The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(114)

Lu was holding him, staring down in concern. She looked, he thought, like fire. Vast and all-consuming and furious. Bigger than fire. She looked like the sun. Beautiful—how could he not have noticed before? But of course, he had.

“Where were you?” she demanded, shaking him a little, because for her, even love would always be a bit bound up with anger.

It made him laugh. It made him want to kiss her. And he would, he resolved. When this was all over, he would kiss her again and again . . .

Nasan cursed. “Is his fever back?”

Lu squinted into the dark behind him. “Nokhai, did you just come out of that wall?”

“Don’t be stupid!” snapped Nasan. He recognized the particular impatience in her voice, though—his sister was afraid. “It’s just a trick of the eye. It’s too damn dark in here to see anything. I mean, where would he have gone?” she said, rapping the stone wall with the butt of her fist. “The room ends right there, see?”

Lu shivered—the barest tremor around him. “I don’t think it does,” she said softly.

Nok sat up. “We have to go. They’ve broken through the gate.”

“How do you know?” Nasan demanded.

“The Ana and the Aba—I had a vision,” he blurted. “It’s . . . just, trust me. We have to go help the Triarch.”

“Not you,” Nasan said. “You’re in no condition to fight. You can barely stand.”

His lips parted to object, but he hesitated. It was an out. No more killing, no more bloodshed, no more terror. He wasn’t made for it. Unlike his sister or Lu, he wasn’t a born warrior. He didn’t even have a weapon.

Only, that wasn’t true anymore.

Nok surged to his feet. “I can stand. And I can fight. I—I have my caul now.” They stared at him as though still unconvinced he wasn’t in the grips of some feverous hallucination.

“You said you can’t control when it comes and goes,” Lu said carefully. He looked at her, at that stern, stately face. In the flinty copper of her eyes he saw the soldier whose head she’d stung an arrow through to save him, the pale, blood-drained slip of a boy she’d killed in the wood. But he saw exhaustion there, too, and a profound animal fear kept just at bay. Maybe no one was a born warrior.

“It’s different now,” he told her. “Look . . .”

He closed his eyes, and though he had no way of knowing whether it would work, he knew all the same. Perhaps the whole thing had been one fever dream, perhaps there was no Black and Violet, no fire born from the core of the world, but this much he knew was real. This much was his.

This time, there was no sensation of wind sweeping over him. Instead, the warmth surged from his chest, through the marrow of his bones. He could feel it down to the soles of his feet, in his scalp, in his teeth.

When he opened his eyes again, the room looked bright as day. The others were staring down at him. Nasan in wonder and Lu with something like relief, and something else like pride. The wolf stretched, and Nok felt power course down his spine.

His sister shook her head to dispel the shock on her face, as though embarrassed by how pure it was. Then she grinned. “Well. Let’s go kill some imperials.”

“Is it Set?” Lu demanded. “Did Set break the gate?”

Set is there, Nok told them. But he’s not alone—he’s not the one who broke the gate.

Lu frowned, the thoughts racing behind her eyes. “Who, then? His monk? Brother?”

No. A girl, Nok said, remembering suddenly. The Ana and the Aba, they said it was a girl. That she was their key, their weapon. Maybe a Hana nun?

Lu was shaking her head. “Set didn’t bring a girl with him to the capital. And the Hana nuns—they just do rites. Ceremony. There hasn’t been anyone with knowledge of magic since they executed the Yunian shamanesses. Are you sure you remember correctly?”

They said it was a girl, Nok repeated stubbornly. And then he remembered the rest. They said she had gray eyes . . .

“Your mother has gray eyes,” Nasan interrupted, looking at Lu.

“Yes,” Lu agreed doubtfully. Then she froze, and Nok saw understanding on her face—then a cavalcade of urgency, of fury, of fear. “My mother,” she whispered. “And my sister.”





CHAPTER 35


The Fall

Chaos greeted them as they ran out onto the temple steps. Lu could see the battle had reached the far end of the Heart: a horde of blue-clad mounted Hana troops clashing against no more than a dozen Yunians.

There was no sign of Set. Or Min. Her sister couldn’t be in that terrible crush of men and horses, could she?

Overhead, the sky still bled, the blue now nearly overtaking the gray. The light was different, too. At first Lu thought it was just her eyes adjusting from the dark of the temple, but no, the whole Heart was changing. Even the trees looked strange, their dull gray-green leaves turned garishly verdant. The long foggy morning of the Inbetween was ending, and the sun had come out harsh and overly bright.

Lu unsheathed her sword, wished for an elk and armor. She looked to her right and saw Nasan heft her staff in both hands. To her left, Nok’s wolf bristled, drawing its lips around massive white teeth. They weren’t much, but they would have to be enough.

“Let’s go,” she told them. They ran fleetly down the temple steps.