The Burning God (The Poppy War Book 3)

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.

They crossed the channel in a small fisherman’s dinghy. Rin sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, shivering against the ocean breeze while Kitay fussed with the sails. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing more to be said. Everything had been spilled the night the fields in Tikany burned, and now what lay between them was a quiet, exhausted resignation. There was no point in commiseration or reassurance. Rin knew what happened next and Kitay thought he did; now there was only the wait.

When the Dead Island emerged on the horizon, a gray, ashy mound that at first seemed indistinguishable from the mist, Kitay reached over and rubbed his thumb over her wrist.

“It’ll be all right,” he murmured. “We’ll fix this.”

She gave him a tight smile, twisted around to face the island, and said nothing.

Nezha was waiting on the beach when their vessel approached the shallows. He didn’t appear to be armed, but that didn’t matter. Neither of them was far from their army. Rin had troops waiting in ships off the coast of Snake Province, spyglasses trained on the horizon for the first sign of her beacon. She could only assume that Nezha’s reinforcements were doing the same.

No, she was counting on it.

“Scared?” she inquired as she stepped onto the sand.

He gave her a hollow smile. “You know I can’t die.”

“We’re trying to broker a peace here.” Kitay dropped an anchor off the side of the dinghy, then followed Rin onto the shore. “Let’s not start off with death threats, shall we?”

“Fair enough.” Nezha gestured farther up the beach, where Rin saw he’d prepared three chairs and a square tea table covered in ink, brushes, and blank parchment. “After you.”

They crossed the length of the beach in silence.

Rin couldn’t help but take quick, furtive glances at Nezha as she walked beside him.

He looked wrecked. He still carried himself like a general. His shoulders never slumped; his voice never wavered. Yet every part of him seemed diminished, stretched thin and whittled down. His scarred mouth, once twisted on one side into a jeering grin, now seemed trapped in a painful rictus.

She’d expected him to jeer at her, to gloat over their capitulation, but he didn’t seem at all like he was enjoying this. He looked exhausted. He looked like someone waiting to die.

They pulled their chairs out and sat. Rin nearly laughed when the first thing Nezha did was politely, meticulously pour each of them a full, steaming cup of tea. It lent such an air of ceremony, of normalcy, to negotiations made possible by an ocean of blood.

Neither she nor Kitay touched their cups. Nezha drained his in a single swallow.

“Well, then.” He reached for an ink brush and held it lightly over the parchment. “Where shall we start?”

“Tell us their final terms,” Rin said.

Nezha faltered for a moment. He’d expected more of a dance. “You mean—”

“Lay it all out,” she said. “List every last thing it’ll take to get the Hesperians off our back. We’re not here to bandy words. Just tell us how much it’ll cost.”

“As you wish.” He cleared his throat. He had no papers to consult; he knew by heart what the Hesperians wanted. “The Consortium is willing to withdraw their forces, commit to a signed armistice, and provide enough shipments of grain, dried meat, and starches to tide the entire country over to the next harvest.”

“Great Tortoise,” Kitay breathed. “Thank—”

Rin spoke over him. “And in return?”

“First, full amnesty for all soldiers and leadership involved with the Republic,” Nezha said. “That benefits you, too. You need people to keep the country running. Let them go back home with their safety guaranteed, and they’ll work for you. I’ll vouch for that. Second, the Consortium wants designated treaty ports—at least one in each province that borders the ocean. Third, they’d like their missionary privileges back. The Gray Order conduct proselytization with immunity, and anyone who lays a finger on them gets extradited to Hesperia for punishment.”

“And what about me?” she pressed.

He held out his arms. Golden circlets gleamed bright around pale skin rubbed painfully raw. Up close, it was clear they were fitted perfectly to the width of his wrists. She didn’t know how he ever took them off, or even if he could. “You’ll put these on. You’ll never call the Phoenix again. You’ll never pass on your knowledge of how shamanism works in any form to anyone alive, and you’ll cooperate with hunting down everyone in Nikan who is even suspected to know about the Pantheon. You can walk free in the south—even rule it, if you like—so long as you make yourself available.”

“Available in what ways?” Kitay asked.

Nezha swallowed. “In the same ways I was.”

