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In the silence that follows, I feel my heartbeat pulsing inside me. The enormity of what I have done, of the consequences of my failure, presses down on me from all sides in the surrounding darkness.

I have courted the enemy. I have unconsciously helped a spy from the Kingdom of Night penetrate the Kingdom of Sky, meant to be a safe frontier from the mó invasion. And I have just summoned the surviving heir to the Kingdom of Rivers into the waiting claws of the enemy.

The jade pendant warms against my neck, for it has never failed— he has never failed. For nine years, the pendant and the boy inside it have been my salvation, the only piece of this world that has not abandoned me. Now, steadfastly and expectedly, it heats against my heart, confirming to me again what has become my very worst fear. I can still see Hào’yáng from earlier this afternoon, limned in the light against a backdrop of sunset skies and dancing petals. I’m here now, he told me.

Sansiran lifts the pendant from my neck. “Yù’chén,” she says, and with a flick of her fingers, he stirs. “Take her as you so wish. Keep her out of the way while I deal with the mortal heir.”

“No,” I whisper. “Please. You already have the mortal realm.”

“Oh, but I don’t,” she replies. “I can only truly have it once I kill the mortal heir.”

I think of the rumors of how, nine years after our kingdom fell, the mó have kept solely to the Imperial City. A rumor that Yù’chén himself confirmed to me.

Fú’yí’s words come back to me in this moment: It is because there is old magic in the bones of our land—magic as old as the Heavenly Order itself. It safeguards this kingdom for mortals. And it remembers who the true rulers of this realm are.

I dismissed her ramblings as confusion, as the desperation of one who had begun to believe in fairy tales.

But what if there was truth to those words? The legends, after all, must come from somewhere.

When the gods created the realms, the dragons gave the first mortal emperor a drop of their blood. That power runs within us still, centuries later.

“No,” I beg, but Sansiran is already turning away.

From across the room, Yù’chén glances at me. The blood on his face and whatever other wounds his mother inflicted on him are all gone, wiped clean with her dark magic. He is beautiful again, but the sight of his flushed cheeks and lips stirs my disgust. His face has closed off in that way it used to, so that I see only the hard, shadowed planes of his features, the dark red of his irises.

“àn’yīng,” he says harshly. “Come here.”

His command flows through me, a familiar caress of darkness I know intimately. I rise to my feet and approach him, yet with each step, I test the limits of his power. I can feel the difference now between the magic of a halfling and the magic of a demon queen. Sansiran’s power bore the weight of mountains, useless for me to resist.

Yù’chén’s is softer. Gentler. Almost as though…he doesn’t mean it. I think of the past few times he compelled me, how I was distracted and not focused on resisting. But if I steel myself now…

I gather every ounce of my willpower and dig my heels in.

My next step falters. I glance down, then quickly up at him, and I see his gaze mirroring mine, darting from my feet to my face. He says nothing; only his arm snaps out, pulling me against him and flipping me around so my back is pressed to him and I’m watching the scene before us.

“Be still,” he says to me, and this time, his power is absolute, twining around my limbs, my ribs, my core, binding me to him. I have no choice but to remain frozen as his hand sweeps to my waist, his other to my arms, pinning me in place. His heartbeat thuds against his chest.

Halfling, it seems to remind me, and I find courage in that. Yù’chén is a half-mó; his power was not even enough to defeat a regular, full mó. If I resisted just now, I can do it again.

I wait for Sansiran to face the sliding doors before I try. Every muscle in my body strains. Then one finger twitches. My other hand gives a shake. Once more, and it might be enough to bend my wrist enough to flick out a crescent blade.

I hear Yù’chén swallow behind me; feel his fingers come to lace themselves with mine.

He twists my arm so hard that I cry out. His other hand pulls me tighter against him. He is rough, cruel, and nothing like the man who trailed kisses up my skin, who cradled my chin in his hands as if I were something breakable.

I know now how deep deception can go. And I will never make the same mistake of trusting him again.

“I hate you,” I whisper, tears warming my eyes.

His voice is low, a rumble in his chest. “I know.”

From beyond the doors of this chamber comes a burst of spirit energy in the night. It is an energy I am familiar with, one that conjures blue skies and white clouds, the radiance of the sun.

Hào’yáng is here. The heir to the Kingdom of Rivers, the child my father gave his life to protect, and my guardian in the jade who has in turn protected me all these years, is walking into a trap. Because of me.

