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“I owe you an explanation,” he said at last.
She leaned against the railing. “Go on.”
“I’m not a shaman.”
She threw her hands up. “Oh, don’t fuck with me—”
“I’m not,” he insisted. “I know I can do things. I mean, I know I’m linked to a god, and I can—sort of—call it, sometimes . . .”
“That’s what shamanism is.”
“You’re not listening to me. Whatever I am, it’s not what you are. My mind’s not my own—my body belongs to some—some thing . . .”
“That’s just it, Nezha. That’s how it is for all of us. And I know it hurts, and I know it’s hard, but—”
“You’re still not listening,” he snapped. “It’s no sacrifice for you. You and your god want the same damn thing. But I didn’t ask for this—”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, it doesn’t just happen by accident. You had to want it first. You had to ask the god.”
“But I didn’t. I never asked, and I’ve never wanted it.” The way Nezha said it made her fall quiet. He sounded like he was about to cry.
He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was so quiet she had to step closer to hear him. “Back at Boyang, you called me a coward.”
“Look, all I meant was that—”
“I’m going to tell you a story,” he interrupted. He was trembling. Why was he trembling? “I want you to just listen. And I want you to believe me. Please.”
She crossed her arms. “Fine.”
Nezha blinked hard and stared out over the water. “I told you once that I had another brother. His name was Mingzha.”
When he didn’t continue, Rin asked, “What was he like?”
“Hilarious,” Nezha said. “Chubby, loud, and incredible. He was everyone’s favorite. He was so full of energy, he glowed. My mother had miscarried twice before she gave birth to him, but Mingzha was perfect. He was never sick. My mother adored him. She was hugging him constantly. She dressed him up in so many golden bracelets and anklets that he jangled when he walked.” He shuddered. “She should have known better. Dragons like gold.”
“Dragons,” Rin repeated.
“You said you’d listen.”
“Sorry.”
Nezha was sickly pale. His skin was almost translucent; Rin could see blue veins under his jaw, crisscrossing with his scars.
“My siblings and I spent our childhood playing by the river,” he said. “There’s a grotto about a mile out from the entrance to this channel, this underwater crystal cave that the servants liked telling stories about, but Father had forbidden us to enter it. So of course all we ever wanted to do was explore it.
“My mother took sick one night when Mingzha was six. During that time my father had been called to Sinegard on the Empress’s orders, so the servants weren’t as concerned with watching us as they might have been. Jinzha was at the Academy. Muzha was abroad. So the responsibility for watching Mingzha fell to me.”
Nezha’s voice cracked. His eyes looked hollow, tortured. Rin didn’t want to hear any more. She had a sickening suspicion of where this story was headed, and she didn’t want it spoken out loud, because that would make it true.
She wanted to tell him it was all right, he didn’t have to tell her, they never had to speak about this again, but Nezha was talking faster and faster, like he was afraid the words would be buried inside him if he didn’t spit them out now.
“Mingzha wanted to—no, I wanted to explore that grotto. It was my idea to begin with. I put it in Mingzha’s head. It was my fault. He didn’t know any better.”
Rin reached for his arm. “Nezha, you don’t have to—”
He shoved her away. “Can you please shut up and just listen for once?”
She fell silent.
“He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” he whispered. “That’s what scares me. They say the House of Yin is beautiful. But that’s because dragons like beautiful things, because dragons are beautiful and they create beauty. When he emerged from the cave, all I could think about was how bright his scales were, how lovely his form, how magnificent.”
But they’re not real, Rin thought desperately. Dragons are just stories.
Weren’t they?
Even if she didn’t believe in Nezha’s story, she believed in his pain. It was written all over his face.
Something had happened all those years ago. She just didn’t know what.
“So beautiful,” Nezha murmured, even as his knuckles whitened. “I couldn’t stop staring.
“Then he ate my brother. Devoured him in seconds. Have you watched a wild animal eat before? It’s not clean. It’s brutal. Mingzha didn’t even have time to scream. One moment he was there, clutching at my leg, and the next moment he was a mess of blood and gore and shining bones, and then there was nothing.
“But the dragon spared me. He said he had something better for me.” Nezha swallowed. “He said he was going to give me a gift. And then he claimed me for his own.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rin said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
Nezha didn’t seem to have even heard. “My mother wishes I’d died that day. I wish I’d died. I wish it had been me. But it’s selfish even to wish I were dead—because if I had died, then Mingzha would have lived, and the Dragon Lord would have cursed him like he cursed me, he would have touched him like he touched me.”
She didn’t dare ask what that meant.
“I’m going to show you something,” he said.
She was too stunned to say anything. She could only watch, aghast, as he undid the clasps of his tunic with trembling fingers.
He yanked it down and turned around. “Do you see this?”
It was his tattoo—an image of a dragon in blue and silver. She’d seen it before, but he wouldn’t remember.
She touched her index finger to the dragon’s head, wondering. Was this tattoo the reason Nezha had always healed so quickly? He seemed able to survive anything—blunt trauma, poisonous gas, drowning.
But at what price?
“You said he claimed you for his own,” she said softly. “What does that mean?”
“It means it hurts,” he said. “Every moment that I’m not with him. It feels like anchors digging into my body; hooks trying to drag me back into the water.”
The mark didn’t look like a scar that was almost ten years old. It looked freshly inflicted; his skin shone an angry crimson. The glint of sunlight made the dragon seem as if it was writhing over Nezha’s muscles, pressing itself deeper and deeper into his raw skin.
“And if you went back to him?” she asked. “What would happen to you?”
“I’d become part of his collection,” he said. “He’d do what he wanted to me, satisfy himself, and I’d never leave. I’d be trapped, because I don’t think I can die. I’ve tried. I’ve cut my wrists, but I never bleed out before my wounds stitch themselves back together. I’ve jumped off the Red Cliffs, and sometimes the pain is enough for me to think I’ve managed it this time, but I always wake up. I think the Dragon is keeping me alive. At least until I return to him.