A heavy silence descended on the table. Nezha wouldn’t meet their eyes. But neither did his gaze drop—he stared straight forward, shoulders still squared, meeting their pity with silent defiance as they stared at his circlets.

“Why?” Rin asked at last. She couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. The sight of the circlets was suddenly too much to bear. She wanted to rip them off his wrists, to cover them with his sleeves—anything to make them disappear. “Nezha, why the fuck—”

“Because they had all the power,” he said quietly. “Because they still do.”

She shook her head, astonished. “Have you no pride?”

“It’s not about pride.” He withdrew his arms. “It’s about sacrifice. I chose the Hesperians because I recognize that they aren’t just decades but centuries ahead of us in every way that matters, and if they decide to work with us, we could use their knowledge to make life better for millions of people. Despite the cost.”

“The costs are where we differ,” she said coldly.

“You’ve only seen one side of them, Rin. You’ve seen them at their very worst, but you also stand for everything they can’t abide. But what if you didn’t? I know they are condescending, I know they don’t think we’re human, I know—” His throat pulsed. He coughed. “I know the depths of their cruelty. But they were willing to cooperate with me. They’re getting this close to respecting me. And if I just had that—”

“What’s it going to take?” Kitay asked abruptly. “For them to respect you?”

Nezha didn’t hesitate. “Your deaths.”

There was no malice in his voice. That wasn’t a threat, just a simple statement of fact. Nezha had not been able to deliver Rin’s corpse, despite having ample opportunity to kill her, and for that he’d given up a nation.

Kitay gave a slight nod, as if he’d fully expected that answer. “And what’s it going to take for them to respect us?”

“They’ll never respect you,” Nezha said tonelessly. “They will never see you as anything more than subhuman. They will work warily with you because they’re afraid of you, but you’ll always have to stay on edge. You’ll always have to grovel to get what you want. My father’s Republic was the only regime they would ever have willingly supported, and they still wouldn’t ever have really trusted me unless I delivered your heads.”

Rin snorted. “So there’s the impasse.”

“Come on. You know that’s not what I’m here for.” He pressed his fingers against his temples. “You won, Rin. Fair and square. I’m not angling for the throne. I’m just trying to make this less painful for everyone involved.”

“You seem so certain that I’ll be an awful ruler.”

“It’s not an insult. I just think you have no interest in ruling at all. You don’t care about statecraft. You’re not an administrator, you’re a soldier.”

“I’m a general,” she corrected.

“You’re a general who’s conclusively wiped everyone else off the map,” he said. “You won, all right? You beat me. But your role—that role, at least, is over. You’ve got no wars left to fight.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“It can be true,” he insisted. “This isn’t what Hesperia wants. This war continues if you bring it to them. But if you work with them, if you let them believe you’re not a threat, they won’t treat you like one. If you make concessions, if you stay in their good graces—”

“That’s bullshit,” she snapped. “I’ve heard that logic before. Su Daji initiated the Third Poppy War because she thought losing half the country was better than losing it all. And what happened then, Nezha? How’d you get that scar on your face? How’d we get to Golyn Niis?”

“What you’re doing,” Nezha said quietly, “will be worse than a thousand Golyn Niises.”

“Not if we win.”

He gave her a wary look. “This is a peace negotiation.”

“It’s not,” she said softly. “You know it’s not.”

His eyes narrowed. “Rin—”

She pushed her chair back and stood up. Enough of these pretensions. She hadn’t come to sign a peace treaty, and neither had he.

“Where is the fleet?” she asked.

He tensed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Call them out.” She let flames roll down her shoulders. “That’s what I came for. Not this charade.”

Kitay stood up. “Rin, what are you doing?”

She ignored him. “Call them out, Nezha. I know they’re hiding. I won’t ask again.”

Nezha’s expression went slack. He exchanged a bewildered glance with Kitay, and the sheer patronization of that gesture made her flames jump twice as high.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”

Then she turned toward the ocean and unleashed a brilliant flare into the sky.

A fleet of dirigibles immediately emerged over the horizon.

I was right. She felt a hot wave of satisfaction. The Hesperians hadn’t been bold enough to conceal their airships on Speer—smart of them, for she would have decimated them otherwise—but they’d kept them waiting all along the coast of Snake Province.

