Page 61 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

Forty-One

Ma—perhaps this is not goodbye, and yet I feel a strange certainty that this journey will be my last. I do not wish to leave you alone, but I cannot go on in a world where my brothers’ murderer lives.

Know that my death will not be in vain. Whether it takes a hundred years or a thousand, I will find you in every lifetime.

And in another life, when we meet again, I hope to be the one to care for you—as you have cared for me.

A twelve-year-old Winter stood before an audience of Anlai nobles, who studied him like a pinned butterfly beneath glass. With an awkward, nervous bow, he went to his instrument, a seven-string guqin. Then, with a deep breath, he began to play.

The melody that emanated from his instrument was so lovely it brought the audience to its knees.

Although this was a social occasion, no one dared speak as music flowed from Winter’s dexterous hands, eloquent and exquisite and entirely bewitching.

Listening to his song felt like being cast under a spell, one even the magician himself was lost in.

For when Winter played his guqin, only then was he truly happy.

“ Why do you toil for hours at your useless instrument? ” demanded his father. “ Your tutors tell me you are ludicrous with a sword. How they laugh at me—a warlord with a musician for a son! What happens if we go to war? ”

“ I have no interest in war ,” said Winter.

“Will you stay at home like a girl, then? Play your little music while your brothers go off to fight for their country?”

“ There are other ways to fight ,” said Winter.

“ Do you really think you can entrance your enemies with your music? ” Liu Zhuo laughed. “ Let me show you—this is what they’ll do. ”

With little ceremony, he stepped on Winter’s prized guqin, an heirloom made from the finest zimu trees of Mount Fuxi. Beneath his father’s boot, the instrument splintered in half, its strings clanging together in protest.

Years later. The Three Kingdoms War raged on, but Winter spent most of his time in his tent, reading poetry and composing songs. He missed his guqin, but it would have been impractical to transport.

“Why won’t you look at me?” he asked Lieutenant Tong Peilun, late one night as the rest of the camp slumbered on.

“Your Highness,” he said, staring at his boots, “it isn’t proper.”

“Is it because I’m a prince?” he asked. “I’ve seen you meet my brother’s eyes.”

Peilun swallowed, his cheeks flushing beneath Winter’s regard. “It’s because you make me nervous,” he admitted.

Winter tilted his head at him, baring the long line of his neck. “And why do I make you nervous?”

His anxiety gave way to frustration. “I can’t do my job properly around you,” he said angrily.

“I don’t need you to do your job, then.” Winter rose from his chair, and Peilun’s gaze drifted to him like a fly to honey. “I have other jobs for you, Peilun.”

The sound of his name was like a release. Peilun strode across the tent, closing the distance between them. Winter extinguished the lamp, but even in the dark, they found each other.

“You must learn to wield the sword!” Peilun snapped, wiping sweat from his brow. Their practice blades lay discarded on the mat after another failed bout. “What if I’m not there to protect you one day? What then?”

“Will that day come?” asked Winter, raising a brow.

“I don’t know,” Peilun replied, exasperated, “but I for one am not willing to risk losing you. Take this seriously, please !”

The prince sighed. “I told you when we first met,” he said calmly, “I have no taste for violence.”

“Then why did you agree to receive instruction?” Peilun growled, his patience wearing thin.

Winter held his gaze. “To spend more time with you, of course.”

Peilun let out an aggravated breath. “Your Highness—”

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

He clenched his jaw. “You’re infuriating.”

The prince grinned, leaning forward to wipe a drop of sweat from Peilun’s brow. “Do go on.”

?“Why do you act like a girl?” asked a ten-year-old Sky. An older memory then, from childhood. “ You know the others make fun of you for it. ”

“ There are worse things than being made fun of ,” said Winter.

Sky wrinkled his nose. “ Like what? ”

“ Like not knowing yourself ,” said Winter. “ Like being ashamed of who you are. ”

And Winter’s sense of self was that strong.

It was so strong he recognized he did not need immense power to make others fear and respect him.

He did not need lixia to feel satisfied with his life.

His contentment and self-acceptance were like poison to the spirits, who picked at any insecurity they could find to tempt him.

We can give you eternal beauty. We can offer a life without pain.

We can provide fame and consequence and glory beyond your imagination.

“ I don’t need any of that ,” answered Winter.

Their voices were drowned out by his will to live. His belief in this life, and his desire for it. His qi poured into the rift, a sea with no shore, filling and filling the chasm until the wayward spirits began to shriek, desperate to return home before the rift sealed shut.

The ground beneath us trembled. Our joined hands tightened, each of our attentions fixed inward as we directed our remaining qi into the rift.

“ Hold on ,” said a once-familiar voice in my head. As if emerging from a hundred-year sleep, I remembered vaguely that I knew that voice. Ming Lei.

“Don’t give it everything. Leave enough to come back.”

The reminder was a jolt to my consciousness.

“Hold back!” I shouted to the others, just as the earth began to tilt, and the chasm sink. “We have to be able to get out!”

They could not hear me. Winter’s music had reached its climax: strings swelling, applause ringing.

Kuro’s blade clashed against his brother’s, and the reverberations were felt through the field, so that stalks of sorghum swayed in answer.

Rouha and Plum stamped their feet to the beat of the dragon dances, the drums pounding faster and faster.

All the memories that made us who we were—we fed them into the veil.

Only I kept something back. And now, as I tried to swim to the surface, dragging Kuro and Winter with me, I found their hands slipping through mine, turning translucent and spectral.

“Liu Winter!” I screamed. “Tan Kuro!”

The balance of our world was reasserting itself, and now nothing could stop its passage. I fought the current, struggling to tow Winter and Kuro with me. I was almost to the surface. A single beam of light emanated from above, fracturing as it struck the restless waves.

But I’d forgotten that my enemies existed on both sides of the veil. Before I could plunge my hand through the opening, a massive shadow obscured the light. He peered down at me, and smiled.

Qinglong.

He’d come for me at last.