sun.

He grinned. “Mark my words,” he said, answering a question I hadn’t asked, “history is being written today.”

I tried to smile back, but my skin felt stretched too tight.

A tinny, high-pitched ringing filled my ears, just soft enough that its source remained unidentifiable.

As we neared the site of the veil’s collapse, the air grew swampy and choked with lixia.

The horses turned fearful, their soldiers having to urge them forward with shouts and even switches.

Sky’s stallion nickered nervously beneath me, before spotting Sky ahead of us as he moved confidently toward the chasm.

The air turned viscous, and I felt as though I were breathing in syrup, or a gossamer spiderweb that clung to my every sense.

Everything dimmed: my vision, my hearing, my sense of the ground beneath me and the sky above.

The world could have been inverted, floating, and I would not have been able to tell.

One thing remained: lixia. It was everywhere, screaming at me for attention. I could smell it, taste it, even hear it, as if it truly were a living organism.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the absence of light.

We were closer to the chasm than I’d expected, as if time moved slowly and then all at once.

The chasm was so much larger than any other spirit gate I’d seen.

It was a rift between worlds, and it felt like one, truly, like a crime of the highest order.

The imbalance of it all rang in my bloodstream, in my bones, in the way the mountains rumbled and the tides shifted.

The world had tilted. Now it was in free fall.

“Stop!” Sky shouted. For he had perceived what I was just now noticing—a subtle, gravitational force drawing us in. Tempting us, luring us closer. Fall , it seemed to say. Fall in.

Kuro’s horse bucked with agitation. The rebel leader tried to calm him, but the animal clearly wished to run. We’d planned to remain on horseback as we worked, to enable a quick getaway. But now I wondered if a getaway was simply wishful thinking.

“We should dismount,” I told Kuro, as he lurched forward on his horse. “We’ll need our concentration.”

Sky looked furious at this, but he had the sense not to argue. “Don’t go any closer to the edge,” he warned me.

I dismounted clumsily, landing on one foot.

Sky’s horse was much taller than I was used to, and gravity did not seem to function properly here, as if up and down had somehow reversed.

A wave of déjà vu washed over me. Were we nearing the in-between realm, the place where I’d fought Chancellor Sima at the end of the war?

Could that have been the start of the rift, when we’d begun to blur the borders between realms?

Lost in thought, I barely noticed the saber-toothed bird that flew from the chasm, her wings slicing through the air as she dove toward me. At her vicious screech, I threw my arms over my head—but the blow never came. Sky’s iron-tipped arrow had already struck, lodging deep in the bird’s side.

I gaped at Sky. “Thank you,” I said breathlessly.

He nodded, fitting another arrow in place. “Do what you need to do.”

Another boom shook the earth from afar. What was Lei up to? But I could not afford to think about him right now. Closing my eyes, I channeled my qi through my core, releasing any errant worries. When I opened my eyes, Sky’s soldiers had formed a small clearing around us.

Only Kuro was left beside me.

Tentatively, I held out a spirit fossil from the Reed Flute Caves. “Ready?” I asked him.

Kuro grinned, positively buzzing with anticipation. He wrapped his hand around mine, so that we both grasped the spirit fossil. At once, I felt our life forces merge, the essence of him bleeding into me.

“See you on the other side, Phoenix-Slayer.”

As one, we left behind our bodies, our spirits entering the site of the rift like petals floating along a river current. I recognized the feeling of the in-between realm now, the way it entrapped qi and lixia, the way it allowed for both human emotion and spirit detachment.

Kuro’s qi centered me like an effusive embrace.

Perhaps he was a reincarnation of the Great Warrior, for his qi was like nothing I’d ever known.

I could not feel the limits of it; I could not sense where his life force ended and Baihu’s lixia began.

The first embers of hope stirred within me.

With my gift for compulsion and Kuro’s boundless qi, perhaps we stood a chance.

Perhaps there could be a happy ending to our story.