So much for Nezha’s cease-fire. This confirmed everything she’d suspected. The Hesperians weren’t interested in peace, and neither was she. Both just wanted to finish this. They’d come for an ambush, and she’d just called their bluff.

Nezha stood up. “Rin, they’re not—”

“Liar,” she snarled. “They’re right there.”

“They’re backup,” he said. “In case—”

“In case what?” she demanded. “In case you couldn’t get the job done? You wanted to end this, so let’s end this. Let’s answer this question once and for all. Let’s pit their god against mine. Let’s see which one is real.”

Her beacon surged higher, a pillar so searingly bright it cast an orange hue over the entire shore. The fleet surged forth. They were already halfway across the channel; they’d be over Speer in seconds.

Rin watched the horizon and waited.

She and Kitay had determined her maximum radius a long time ago. Since they had been anchored, it had always been fifty yards in any direction. She could never push farther without Kitay collapsing, without losing access to the Phoenix.

But now she was on Speer. Everything changed on Speer.

When the first of the airships drew close enough that she could see its cannons, she swept it out of the sky. The cannons never fired; it plummeted straight into the ocean like a rock.

The rest of the fleet advanced, undaunted.

Keep coming, she thought, exhilarated. I’ll smite you all.

This was it. This was the moment she rewrote history. The Hesperian fleet would crowd the sky like storm clouds, and she’d destroy it in minutes. This would be more than a crushing victory. It would be a display of force—an undeniable, irrefutable display of divine authority.

Then the Hesperians she permitted to survive would flee, this time for good. They would never return to the eastern hemisphere. They would never dare threaten her people. And when she demanded gold and grain, they wouldn’t dare say no.

This was what Speer had always been capable of, what Queen Mai’rinnen Tearza had been too afraid to do. The last Speerly queen let her homeland become an island of slaves because she thought unleashing the Phoenix might burn down the world. She could have had everything, but she didn’t have the will.

Rin would not make that same mistake.

“I didn’t want this.” Dimly, over the roar of the flames, she heard Kitay pleading to Nezha. “That’s not what she—”

“Stop her,” Nezha said.

“I can’t.”

Nezha stood, pushing his chair to the ground. Rin grinned. When he lunged, she was ready. She’d seen the bulge under his shirt where he’d concealed a knife. She knew that when he had the initiative, he favored a right-handed strike to the upper torso. She twisted to the side. His blade met empty air. When he tried tackling her, she mirrored his momentum and rolled with him to the ground.

Subduing him was so easy.

It should have been a struggle. Nezha had all the advantages in hand-to-hand combat—he was just taller and heavier, his limbs were longer, and every time they’d ever brawled, unless she pulled a gimmick, he’d always managed to pin her through sheer brute force.

But something was wrong.

That formidable skill wasn’t there. Strength, speed—both gone. His strikes were stiff and sluggish. She couldn’t see proof of any wounds, yet he winced with every motion, as if invisible knives were digging into his flesh.

And he wasn’t calling the Dragon.

Why wasn’t he calling the Dragon?

If Nezha had demanded more of her focus she would have noticed the way his golden circlets rang eerily every time he moved, darkening the skin around his wrists and ankles. But her mind was not on Nezha. He was just an obstacle, a great, blockish object that she needed out of the way. In that moment, Nezha was an afterthought.

Her mind was on the sky; her focus was on the fleet.

Was this how Jiang had always felt on the battlefield, when he’d felled columns with little more than a thought? The difference in scale was inconceivable. This wasn’t fighting. There was no struggle involved in this, no effort. She was simply writing reality. She was painting. She pointed, and balloons incinerated. She clenched her fist, and carriages exploded.

Her vision lurched, sharpened, expanded. When she’d sunk the Federation she’d been underground, alone inside a stone temple, and yet when she’d awakened the dormant volcano it had felt like she was floating right above the archipelago, keenly aware of the million sleeping souls beneath her, flaring like match heads, only to go suddenly, irreversibly dark.

Now, again, she saw the material world—such a flimsy thing, so fragile and temporary—through the eyes of a god. She saw the airships in such close detail she could have been standing under them. She saw the smooth texture of the airship balloons. Time dilated as she watched the fire ignite around them, ripping through whatever gas filled their interiors that was so delicious to the flame—

“Rin, stop!” She saw Nezha’s mouth moving seconds before she realized he was yelling. He wasn’t even really fighting anymore—he certainly couldn’t be trying, because his blows hardly landed, and his parries were sluggish.