Yù’chén has forbidden me to move, but he has not forbidden me to speak.

“Hào’yáng!” I scream. “Hào’yáng, don’t come in! It’s a trap—”

A palm clamps over my mouth, muffling my cries. “Be silent,” Yù’chén commands me, and I obey—but not before I sink my teeth into his flesh. I hear him curse, taste copper in my mouth, but I continue to bite down, and he does not move his hand away. His blood fills my mouth, drips down his wrist.

Another pulse of spirit energy, and the doors slam open.

Hào’yáng stands in the doorframe, his hair and uniform whipping in the wind. Spirit energy rolls through the chamber like thunder. His gaze immediately snaps to me across the room, then locks on Sansiran.

“You have summoned me,” he says, his voice crackling like ice. “The rest of the Heavenly Army is not far behind. Unhand her.”

Sansiran’s smile stretches wide and red. Cold fear pierces my heart. I have seen that smile before—in the moments before she drank my mother’s soul.

“That is quite all right,” Sansiran says softly. “I’ll be finished with you by the time they’re here.”

She strikes.

A flare of light arcs like the edge of a curved blade, so bright that I squeeze my eyes shut. When I look again, Hào’yáng’s sword is out. A glow pulses from it, driving back the darkness of this chamber, the darkness emanating from Sansiran. An ancient power, strange and foreign and containing unimaginable depths, vibrates from Hào’yáng and his weapon. A rippling turquoise light fills the chamber, undulating against the walls as though we have fallen into the sea.

Sansiran hisses and throws up her arm. Behind me, Yù’chén staggers slightly from the sheer force of Hào’yáng’s spirit energy. His magic wavers; his grip almost slips, but I go careening backward with him. We crash into the wall. He makes a pained noise and lifts his hands, and I notice his fingers and palms blistering beneath the light emanating from Hào’yáng’s blade.

I take my chance. I ram my elbow into his ribs and hear him grunt; I manage to shift my legs just slightly, almost enough to swipe my feet at his ankles.

“Such a neat toy the immortals have gifted you,” Sansiran snarls at Hào’yáng. A pulse of her power thrums across the chamber. His light—his sword’s light—flickers.

“Wrong,” Hào’yáng replies, but I hear the strain in his voice. “This isn’t from the immortals.”

“No matter who it’s from,” the demon queen purrs, “you’re finished. ”

I shout as a coil of dark magic whips out from behind Hào’yáng. He hears my cry and pivots, lifting his sword just in time. The shadows ram into him, driving him to his knees.

When Sansiran raises her hand again, Hào’yáng is vulnerable.

This time, her darkness meets a light brighter than the sun.

Warmth fills me, seeping through my veins into my core. At the same time, the chamber reverberates with the sheer magnitude of the new magic. Sansiran screams; Yù’chén moans in pain. The mó, I realize, are affected by immortals’ magic in a way that I am not. His hands slide from me as he falls to his knees; I go down with him, our limbs tangled and his arms heavy against my shoulders. His magic falters and dissipates, releasing me from its hold.

The light in the chamber dims to reveal a silhouette within.

Shī’yǎ stands before Hào’yáng. Instead of her lotus flower, she now holds a sword that glimmers petal-pink, the hilt a deep leaf green. Power radiates from it in waves, as inexorable as the heat of the sun, flooding the room. Shī’yǎ’s expression is calm, her eyes belying nothing but still waters.

“Demon Queen Sansiran,” she says gently, but somehow, her voice seems to echo. “Your reputation precedes you.”

Sansiran’s lips curl. “As does yours,” she replies coldly, “Yī’lín Shī’yǎ, the mortal-lover.”

Shī’yǎ only blinks slowly. “The Heavenly Army will arrive at any minute. The High Court has been alerted. Take your army and retreat now, Sansiran, before it’s too late.”

“Not until I have what’s mine, Yī’lín Shī’yǎ,” the demon queen growls. “For so long, the immortals have taken the glory and respect across the realms, dictating the Heavenly Order and the laws across the kingdoms. The mó have been vilified, so much so that even a mere mortal emperor refuses to show respect to his own son and rightful heir!”

“There is much to the Heavenly Order that should be changed,” Shī’yǎ says steadily, “but waging war against an entire realm is not the way, Sansiran.”

