This wasn’t about humiliation.
This was about survival.
Then the calculus became starkly clear.
She’d hoped so desperately for a different outcome. She’d climbed that mountain willing to do almost anything for the Trifecta. She’d known they had done awful things. She would have overlooked those things, if only she could borrow their power. If it meant victory against the Republic, she would have forgiven the Trifecta for almost anything.
But not this.
She lifted her head. “Thank you.”
Riga’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “What for, little girl?”
“For making this easy.” She closed her eyes, focusing through her pain onto a singular point of rage. Then she turned her palm out.
The burst of flame lasted for only two seconds, just long enough to singe Riga’s clothes before it died away.
The Phoenix hadn’t disappeared. Rin could still feel her link to the god, clearer than ever in the Heavenly Temple. But the Phoenix was suppressed, screeching, struggling against an enemy that Rin could not perceive.
Somewhere on the spiritual plane, the gods were at war.
Hand-to-hand combat, then.
Rin drew her sword. Riga pulled his blade from atop the altar just before she charged at him, parrying with a force that sent shock waves ripping through her arm.
He was unexpectedly slow. Bizarrely clumsy. He made the right moves, but always a split second behind, as if he were still remembering how to channel thoughts into actions. After twenty years asleep, Riga had yet to acclimate to his physical body, and only that disadvantage was keeping Rin alive.
It wasn’t enough. Her swordplay was awful. She never practiced with her left hand. She had no balance. Slow as he was, she only barely managed to keep pace, and in seconds he put her on the defensive. She couldn’t even think about striking back; she was so focused on avoiding his blade.
Riga raised his sword overhead. She jerked her blade up just in time to meet a blow meant to cleave her in two. Her shoulder buckled from the impact. She tensed, anticipating a side strike, but Riga did not lift his blade from hers. He pressed down, harder and harder, until the crossed steel was inches from Rin’s face.
“Kneel,” he said.
Rin’s knees shook.
“I will be merciful,” he said. “I will permit you to serve. You need only kneel.”
Her arm gave out. He sliced down. She dove to the left, barely avoiding his blade, as her own sword dropped from her numb fingers to the floor. Riga scraped his foot over the hilt and kicked it to the other side of the room.
“Ziya.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Get rid of that.”
Jiang was still standing where he’d frozen when Riga stepped off the altar. At the sound of his name, he lifted his head, brows furrowed in confusion.
“Master,” Rin breathed. “Please . . .”
Jiang moved slowly toward the sword, bent over to pick it up, then hesitated. His eyes landed on Rin and he frowned, squinting as if he was trying to remember where he had seen her before.
“Come now, Ziya.” Riga sounded bored. “Don’t dawdle.”
Jiang blinked, then lifted the sword off the ground.
Rin hastened to her feet, hand scrabbling for her knife only to remember that she was reaching with phantom fingers, that her right hand wasn’t there.
She lunged at Riga’s legs. If she could just knock him off balance, get him on the ground—
He saw her coming. He stepped aside and swept his knee up high into her sternum. Something cracked in her rib cage. She dropped to the floor, unable to even gasp.
“Had enough?” He bent down, seized her collar, and dragged her up to face him. Then he slammed a fist into her stomach.
The blow sent her careening back until she hit the wall. Her head cracked against stone. Stars exploded behind her eyes. She slid bonelessly to the ground, choking. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t perceive anything but pulsing, white-hot flashes of pain.
She had no weapon, no shield, and no fire.
For the first time, it sank in that she might not leave this temple alive.
“I hate to do this.” Riga tapped his blade to the side of her neck, as if practicing his swing before he took it. “Killing off the last of you. It’s so final. But you Speerlies never gave me a choice. You always had to be so very troublesome.”
He drew his sword back. Rin squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the blade to land.
It never did.
She heard a splintering crack. She opened her eyes. Jiang stood between her and Riga. His staff was in splinters, and crimson stained both his torso and Riga’s blade. Jiang twisted around. Their eyes met.
“Run,” he whispered.
Riga swung his sword again. Something black whistled through the air, and Riga’s blade skidded across the ground.
“I forgot,” Riga sneered. “You always had a soft spot for Speerlies.”
He aimed a savage kick at the wound in Jiang’s side. Jiang doubled over. In the corner, Daji gasped and clutched her stomach, her faced pinched with pain.
Rin hesitated, torn between Jiang and the door.
“He can’t kill me,” Jiang hissed. “Run.”
She staggered to her feet. The door was ten feet away. That was nothing. Her legs hurt so much, everything hurt so much, but she bit down the pain and forced herself to keep moving. Five feet—
A bang exploded behind her. She tripped and fell.
“Run,” Jiang repeated, though his voice sounded strained. Rin smelled blood. She wanted to look back but knew she couldn’t, knew she had to keep moving. Three feet. She was so close.
“Call them,” Jiang shouted. “End this.”
Rin knew precisely what he meant.
Outside, she stumbled into the fog.
She refused to feel guilt for this. This was her only option; this was what Jiang wanted. He’d made his choice, and now she made hers. She turned an open palm to the sky.
I unleash you.
This time the Phoenix came. The Dragon was distracted, struggling against the Gatekeeper, and so her god was free. The fire surged through her arm and up into the mist, a shining beacon against a backdrop of gray.
The Phoenix shrieked, delighted. In that moment Rin felt its divine presence closer, more intimately than she ever had, a synchronicity that surpassed what she had once felt on Speer. Here where the boundary between man and god was blurred, their wills overlapped until they were not separate beings, one channeled through the other, but a single entity, ripping through the fabric of the world to rewrite history.
Fire pierced the dense mist, spiraling into a pillar so tall and bright that Rin thought it must be visible to the entire world. The clouds that shrouded Mount Tianshan shriveled away, exposing the pagoda against the bare face of stone.
Nezha must have seen. Rin was counting on it. He’d been following her all this way, and now she’d delivered to him everything he and the Hesperians wanted—all the world’s most powerful shamans clustered in one place, open targets trapped atop the mountain.
Here’s your chance, Nezha. Now take it.
One by one, the airships appeared from behind the clouds, blurry black shapes that homed in on her unmistakable beacon. They had been hovering, waiting, searching for a target. Now they had it.
They flew into a semicircular formation, surrounding the pagoda from every angle. Rin couldn’t see Nezha from this distance, but she imagined he was riding in the center of the fleet, eyes trained on her. She raised her hand and waved.