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She felt for where it pressed into her lower back. Her fingers came away bloody.
She tried not to panic. Something was stuck, that was all. She knew she wasn’t supposed to pull it out until she was with a physician, that the object piercing her back was the only thing stopping her blood spilling out. And she couldn’t see well enough from this angle—she’d be stupid to try to remove it herself.
But she could barely move without digging the rod deeper into her back. She might end up severing her own spine.
Nezha was in no state to help her. He had curled into a small, trembling ball, his arms wrapped around his knees. She crawled toward him and tried to hoist him into a sitting position using her good arm. “Hey. Hey.”
He didn’t respond.
He was twitching all over. His eyes fluttered madly while little whimpering noises escaped his mouth. He raised his hands, trying to claw at the tattoo on his back.
Rin glanced at the river. The water had started moving in eerie, erratic patterns. Odd little waves ran against the current. Blood-soaked columns rose out of the river at random. A handful splashed harmlessly near the shore, but one was growing larger and larger near the center of the river.
She had to knock Nezha out. That, or she had to get him high—but this time she had no opium . . .
“I brought it,” he gasped.
“What?”
He placed a trembling hand over his pocket. “Stole it—brought it here, just in case . . .”
She shoved her hand into his pocket and drew out a fist-sized packet wrapped tightly in bamboo leaves. She tore it open with her teeth, choking at the familiar, sickly sweet taste. Her body ached with an old craving.
Nezha sucked in air through clenched teeth. “Please . . .”
She clutched two nuggets in her hand and ignited a small fire beneath them. With her other hand she hoisted Nezha upright and tilted his head over the fumes.
He inhaled for a long time. His eyes fluttered closed. The water began to calm. The little waves sank beneath the surface. The columns lowered slowly and disappeared. Rin exhaled in relief.
Then Nezha shrank away from the smoke, coughing. “No—no, I don’t want that much—”
She gripped him tighter. “I’m sorry.”
He’d only smoked several whiffs. That would wear off in under an hour. That wasn’t enough time. She needed to make sure the god was gone.
She forced the opium under his nose and clamped a hand over his mouth to force him to inhale. He thrashed in protest, but he was already weak and his struggles grew more and more feeble as he inhaled more of the smoke. Finally he lay still.
Rin threw the half-burned nuggets into the dirt. She brushed a hand over Nezha’s forehead, pushed strands of wet hair out of his eyes.
“You’ll be all right,” she whispered. “I’ll send someone out after you.”
“Stay,” he murmured. “Please.”
“I’m sorry.” She leaned forward and lightly kissed his forehead. “We’ve got a battle to win.”
His voice was so faint she had to lean down to hear it. “But we’ve won.”
She choked with desperate laughter. He hadn’t seen the burning city. He didn’t know that Arlong barely existed anymore. “We haven’t won.”
“No . . .” His eyes opened. He struggled to raise his arm. He pointed at something past her shoulder. “Look. There.”
She turned her head.
There on the seam of the horizon sailed a fleet, waves and waves of warships. Some glided over water; some floated through the air. There were so many that they almost seemed like a mirage, endless doubles of the same row of white sails and blue flags against a brilliant sun.
Chapter 33
“How lovely,” spoke a voice, familiar and beautiful, that made Rin’s heart sink and her mouth fill with the taste of blood.
She lowered Nezha onto the sand and forced herself to stand up. Metal shifted beneath her flesh, and she bit back a cry of pain. The agony in her back and shoulder was almost unbearable. But she was not going to die lying down.
How could the Empress still terrify her like this? Daji was just a lone woman now, without an army or a fleet. Her general’s garb was ripped and drenched. She limped when she walked, and her shoes left behind imprints of blood. Yet she approached with her chin lifted high, her eyebrows arched, and her lips curved in an imperious smile as if she had just won a great victory, emanating a dark, seductive beauty that made irrelevant her sodden robes, her shattered ships.
Rin hated that beauty. She wanted to drag her nails across it until white flesh gave way under her fingers. She wanted to gouge Daji’s eyes out of their sockets, crush them in her fists, and drip the gelatinous ruin over her porcelain skin.
And yet.
When she looked at Daji her entire body felt weak. Her pulse raced. Her face felt hot. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Daji’s face. She had to look and keep looking, otherwise she would never be satisfied.
She forced herself to focus. She needed a weapon—she snatched a sharp piece of driftwood off the ground.
“Get back,” she whispered. “Come any closer and I’ll burn you.”
Daji only laughed. “Oh, my darling. Haven’t you learned?”
Her eyes flashed.
Suddenly Rin felt the overwhelming urge to kill herself, to drag the driftwood against her own wrists until red lines opened along her veins, and twist.
Hands shaking, she pressed the sharpest edge of the driftwood to her skin. What am I doing? Her mind screamed for her to stop, but her body didn’t care. She could only watch as her hands moved on their own, preparing to saw her veins apart.
“That’s enough,” Daji said lightly.
The urge disappeared. Rin dropped the driftwood, gasping.
“Will you listen now?” Daji asked. “I’d like you to stand still, please. Arms up.”
Rin immediately put her arms up over her head, stifling a scream as her wounds tore anew.
Daji limped closer. Her eyes flickered over the remains of Rin’s harness, and her right lip curled up in amusement. “So that’s how you dealt with poor Feylen. Clever.”
“Your best weapon is gone,” Rin said.
“Ah, well. He was a pain to begin with. One moment he’d try to sink our own fleet, and the next all he wanted to do was float among the clouds. Do you know how absurdly difficult it was to get him to do anything?” Daji sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to finish the job myself.”
“You’ve lost,” Rin said. “Hurt me, kill me, it’s still over for you. Your generals are dead. Your ships are driftwood.”
A round of cannon fire punctuated her words, a roar so loud that it drowned out every other sound along the shore. It went on for so long that Rin couldn’t imagine that anything remained floating in the channel.
But Daji didn’t look faintly bothered. “You think that’s winning? You aren’t the victors. There are no victors in this fight. Vaisra has ensured that civil war will continue for decades. He’s only deepened the fractures. No man can stitch this country back together now.”
She continued to limp forward until they were separated by only several feet.
Rin’s eyes darted around the shore. They stood on an isolated stretch of sand, hidden behind the wreckage of great warships. The only other soldiers in sight were corpses. No one was coming to her rescue. It was just her and the Empress now, facing off in the shadows of the unforgiving cliffs.