“Do not stand there with your holier-than-thou attitude and preach to me when you have benefited from the very structure that gives you and your kind the most privilege!” Sansiran’s voice rises with the static in the room, the frenzied way the shadows shift. As the demon queen’s magic explodes, Shī’yǎ counters with a shield of her own. The sheer power in the chamber rams into me, choking me. I can’t breathe. I can’t see.

The room shifts; I feel the wall against my back, and suddenly, a shadow falls over me. The unbearable pain and power dim.

Yù’chén stands between me and the battle. His entire face is contorted in pain, but he props himself up, hands splayed against the wall on either side of my head. Shielding me from the painful, overwhelming clash of magic. Blood drips down his nose, and ichor darkens his veins.

For a moment, I only stare at him, confusion giving me pause. Why?

Then his gaze meets mine, shaking me from my stupor, and I know what I must do.

When I reach for my blades, Heart slides into my hand. I remember now that it is Yù’chén who placed my crescent blades back in their sheaths one by one.

I angle the dagger, and I thrust.

I mean to pierce his chest, to where his heart beats. I mean to kill him.

But I made a fatal mistake in selecting Heart, and in allowing my own heart to take charge.

Halfway through my strike, the blade changes direction. It is subtle, just a slight shift in the angle, but it makes all the difference in the world.

The tip of my blade meets Yù’chén’s skin, an inch away from his heart. And it slows, pulled back by my own traitorous will.

Yù’chén’s hand snaps out. His fingers wrap around mine, around the hilt of my crescent blade.

There is a split second, a half breath, between when he grips my hands tightly in his and when my blade pierces his flesh. A fraction of a moment when he could have stopped me.

I feel resistance—but only in the form of metal slicing through flesh, sliding between bone, and coming to pierce the soft, slick texture of his lungs.

Yù’chén exhales, his breath wet. Blood dribbles down his chin, splattering onto our joined hands; onto his fingers, wrapped around mine; onto mine, wrapped around the hilt of the crescent blade. His body pitches forward and his head slumps, thudding against the wall. I feel his body against mine, the heat of his blood, the shallow hitches to his breathing. His hands tremble as he draws shuddering breaths.

And I think…I think I hear him whisper a word:

“Go.”

Behind us, Sansiran screams.

Shadows wrap around me, and the next moment, I’m dangling in the air. Sansiran’s magic tightens over me, rushing up my nose and my lips, suffocating me. The pain is the worst I have ever felt: as though my skin is peeling from me and my bones are melting from within, as though ten thousand daggers pierce my flesh. I hear my own scream reverberating inside my skull, and another voice echoes in my ears.

“You dare threaten the life of my heir,” Sansiran snarls at me. “I will destroy you so that your bones burn and scatter as ashes.”

“No!”

This time, though, the cry comes from a familiar figure: Shī’yǎ.

Warmth envelops me. The pain lessens, and the darkness retreats, yielding to a lambent light. I feel I am drifting, but the surroundings of the chamber are gradually returning to me. When I look up, it is as though the world has cleaved into night and day.

Sansiran’s darkness, which shackled me, has broken. A shield of light shimmers between me and the dark magic, emanating from Shī’yǎ. Her teeth are clenched, her expression is tight—and her magic wavers. Sparks fall like ashes as her shield begins to dissolve, swallowed bit by bit by Sansiran’s encroaching darkness.

Hands wrap around my shoulders. Hào’yáng crouches next to me, his sword pulsing that blue light of ocean waves I saw earlier. As he draws me under the cover of its magic, the pain recedes and my head clears.

“Hold on to me,” he says, and with one hand around my waist, he lifts me, supporting me as I find my footing.

Somehow, we make it to the doors. I glance back one more time. Beneath Shī’yǎ’s fading light and Sansiran’s growing darkness, Yù’chén is slumped against the wall where I left him. His chest rises and falls in shallow breaths, and veins spiderweb across his skin as his dark magic counters the wound I gave him. His hand is on the hilt of Heart. His gaze never leaves me.

I turn away and hold on to Hào’yáng as we stumble outside, into the gardens of rock and water and chrysanthemums. The clear night air fills my lungs—but instead of silence and stillness, the courtyard writhes with movement. Beings that are not immortal guards or candidates stalk through the trees and between the pillars of the open-air pavilions.

The mó army is here, in the Kingdom of Sky.

Hào’yáng lets go of me. “Defend us,” he tells me. His spirit energy stirs as he begins to conjure a talisman.

A demon appears at his side, lunging at us.

