As we travel down the marble halls of the King’s fortress, my senses fire, hunting for more clues. A second change: the guards seem to be anticipating something; Commander Razib throws me more than one knowing look over his shoulder. A third: I’m led into a part of the building I’ve never been in before.
With each step, my apprehension grows. I thought I was beginning to know the King’s fortress well, but to be surprised with an entirely new wing shakes my confidence. We pass through a series of archways each framed by a pair of guards, until they end abruptly in a small circular room. Because my view is blocked by the guards in front of me, I don’t see what’s inside until I’m right upon it.
The top of a spiral stairway.
Its steps twist out of sight. Commander Razib starts down them, while I hesitate.
One of the guards behind shoves me. “Down,” he orders.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly going to go up,” I hiss.
“What was that, keeda?” the Commander growls.
“Oh,” I say, flashing him a mocking smile. “You know. Just admiring the view.”
Anger flares across his face. I ready myself for a slap or a punch to the gut, but none come, and I gain a fickle sense of triumph. I’m the King’s Moonchosen now. Even the guards have to be careful how they treat me in public. Being here is supposed to be my choice, after all.
My privilege.
We trudge down the staircase. The steps are narrow and winding, only fitting two demons abreast. It gets dark quickly, and a few of the guards light lanterns, flames flickering off the stone walls. When I’m wondering if we’ll ever reach the end of this infernal stairway, we emerge into a long, lantern-lit corridor. And at the end of that—
The sight arrests me, snatching my breath away.
The chamber is not much bigger than my room in the Moon Annexe, but its walls curve up to a high domed ceiling, making our footsteps ring out and giving the impression we’re in some sort of cave. The walls and floor are rough, hewn like the stairs and passageway from the earth’s rock. Lantern light glimmers off the dully glittering granite, reminding me unpleasantly of the King’s mirrored bedroom.
Yet that isn’t what has made me reel. And even though the King is here—along with Naja and a group of shamans working the magic sending waves of static over me—none of this is the worst thing about this horrible place.
In any other situation, I would have been happy to see a friend’s face. But not here. Not like this.
Not hanging from the ceiling on a metal chain, a curved hook embedded in their back, holding them a foot off the ground.
The dripping of blood is loud.
“My dear Moonchosen. We’re so pleased you could join us.”
The King’s voice sounds from where he is seated beside Naja in a ring of stone benches that circle the chain and its suspended prisoner. He rises, opening his arms in welcome.
“I thought you might like to see an old friend of yours. Why don’t you say hello?”
The King waits, smiling, but I don’t move. Every inch of me has turned to ice despite the uncanny warmth of the shaman’s magic where they face the prisoner—my friend—weaving daos over him. And I realize their magic isn’t harming him—it’s healing him.
Just enough to keep him alive.
Magic has no effect on dead things, despite countless efforts by shamans over the ages. And the King does not want this prisoner to die.
Not just yet.
The King’s smile sharpens. “Don’t be shy,” he says, his arctic eye fixed on me. “Come closer, Lei-zhi.”
When I make no move, Commander Razib pushes me. I stumble, my uneven steps echoing off the walls. But the drip of my friend’s blood is louder. It is everywhere, pounding in my ears and beating in time with my frantic pulse and ragged breaths.
I don’t want to go on, but the Commander shoves me again, and again, until my slippered feet slap into the pool of widening red with a sickening splatter.
Jeers rise from the guards.
The King and Naja watch, quiet, intent.
Blood seeps up my robes. I wish I could scream, run away, tear off my soiled clothes—but it wouldn’t be fair. I owe it to my friend to stay in this with him.
Horror clenches my gut as my gaze meets his: those small, crinkle-edged gray eyes, so familiar to me after months of traveling and laughing and arguing and fighting together. Even after the way we left things between us, they were eyes I’d one day hoped to see again.
How cruelly the gods have granted my wish.
“Shifu Caen,” I choke out, unable to stop a sob escaping.
My old friend and ally—Wren’s lifelong mentor, her father’s lover—looks down at me, turning slightly where he hangs from the chain. His long hair, usually tied in a half knot, is ragged and loose, tangling in sticky clumps. Bruises bloom across his skin. One of his cheekbones looks wrong, unnaturally sunken. A ragged thread of air rasps through his cracked lips, and though there is pain in his expression, and fear, and sorrow, the thing that burns most brightly is determination.
A warrior, to the end.
“Caen,” I breathe, softer, so only he can hear.
Another name hovers in the small space of our silence.
His eyes soften. “She is safe,” he croaks, hardly moving his lips so the demons can’t read them. “They are all safe.” And as relief floods me, his eyes harden.
I know instinctively what is coming.
His voice is calm. “Do it.”
Without even pausing to consider—because I know it is right, because I know whatever waiting for him is worse, and that the end is better at the hands of a friend than an enemy—I whisper in a rush, tears rising, “Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” And as roars surge from the watching demons as they comprehend what I’m about to do, I bend my knees and launch into a high, powerful jump—just as Caen himself taught me—and, using the momentum and all my weight, I grab his head.
And thrust it backward.
Straight onto the sharp end of the hook protruding from the top of his back.
NINE
LEI
IT’S NOT UNTIL LATER—LONG AFTER the guards wrestled me to the floor, the dungeon alive with snarled orders as the King stood over me, nearly too incensed to speak, Commander Razib’s cloven foot digging into my back; after I’ve been dragged back to my room and flung inside with no hint at what punishment awaits me—not until I’m lying on the rattan mat of my room, shivering and shaking and still red, dark red all over from Shifu Caen’s blood, that I realize I pushed his head so hard the hook’s tip dug halfway into my palm.
I stare at the wound—and that draws my attention to the cuff at my wrist.
Caen’s blood has dimmed its gold. My own blood drips down from the still-oozing tear in my hand, mingling with his. With a dull heart, I wonder who else of my friends’ blood I may have drawn today. Yet even though the thought of it is awful—too awful yet to comprehend—the worry doesn’t quite latch.
I’m too full of what just happened.
What I just did.