She jerked her knee into his side, clamped her left hand against his shoulder, and pushed him hard to the ground.

His head slammed against the corner of the table. He slumped sideways, mouth agape. He didn’t get up.

She turned back to the fleet.

The beach faded from her sight. She saw what the fire saw—not bodies or ships but simply shapes, all equal, all simply kindling for the pyres of her worship. And she knew the Phoenix was pleased because its screeching laughter grew louder and louder, its presence intensifying until their minds felt as if they were one, as, from one end of the horizon to the other, she methodically wrecked the fleet—

Until it went silent.

The shock sent her reeling.

The sky seemed very blue and bright; the airships so far away. She was just a girl again, without fire. The Phoenix was gone, and when she reached to find it she met only a mute, indifferent wall.

She whirled on Kitay. “What have you—”

He was barely managing to stand, clutching the table for support. His face had turned a deathly gray. Sweat dripped from his temples, and his knees buckled so hard she was sure he was about to collapse.

“You can’t,” he whispered.

“Kitay—”

“Not without my help. Not without my permission. That was our deal.”

She gaped at him, astonished. He’d cut her off. The traitor, he’d fucking cut her off.

Kitay was her back door, her bridge, her single channel to the Phoenix. Since the moment they’d been anchored he’d always kept it open, had let her abuse his mind to funnel as much fire as she desired. He’d never closed it off. She’d almost forgotten that he could.

“I didn’t think I could, either,” he said. “I thought I couldn’t deny you anything. But I can, I always could, I’d just never really tried.”

“Kitay . . .”

“Stop this,” he ordered. A spasm rippled through his body and he lurched forward, wincing, but caught himself on the edge of the table before he fell. “Or you’ll never call the fire again.”

No. No, this wasn’t how this ended. She hadn’t come this far to be thwarted by Kitay’s idiotic scruples. He didn’t get to withhold her power like a condescending parent, dangling her toys just out of reach.

She saw the defiance in his eyes, and her heart shattered.

You, too?

She didn’t attack first. If Kitay hadn’t taken the first blow, she might not have had the will to strike him. Despite his betrayal he was still Kitay—her best friend, her anchor, the person she loved most in the world and the one person she’d sworn to always protect.

But he did take the blow.

He lunged forward, fists aimed at her face, and once he did, it was like a glass pane had shattered. Then there was nothing holding her back, no sentiment, no pangs of guilt when she redirected her fury toward him.

She’d never fought Kitay before.

She realized this as they wrestled to the ground—a dim, floating observation that was really quite amazing, for almost everyone in her class at Sinegard had fought everyone else at some point. She’d sparred against Venka and Nezha plenty of times. Her first year, she’d tried so hard to kill Nezha that she’d nearly succeeded.

But she’d never once touched Kitay. Not even in practice. The few times they were paired against each other they found excuses to seek different partners, because neither of them could stand the thought of trying to hurt the other, not even for pretend.

She hadn’t realized how strong he was. Kitay in her mind was a scholar, a strategist. Kitay hadn’t seen combat since Vaisra’s northern expedition. He always waited out battles from a distance, kept safe by an entire squadron.

She’d forgotten that he, too, had been trained as a soldier. And he’d been very, very good at it.

Kitay was not as strong as Nezha, nor as fast as her. But he struck with crisp, deadly precision. His attacks landed with maximal force concentrated to the thinnest point of impact—the knife edge of his hand, the point of his knuckle, the protruding cap of his knee. He chose his targets carefully. He knew her body better than anyone; he knew the spots where she hurt the most—her amputated wrist, the scars along her back, her twice-cracked ribs. And he attacked them with brutal precision.

She was losing. She was getting exhausted, slowed by the accumulated hurts of a dozen direct blows. He’d maintained the offensive from the start. She was flailing to even parry; she wouldn’t last another minute.

“Give up,” he panted. “Give up, Rin, it’s over.”

“Fuck you,” she snarled, and flung her right fist toward his eye.

