They need Wren.
I lurch over bodies, the earth wet with blood. The brawling statues block most of the firelight, smoke from the burning trees and war-carriages choking the air.
In a flash of lightning, I spot Wren standing on a hunk of fallen stone close to the main gates, surrounded by a horde of Shadow soldiers. Her swords whirr, beating them back, but the soldiers are unrelenting and she is tiring, her movements becoming sloppy. Her eyes flicker, ice-white one moment then brown the next; she’s falling in and out of her Xia state.
If she fails, if she loses her grip now amid all these soldiers…
The ground shudders as one of the warring statues finally topples, its head punched clean off by the other. The head of the remaining statue swivels, looking at Wren, and I know our shamans have lost.
As the stone bull heaves toward her, so do I.
I weave through the Shadow soldiers surrounding her. They’re so focused they don’t pay me any attention until I’m halfway up the slab of rock. By then, Wren has seen me, too. She cuts off the arm of a soldier as they grab my shoulder.
“Lei!” she cries, her voice normal, her eyes not Xia white but brown.
Lovely, rich, honey-warm brown.
Right now, she is just Wren.
My Wren.
I smile as she reaches for me. At least I got to see her as the girl I fell in love with one final time.
Our fingers clasp. But before she can pull me up, I cling on tight and draw my other hand around, lifting the edge of the dagger to my chin.
“I’m sorry,” I say, so quiet it’s whipped away by the roar of battle, but for a moment it feels as though she can hear me, as though my words find her, gentle as they are amid such carnage, slipping under her skin as lightly as a kiss.
One last kiss, I think. That would have been nice.
“I love you,” I tell her. It’s important this is the last thing she hears from me.
And then I jerk my arm, drawing the blade across my waiting throat.
THIRTY-FIVE
WREN
SHE SAW IT ALL HAPPEN IN slow motion. Lei, staring up at her with blazing eyes. Her mouth moving, words so clear Wren felt them even if she couldn’t hear them: I’m sorry. I love you. The lifting knife. The glinting blade.
Surely Lei couldn’t be doing this. Surely her father had never suggested it in the first place, because what kind of man would do that to his daughter, would ask that of a girl he’d already asked so much of? But here Wren was, watching it happen. It played out like a nightmare, but it was real. Wren knew what her father was capable of, and she knew what Lei was capable of, and she understood too late she had underestimated them both.
Wren grasped Lei’s slipping fingers.
A sound tore from her lips.
Magic burrowed through her—and out.
It was like nothing she’d ever felt before. Wren had dived into that eternal lake too many times to count, yet now it was as though she were the lake. She could barely see. Her ears screamed. Her head pounded.
As if from afar, Wren felt herself lurch forward, heart crying out as she reached with straining fingers for that shining blade. But even in her Xia state things were underwater-heavy, the air almost impenetrable, and she knew with a terrible certainty she was moving too slow.
Then everything stopped.
One infinite second, in which all was suspended: life and breath, heartbeat and thought.
There was a soft glow, golden, like Lei’s eyes. It built slowly to a warm shine, then a hot, yellow glaze. Then, with gathering speed, it grew brighter, until it was a dazzling white— That was when the world split apart.
That’s what it felt like. Like when Wren reached into her Xia state and power flooded her—a sudden blast of strength and magic, making each of her senses come alive. Except this time, it was happening not just within her but all around, a riot of noise and color and movement and change that swept into everything and everyone, churned the whole world upside down.
There was a blast. And like a blast, it created something: power, energy, force.
It also took something away.
Wren found herself on the ground. She was on her back. The smoke had cleared, leaving scraps of fabric and blackened leaves and burning embers fluttering down through a granite, predawn sky. Wren tried to move but found she couldn’t. Her muscles throbbed. She couldn’t hear anything apart from the shrill ringing in her ears. The air smelled bitter. And… there was something else. A strange wrongness that pulsed in her cells.
Her mind filtered back groggily. There’d been an explosion—a magical blast. Her magic? Before the explosion there had been light. Light that had begun as a gentle glow, the color of Lei’s eyes— Lei.
Everything came back to her in a rush.
Lei. The blade. Her waiting throat.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
Muscles shrieking with the effort, Wren pushed herself up. She swayed, head spinning. Soldiers were splayed across the battleground. Many were dead, their eyes blank and staring. Many more were alive but reeling from the force of the blast, just as she was.
Heads lifted. Arms grasped at empty air. A few calls rang out, growing louder as the ringing in Wren’s ears faded. The charged wind of the thunderstorm grazed her bare cheeks. Pain sang through Wren: her old injury, her aching muscles. And as the sensations of the world came back, the sense of loss grew more prominent.
Something was different. The world was changed.
How? Why?
Wren pushed the questions away. Finding Lei was more important. She forced past the pain and moved through the swaths of fallen warriors.
More of them were rousing now. Fights stuttered back into life as the blast-shocked demons and humans struggled to regain their rhythm. Wren skirted the messy scuffles. She kicked at hands that seized her ankles. One soldier jumped on her back, and she wrestled him off her—her swords had been lost in the explosion.
Another demon approached. Wren spun, knocking him away with a thrust of her elbow.
The demon rubbed his jaw. “Thank the gods you don’t have your swords,” he muttered, straightening.
“Kenzo!” Wren exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I thought—”
“I know.” He glanced over her. “What happened? There was some sort of explosion, but no cannons were fired on either side. And something feels…”
“Off,” Wren finished. “The royal shamans must have done something. Created some kind of magical blast.”
“I thought it was you.”
She shook her head. “Kenzo—I need to find Lei. My father asked her to sacrifice herself to unlock the full potential of my Xia power.”
“So that’s why you attacked him,” he said.
“I won’t apologize—”