The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(118)

Lu, watch out! Nok’s voice rang in her head.

The boulder caught her in the side. Heat exploded through her arm and ribs like rogue fireworks. Panicked flares of red and violet and silver lit the back of her eyelids.

What . . . ?

Min hurtled toward her. Her sister’s hands were outstretched, clutching a second chunk of paving stone, this one larger, wrapped in a dense web of crackling light. She was sweating, her chest heaving with effort, as though the weight of it was too much for her.

“Min?” Lu whispered. Why? The question screamed inside her. She couldn’t find the breath to ask it, though.

Vrea leaped forward, lightning stretching from her hands toward Min. Min pivoted and released her stone toward Vrea. The shot went high; Vrea’s blast of energy shattered it in mid-flight, raining debris down upon them.

With Vrea distracted, the Hana army charged. Vrea scarcely had time to redirect her focus from Min toward the advancing soldiers, shoving them back with small, directed blasts of energy.

Nok’s wolf dove into the fray. It latched its jaws around the throat of the nearest horse and gave a terrible shake. Both beast and rider fell screaming, bowling over several of their nearest compatriots. One of the fallen men struggled to his hands and knees, but Nasan’s staff caught him across the jaw, snapping his head back with a sickening crack.

Lu closed her eyes, struggling to breathe. Her body felt undone, taken apart and thrown back together in a heap. In the aftermath, pain began to seep in, flaring from her side, the ball of her shoulder. Around her the battle seethed. The clashing of steel, the braying of horses. Men wailing and dying.

She tried to sit up, but her left arm was dead. She couldn’t feel her hand, her fingers. Just a screaming, mindless pain. Her sword was gone, lost to the fray.

It doesn’t matter. I’ll never wield it properly again. The thought sent a shock of grief through her already splintered heart.

“Lu.” Min’s voice was improbably quiet, close. Lu opened her eyes and found her sister standing over her, searching her broken body with startled eyes, as though she hadn’t been the one to break it.

“Help me, Min,” Lu whispered. “You’re my sister—”

“Sister?” The word seemed to catch her off guard. She cocked her head and looked into the distance, seemingly oblivious to the wild battle at her back. “Am I?”

“What . . . ?” Lu stammered. “What do you—”

“Isn’t it strange,” Min said, “the way mother always hated you, and father always ignored me? I confess, it never occurred to me to think anything of it. It was simply the way it was. But it was strange, wasn’t it? We never did anything to deserve it, we were just . . . born. It was a mystery.”

“Min—”

“Our family was a mystery, and I solved it, Lu.” Min turned solemn gray eyes back on her. “We were born to the wrong mothers. Me, to the wife our father hated. And you, to the woman he wasn’t allowed to love.”

Lu gaped at her. Had her sister lost her mind? “What woman?”

Min shrugged, slippery and slight. “A shamaness. A Yunian shamaness—isn’t that strange? Her name was Tsai.”

Tsai . . . where had she heard that name before? And then she remembered. Back in Omair’s quaint little home in Ansana, the old apothecarist had said it.

Tsai. Slight, almost brittle to look at, but that exterior hid immense power. A star crammed inside a soap bubble.

“It makes me feel better, in a way,” Min said. “It explains why we’re so different. When we were little, I cursed the heavens for making you so strong, so clever, so beautiful. They gave it all to you and left nothing for me, I thought.”

“That’s not true, Min. You know it’s not—”

“You’re right,” her sister said. Lu looked up at her in surprise. Min nodded once, as though making a decision. “You’re right. It turns out I do have something you don’t.”

“Min, please—”

“What I have,” her sister continued, “isn’t from the heavens, though.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lu slurred, trying to focus past the pain, past her confusion. “Set’s gone, you’re free now. Whatever it is, I can fix it.”

“No!” Min shrieked, her hands going to her ears as though she meant to cover them against the sound of Lu’s voice. “I was going to fix it! I had a plan. I was going to make it all better! I was going to win, and I was going to give Set sons, and I was going to let you come home, but you ruined everything!”

Lu licked her lips, tasted blood and dust. “Min. What did Set do to you?”

“You don’t understand,” Min seethed. “He didn’t do anything! It was me, it was supposed to be me this time, but you took everything away!” Rage contorted her sister’s tired little face, turned it feral and unfamiliar. Wrong. This wasn’t her sister. Not the one she’d left behind.

Min raised her hands.

A fresh flush of tears stung Lu’s eyes. She struggled to keep them open. It would be better if she could stand. But no matter. She was a warrior. She would not flinch at death.

Her sister—for that was what she was, even now, Lu thought, even if what she was saying was true, even with her hands raised like that—her sister’s face swam before her, dappled in sparks from the ball of energy building in her hands. It was as though Lu were seeing her from underwater.