He looked so small.
“I’ll go,” Nezha said. “We’ll go into that grotto. You don’t have to be alone anymore. But you have to stop. Leave this city alone.”
The Dragon remained very still. Then, ever so slowly, the waters began to recede.
The Dragon made a slight motion toward Nezha that seemed bizarrely affectionate. Rin stared, mouth agape, as Nezha pressed his hand against the Dragon’s side.
I’ll go.
With that one gesture, he’d prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths. He’d tamed a god that she’d woken, he’d prevented a massacre that would have been her fault, and he’d thrown her this victory.
“Nezha,” she whispered, “what the fuck?”
Too late, she heard a faint and distinctive drone.
The aircraft emerged over the side of the cliff and dove, fast and low, straight over the grotto. It was much smaller than the bomber dirigibles that had pursued Rin through the mountains; its cockpit seemed large enough for only one person. Stranger still was its underbelly—extending from the bottom of its basket where its cannon should have been was a long, glinting wire that branched into several curved points like a reaching claw.
Rin glanced to Nezha. He stood stock-still, eyes wide in horror.
But the Hesperians were his allies. What did he have to fear?
She pulled fire into her hand, deliberating whether to attack. Before, she wouldn’t have hesitated. But if the dirigible had come to fight the Dragon . . .
The dirigible veered sharply toward her. That answers that. She aimed her palm at the cockpit. But before she could pull her fire forth, a thin line of lightning, lovely and absurd, arced through the blue sky. A second later, she saw a blinding white light. Then nothing.
She wasn’t hurt. She felt no pain. She was still standing; she could hear and move and feel. Though her vision blurred for a moment, it returned after several blinks. But something had shifted about the world. It seemed, somehow, stripped of its life and luster—its colors were drained, blues and greens muted into shades of gray, and its sounds reduced to sandpapery scratches.
The Phoenix went quiet.
No—the Phoenix disappeared.
Rin strained in her mind, flailing desperately through the void to pull the god through Kitay’s mind into hers, but she grasped at nothing. There was no void. There was no gate. The Pantheon was not drifting beyond her reach, it simply wasn’t there.
Then she screamed.
She was in the Chuluu Korikh again. She was drowning in air, sealed and suffocating, imprisoned this time not in stone but in her own heavy, mortal body, pounding helplessly against the walls of her own mind, and that was such unbearable torture that she barely registered the lightning still coursing through her body, making her teeth chatter and singeing her hair.
You are nothing but an agent of Chaos. Sister Petra’s voice rose unbidden to her mind—that cold, clinical voice speaking with assured confidence that until today had never seemed justified. You are not shamans, you are the miserable and corrupted. And I will find a way to contain you.
She’d found it.
Child. Rin heard the Phoenix’s voice. Impossible. And yet the fire returned; a warm heat surged over her body, cradling her, protecting her.
The lightning now landed on Nezha.
He stood with his back to her, arms splayed out like he was being crucified, twitching and jerking as crackling brightness ricocheted across his body. Sparks arced back and forth from his golden circlets, which seemed to amplify the electricity before it burrowed deep into his flesh.
The bolts thickened, doubled, and intensified. Harsh, ragged sobs escaped Nezha’s throat. The Dragon, too, seemed racked with pain. It was performing the oddest dance, head jerking and body writhing, flailing back and forth through the air in a way that would have been funny if it weren’t so horrific.
Rin’s mouth filled with bile.
Focus, child, the Phoenix urged. Strike now.
Rin’s glance darted between the Dragon and the dirigible.
She knew she had one chance to attack—but which target? Nezha had saved her from the dirigible; the dirigible was saving her from the Dragon. Who was her enemy now?
She raised her left hand. The dirigible darted backward several yards, as if sensing her intentions. She opened her palm and aimed a thick stream of flame at its balloon, forcing it faster and higher, hoping desperately that she had the range.
A ripping noise shattered the sky. The dirigible balloon glowed orange for an instant, burst, then vanished. The basket hurtled toward the cliffs; the lightning disappeared.
Nezha crumpled.
Rin’s first instinct was to rush toward him. She took two steps, then caught herself, utterly bewildered. Why would she help him? Because he’d just saved her? But that was his mistake, not hers—she shouldn’t bother, she should just let him die—
Shouldn’t she?
The water turned icy cold around her knees. She felt a wave of exhausted dread.
But the Dragon did not attack. Incredibly, it seemed frightened into submission. It turned its head toward the grotto and slithered back into the dark. Suddenly the air was not so heavy. The gray clouds disappeared, and sunlight was again visible against the glinting waves. Gravity took hold over the river once again, and the suspended waters dropped with a resounding crash.
I must get to shore.
The thought ran like a mantra several times through Rin’s mind before it finally registered into action. Swaying and stumbling like a drunkard, she made her way to the riverbank. She felt detached, distant, as if someone else were clumsily controlling her body while her mind raced with questions.
What had just happened? What had Nezha just done? Was that a surrender?
Had she won?
But none of her dreams of victory had looked anything like this.
She heard a faint, pitiful gurgle. She turned. Pipaji lay farther down the sands, curled into a fetal position. Her face was barely above water; Rin didn’t know how she hadn’t drowned. But her narrow shoulders rose and fell, and her fingers scratched tiny, desperate patterns in the mud as she whimpered.
Rin hastened to her side.
“Oh, gods.” She propped Pipaji up in her arms and slammed her fist against the girl’s narrow back, trying to force the water from her lungs. “Pipaji? Can you hear me?”
Water dribbled from Pipaji’s mouth—just a little trickle at first, and then her shoulders heaved and a stinking torrent of river water and bile spewed from her mouth. Pipaji gagged and slumped weakly against Rin’s chest, breathing in shallow, desperate hitches.
“Hold on.” Rin slung Pipaji’s right arm around her shoulder and pulled her to her feet. The positioning was awkward, but Pipaji was so thin and light that Rin found it surprisingly easy to drag them both forward, one step at a time. “Just hold on, you’re going to be fine, we’ll just get you to Lianhua.”
They’d made it ten steps up the shore when Rin heard a vicious fit of coughing. She twisted her head over her shoulder. Nezha was doubled over on his knees in the shallows, shoulders heaving.
She halted.
He was only several yards away. He was so close she could make out every detail on his face—his chalk-white pallor, his red-rimmed eyes, the faded scars on porcelain-pale skin. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d stood so close without trying to kill each other.