I greet it with my blades. The tip of Poison tears a gash across the mó’s chest. As he stumbles back, stunned, I follow through by driving Striker into his core. His cry of pain is disturbingly human, and I can’t help but think of Yù’chén and his hands around mine as I cut my blade through him. The sound he made, the way his body twitched against me.

I rip Striker through the mó’s chest. He— it —dissolves into shadows and smoke. The last to go are its red eyes.

The next one is on me before I can draw a breath. I spin, my body in overdrive, adrenaline fueling my every slash, every duck, every move.

There’s a trilling sound behind me. A spark shoots into the skies and blooms like a firework, showering the courtyard with gold illumination. Hào’yáng’s talisman flares brightly in the night, strands of light weaving into a sun over clouds: the symbol of the Kingdom of Sky.

A distress signal.

Hào’yáng places two fingers in his mouth and whistles. Then he turns and he’s moving, his sword flashing, a deep blue light in the darkness. I have trained with him, but I have never truly seen him in action. He is incredible. I didn’t think a mortal could fight as he does, as though not only his body but his entire soul as well moves to the rhythm of his sword. Spirit energy sings from him, so powerful that it creates flashes of gold in the night as he clashes with demons.

I place myself behind him. We are in this together, our bodies in tune with each other’s movements, as if we are melodies of the same song, threads of the same tapestry, two souls with the same fate, winding together.

But Sansiran’s spell has weakened me. My legs shake, and my slashes slow in spite of everything I throw into the fight. And the mó—they keep coming, all emerging from the direction of the Celestial Gardens. From the gates Yù’chén created.

The next mó ducks my blade and rams me into the ground. Its face, in the form of a young man’s, is frenzied with bloodlust as it sinks its teeth into my shoulder.

Striker finds the mó’s stomach just as Hào’yáng drives his sword through its core. He rips the mó off me and holds out his hand. I take it, and he pulls me up, his hand steady on my waist as he supports me.

Behind him, something shimmers in the night. Small at first, but growing larger as it weaves through the stars and plunges down toward us.

A snowy dragon lands right in front of us, scales glimmering white. Ancient, powerful magic clings to its body like frost, sending the mó around us scattering. As the dragon turns its large brown eyes to us and gives a shake of its ocean-colored mane, I realize I know her.

It’s Meadowsweet—in her dragon form.

Hào’yáng pulls me to her. “Hold on to me,” he says, throwing his legs over the dragonhorse. “I need to get Shī’yǎ.”

I settle over the dragonhorse’s back and grab onto Hào’yáng’s waist. Despite the scales and the heaving muscles of the serpentine body beneath us, this is familiar: me holding on to Hào’yáng as Meadowsweet takes us through the skies.

“Shī’yǎ is still inside,” Hào’yáng tells the dragonhorse.

She huffs, steam curling from her nostrils as she bares her teeth. Then she plunges forward.

The world rushes by, night and ichor and stars, until we burst through the doors of the healing chamber.

The darkness is overwhelming. It roils from Sansiran as though she is an endless well, an abyss. She is aglow, as though moonlight spills from her, outlining the red of her eyes and lips, that garnet at her neck and her imperial robes.

Shī’yǎ’s hands are thrown up before her. The circle of light has shrunk to envelop just her body. There is a crease between her brows, which I have never seen before.

Sansiran fists her hands. Her magic shifts, the darkness sharpening into a blade.

Hào’yáng shouts, but it’s too late. Sansiran’s magic strikes, piercing what is left of Shī’yǎ’s shield. The immortal lets out a cry that tears through the night.

Watching her fall is like watching a blossom fall from a tree. Time seems to slow as Shī’yǎ’s body arcs, graceful even in her pain. That ethereal glow haloing immortals flickers for a moment, and then begins to drift from her like ashes.

Sansiran’s face is alight in triumph even as Meadowsweet circles behind Shī’yǎ, even as Hào’yáng catches her in his arms. The demon queen whirls, aiming a bolt of her lethal power at Hào’yáng—but Meadowsweet deftly ducks it as she pivots for the door.

“This is the end.” Sansiran’s voice echoes behind us, amplifying, her darkness seeming to wrap claws into us as we soar toward the light. “My army has arrived. The wards to the Kingdom of Sky are falling. We will hunt you to the ends of the realms.”

We burst free into the night, the white dragonhorse’s back rippling as she canters for the Hall of Radiant Sun. I hold on tightly to her, to Hào’yáng.

In his arms, Shī’yǎ’s light dims, sparks of it trailing off like a dying star.