In her fury she forgot that fist did not exist, that she would not meet the sharp bones of his face with curled knuckles but the stump of her wrist, sore and vulnerable and protected only by a thin, irritated layer of skin.

The pain was white-hot, debilitating. She howled.

Kitay staggered back, out of her range, and picked Nezha’s knife up from the ground.

She flinched back, arms flung up instinctively to protect her chest. But he hadn’t pointed the blade at her.

Fuck.

She lunged and caught his wrist just as he plunged the blade toward his chest. She wasn’t strong enough; the tip burrowed under his skin and slid down, slicing a gash across his ribs. They struggled against each other, her pulling with all her might while he pushed the knife against himself, the sharp blade trembling just an inch from his chest.

She wasn’t going to win.

She couldn’t overpower him. He was stronger. He had both his hands.

But she didn’t have to physically defeat him—she only needed to break his will. And she knew one unspoken fact for a certainty, one truth that had underlined their bond since the day she’d met him.

Her will was so much stronger than his. It always had been.

She acted. He followed. Like two hands on a sword’s blade, she determined the direction and he provided the force; she was the visionary, and he was her willing executioner. He’d always enforced what she wanted. He would not defy her now.

She focused all her thoughts toward the Phoenix, railing against the fragile barrier of Kitay’s mind.

I know you’re there, she prayed to the silence. I know you’re with me.

“Give up,” Kitay said. But sweat was dripping down his forehead; his teeth were clenched with strain. “You can’t.”

Rin shut her eyes and redoubled her efforts, grasping around the void until she found a tiny filament, the barest hint of divine presence. That was enough.

Break him, she told the Phoenix.

She heard a shattering sound in her mind, a porcelain cup dashed against stone.

She saw a flash of red. The beach disappeared.

They were alone in the plane of spirit, standing on opposite sides of a great circle, both of them naked and fully revealed. It was all there, laid out between them. All their shared fury, vindictiveness, bloodlust, and guilt. Her cruelty. His complicity. Her desperation. His regret.

She saw him across the circle and knew that if she wanted to subdue him, all she had to do was think it. She’d nearly done it before—the instant they were anchored, in the first moments after she’d reestablished her bond with the Phoenix, she’d nearly erased him. She could rip the god’s power through his mind like he was nothing more than a flimsy net.

He knew it, too. She felt his resignation, his wretched surrender.

Surrender, not agreement. They were enemies now—and she could bend his will, but she’d never again have his heart.

Yet something—sentiment, heartbreak—compelled her to try.

“Kitay, please—”

“Don’t,” he said. “Just—go ahead. But don’t.”

His body went limp. The spirit world disappeared. Rin came to her senses just as Kitay slumped to the ground, falling heavily against her arms. Then, somehow, she was kneeling above him with her hand on his neck, her thumb resting against the bulge of his throat.

Their eyes met. She felt a shock of horror.

She recognized the way he was looking at her. It was how she’d once looked at Altan. It was the way she’d seen Daji look at Riga—that look of wretched, desperate, and reproachful loyalty.

It said, Do it.

Take what you want, it said. I’ll hate you for it. But I’ll love you forever. I can’t help but love you.

Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you.

She almost took that for permission.

But if she did, if she broke through his soul and took everything she wanted . . .

She’d never stop. There would be no limits to her power. She’d never stop using him, ripping his mind open and setting it on fire every hour and minute and second, because she would always need the fire. If she did this then her war would extend across the world and her enemies would multiply—there would always be someone else, someone like Petra trying to banish her god and crush her nation, or someone like Nezha trying to foment rebellion from within.

And unless she killed every single one of them, she would never be safe and her revolution would never succeed, and so she’d have to keep going until she reduced the rest of the world to ashes, until she was the last one standing.

Until she was alone.

Was that peace? Was that liberation?

She could see her victories. She could see the burned wreckage of Hesperian shores. She could see herself at the center of a conflagration that consumed the world, scorched it, cleansed it, ate away its rotted foundations—

But she couldn’t see where it ended.

She couldn’t see where the pain stopped—not for the world, and not for Kitay.

“You’re hurting me,” he whispered.

It was like being doused in ice water. Repulsed, she gave a sharp sob and jerked her hand away from his neck.

The humming above crescendoed to a deafening roar.

