“But we were going to rebuild this world,” she said. The words sounded plaintive as she said them, a childish fantasy, but that was how she felt, that was what she really believed—because otherwise, what the fuck was this all for? “We were going to be free. We were going to make them free—”
“And you can still do that,” he insisted. “Look at what we’ve done. Where we are. We’ve built an entire nation, Rin. We don’t have to let it collapse.”
“But they’re going to come after us—”
“I promise you they won’t.” He took her face in his hands. “Look at me. Nezha’s defeated. There’s no fight left in him. What he wants is what we all want, which is to stop killing our own people.
“We’re about to have the world we fought for. Can’t you see it? It’s so close, it’s just over the horizon. We’ll have an independent south, we’ll have a world free from war, and all you have to do is say the word.”
But that wasn’t the world she’d fought for, Rin thought. The world she’d fought for was one where she, and only she, was in charge.
“We told them they were free,” she said miserably. “We won. We won. And you want us to go back to the foreigners and bow.”
“Cooperation isn’t bowing.”
She scoffed. “It’s close enough.”
“It’s a long march to liberation,” he said. “And it’s not so easy as burning our enemies. We won our war, Rin. We were the righteous river of blood. But ideological purity is a battle cry, it’s not the stable foundation for a unified country. A nation means nothing if it can’t provide for the people in it. You have to act for their sake. Sometimes you’ve got to bend the knee, Rin. Sometimes, at least, you’ve got to pretend.”
No, that’s where he was wrong. Rin could not bow. Tearza bowed. Hanelai bowed. And look what that got them: quick, brutal deaths and complete erasure from a history that should have been theirs to write. Their fault was that they were weak, they trusted the men they loved, and they didn’t have the guts to do what was necessary.
Tearza should have killed the Red Emperor. Hanelai should have murdered Jiang when she’d had the chance. But they couldn’t hurt the people they loved.
But Rin could kill anything.
She could unshackle this country. She could succeed where everyone else had failed, because she alone was willing to pay the price.
She’d thought Kitay understood the necessary sacrifice, too. She’d thought that he, if anyone, knew what victory required.
But if she was wrong—if he was too weak to see this revolution through—then she’d have to do it alone.
“Rin?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“Tell me you see it, too.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Please, Rin. Tell me you get it.”
He sounded so desperate.
She looked into his eyes, and she couldn’t recognize the person she saw there.
This was not Kitay. This was someone weak, gullible, and corrupted.
She’d lost him. When had he become her enemy? She hadn’t seen it happening, yet now it was obvious. He might have been turned against her at Arabak. He might have been planning his eventual betrayal ever since they’d left Arlong. He might have been working against her this entire time, holding her back, stopping her from burning as brightly as she could. He might have been on Nezha’s side all along.
The only thing she knew for certain was that Kitay was no longer hers. And if she couldn’t win him back, then she’d have to do the rest of this by herself.
“Please, Rin,” he urged. “Please.”
She hesitated, carefully weighing her words before she answered.
She had to be clever about this. She couldn’t let him know that she’d seen through him.
What was a plausible lie? She couldn’t simply agree. He’d know she was faking it; she’d never conceded a point so easily.
She had to feign vulnerability. She had to make him believe this was a hard choice for her—that she’d broken, just like he wanted her to.
“I’m just . . .” She let her voice tremble. She widened her eyes, so that Kitay would think she was terrified rather than capricious. Kitay would believe that. Kitay had always wanted to see the best in people, damn him, and that meant he would fucking fall for anything. “I’m scared I can’t come back from this.”
He pulled her close against him. She managed not to flinch against his embrace.
“You can come back. I’ll bring you back. We’re in this together, we’re linked . . .”
She started to cry. That, she didn’t have to fake.
“All right,” she whispered. “All right.”
“Thank you.”
He squeezed her tight. She returned his embrace, pressing her head against his chest while her mind raced, wondering where she went from here.
If she couldn’t count on her people and she couldn’t count on Kitay, then she’d have to finish things herself. She had the only ally she needed—a god that could bury countries. And if Kitay tried to deny her that, then she’d just have to break him.
She knew she could do it. She’d always known she could, since the day they knelt before the Sorqan Sira and melded their souls together. She could have erased him then. She almost had; she was just that much stronger. She’d held herself back because she loved him.
And she still loved him. She’d never stop. But that didn’t matter.
You’ve abandoned me, she thought as he wept with relief into her shoulder. You thought you could fool me, but I know your soul. And if you’re not with me, you’ll burn, too.
Chapter 34
Nezha would meet them alone in three weeks on Speer. No guards, no delegates, no troops lying in wait, and no Hesperians. Rin and Kitay would represent Nikan, and Nezha would speak for the Republic and the Consortium both. If Rin caught even a glimpse of anyone else on the island, the cease-fire was off.
Those were the terms she demanded in the first and only response to Nezha’s letters. She was stunned when he and the Consortium agreed without question.
But then, the Hesperians could not understand the power that lay in the sands of the Dead Island. They thought Nikara superstitions were the products of feeble, uncivilized minds, that her command of fire was nothing more than an outburst of Chaos. They couldn’t know that Speer was suffused with history and blood, with the power of thousands of vengeful deceased who haunted its every corner.
There are places in the world where the boundaries between the gods and mortals are thin, Chaghan had once told her. Where reality blurs, where the gods very nearly materialize.
The Speerlies had made their home in such a place, right on the edge of mortality and madness, and the Phoenix had both punished and blessed them in turn.
The Dead Island’s legacy ran through Rin’s blood. Now it called her home to finish what she’d started, to see her revenge through to the end. When she returned to that island, she’d be in the Phoenix’s holy domain, one step closer to divinity.
She’d destroyed a nation from that island once before. She wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.