Too late, Rin glanced up. Lightning enveloped her body, a dozen painless arcs of light a thousand times brighter than the sun. The Phoenix went silent. So did the rage; so did the crimson visions of a world on fire. The lightning vanished her divinity, and all that it left behind was utter horror at what she’d nearly done.

Kitay moaned, touched two fingers to his temple, and went limp. Rin clutched him against her chest and rocked back and forth, dazed.

“Rin,” croaked Nezha.

She twisted around. He was sitting up. Blood dribbled down the side of his head, and his eyes were bleary, unfocused. He stared at the electricity dancing across Rin’s body, mouth agape. He rose slowly, but she knew he wasn’t going to attack. He was the furthest thing from a threat at that moment—he just looked like a young boy, scared and confused, utterly at a loss for what to do.

There’s nothing he can do, Rin realized. Neither Nezha nor Kitay could determine what happened next. They weren’t strong enough.

This choice had to be hers.

She saw it in a flash of utter clarity. She knew what she had to do. The only path, the only way forward.

And what a familiar path it was. It was so obvious now. The world was a dream of the gods, and the gods dreamed in sequences, in symmetry, in patterns. History repeated itself, and she was only the latest iteration of the same scene in a tapestry that had been spun long before her birth.

So many others had stood on this precipice before her.

Mai’rinnen Tearza, the Speerly queen who chose to die rather than bind herself to a king she hated.

Altan Trengsin, the boy who burned too bright, who became his own funeral pyre.

Jiang Ziya, the Dragon Emperor’s blade, the monster, the murderer, her mentor, her savior.

Hanelai, who fled to her death before she knelt.

They’d wielded unprecedented power, unimaginable and unmatchable power capable of rewriting the script of history. And they’d written themselves out.

Now here they were again: three people—children, really; too young and inexperienced for the roles they’d inherited—holding the fate of Nikan in their hands. And Rin was poised to acquire the empire Riga had wanted, if only she could be just as cruel.

But what kind of emperor would Riga have been? And how much worse would she be?

Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.

She could see the future and its shape was already drawn, predetermined by patterns that had been set in motion before she was born—patterns of cruelty and dehumanization and oppression and trauma that had pulled her right back into the place where the Trifecta had once stood. And if she did this, if she broke Kitay like Riga would have broken Jiang, she would only re-create those patterns—because there would be resistance, there would be blood, and the only way she could eliminate that possibility was by burning down the world.

Yet a single decision could escape the current, could push history off its course.

It’s a long march to liberation, Kitay had said.

Sometimes you’ve got to bend the knee.

Sometimes, at least, you’ve got to pretend.

She finally understood what that meant.

She knew what she had to do next. It wasn’t about surrender. It was about the long game. It was about survival.

She stood up, reached for Nezha’s hand, and curled his fingers around the handle of the knife.

He stiffened. “What are you—”

“Get their respect,” she said. “Tell them you killed me. Tell them everything they want to hear. Say whatever you need to to get them to trust you.”

“Rin—”

“It’s the only way forward.”

He understood what she meant him to do. His eyes widened in alarm, and he tried to wrench his hand away, but she clenched his fingers tight.

“Nezha—”

“You can’t do this for me,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

“It’s not for you. It’s not a favor. It’s the cruelest thing I could do.”

She meant it.

Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.

She glanced down at Kitay.

He was awake, his face set in resolve. He gave her a grim nod.

That was all she had to see. That was permission.

She couldn’t release him. Neither of them knew how. But she knew, as clearly as if he’d said it out loud, that he intended to follow her to the end. Their fates were tied, weighed down by the same culpability.

“Come, now.” She linked her fingers around Nezha’s. Closed both his hands around the cold, cold hilt as lightning arced around them, between them. Brought the blade round to the front. “Properly this time.”

“Rin.” Nezha looked so scared. It was a funny thing, how fear made him look so much younger, how it rounded his eyes and erased the cruel grimace of his sneer so that he looked, just for an instant, like the boy she’d first met at Sinegard. “Rin, don’t—”

“Fix this,” she ordered.

Nezha’s fingers went slack in hers. She tightened her grip; she had enough resolve for the both of them. As the dirigibles descended toward Speer, she brought Nezha’s hand up to her chest and plunged the blade into her heart.