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Rin reached backward to feel at her wounds. Her back and shoulder were covered in a swath of bandages. Her fingers kept brushing against raised skin that hurt to touch. She winced. She didn’t want to see what lay beneath the wrappings. “Did they tell you how bad it was?”
“Can you still wiggle your toes?”
Rin froze. “Venka.”
“I’m kidding.” Venka cracked a smile. “It looks worse than it is. It’ll take you a while, but you’ll get full mobility back. Your biggest concern is scarring. But you were always ugly, so it’s not like that will make a difference.”
Rin was too relieved to be angry. “Go fuck yourself.”
“There’s a mirror inside that cabinet door.” Venka pointed to the back corner of the room and stood up. “I’ll give you some time alone.”
After Venka closed the door, Rin pulled off her shirt, climbed gingerly to her feet, and stood naked in front of the mirror.
She was stunned by how repulsive she looked.
She’d always known that nothing could make her attractive; not with her mud-colored skin, sullen face, and short, jagged hair that had never been styled with anything more sophisticated than a rusty knife.
But now she just looked like a broken and battered thing. She was an amalgamation of scars and stitches. On her arm, dotted white reminders of the hot wax she’d once used to burn herself to stay awake studying. On her back and shoulders, whatever lay behind those bandages. And just under her sternum, Altan’s handprint, as dark and vivid as the day she’d first seen it.
Exhaling slowly, she pressed her left hand to the spot over her stomach. She couldn’t tell if she was only imagining it, but it felt hot to the touch.
“I should apologize,” said Kitay.
She jumped. She hadn’t heard the door open. “Fucking hell—”
“Sorry.”
She scrambled to pull her shirt back on. “You might have knocked!”
“I didn’t realize you’d be up.” He crossed the room and perched himself on the side of her bed. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize. That wound is my fault. Didn’t put padding around the gears—I didn’t have time, so I was just going for something functional. The rod went in about three inches at a slant. The physicians said you’re lucky it didn’t sever your spine.”
“Did you feel it, too?” she asked.
“Just a little,” Kitay said. He was lying, she knew that, but in that moment she was just grateful he would even try to spare her the guilt. He lifted his shirt and twisted around to show her a pale white scar running across his lower back. “Look. They’re the same shape, I think.”
She peered enviously at the smooth white lines. “That’s prettier than mine will be.”
“Don’t get too jealous.”
She moved her hands and arms about, gingerly testing the temporary boundaries of her mobility. She tried to raise her right arm above her head, but gave up when her shoulder threatened to tear itself apart. “I don’t think I want to fly for a while.”
“I gathered.” Kitay picked her unfinished apple up off the windowsill and took a bite. “Good thing you won’t have to.”
She sat back down on the bed. It hurt to stand for too long.
“The Cike?” she asked.
“All alive and accounted for. None with serious injuries.”
She nodded, relieved. “And Feylen. Is he . . . you know, properly dead?”
“Who cares?” Kitay said. “He’s buried under thousands of tons of rock. If there’s anything alive down there, it won’t bother us for a millennium.”
Rin tried to take comfort in that. She wanted to be sure Feylen was dead. She wanted to see a body. But for now, this would have to do.
“Where’s Nezha?” she asked.
“He’s been in here. Constantly. Wouldn’t leave, but I think someone finally got him to go take a nap. Good thing, too. He was starting to smell.”
“So he’s all right?” she asked quickly.
“Not entirely.” Kitay tilted his head at her. “Rin, what did you do to him?”
She hesitated.
Could she tell Kitay the truth? Nezha’s secret was so personal, so intensely painful, that it would feel like an awful betrayal. But it also entailed immense consequences that she didn’t know how to grapple with, and she couldn’t stand keeping that to herself. At least not from the other half of her soul.
Kitay said out loud what she had been thinking. “We’re both better off if you don’t hide things from me.”
“It’s an odd story.”
“Try me.”
She told him everything, every last painful, disgusting detail.
Kitay didn’t flinch. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Nezha’s been a prick his whole life. I imagine it’s hard to be pleasant when you’re in chronic pain.”
Rin managed a laugh. “I don’t think that’s entirely it.”
Kitay was silent for a moment. “So am I to understand that’s why he’s been moping for days? Did he call the dragon at the Red Cliffs?”
Rin’s stomach twisted with guilt. “I didn’t make him do it.”
“Then what happened?”
“We were in the channel. We were—I was drowning. But I didn’t force him. That wasn’t me.”
What she wanted was for Kitay to tell her she hadn’t done anything wrong. But as usual, all he did was tell her the truth. “You didn’t have to force him. You think that Nezha would let you die? After you’d called him a coward?”
“The pain’s not so bad,” she insisted. “Not so bad that you want to die. You’ve felt it. We both survived it.”
“You don’t know how it feels for him.”
“It can’t possibly be worse.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe it’s worse than you could even imagine.”
She drew her knees up to her chest. “I never wanted to hurt him.”
Kitay’s voice held no judgment, only curiosity. “Why’d you say those things to him, then?”
“Because his life is not his own,” she said, echoing Vaisra’s words from so long ago. “Because when you have this much power, it’s selfish to sit on it just because you’re scared.”
But that wasn’t entirely it.
She was also jealous. Jealous that Nezha might have access to such enormous power and never consider using it. Jealous that Nezha’s entire identity and worth did not hinge on his shamanic abilities. Nezha had never been referred to solely by his race. Nezha had never been someone’s weapon. They had both been claimed by gods, but Nezha got to be the princeling of the House of Yin, free from Hesperian experimentation, and she got to be the last heir of a tragic race.
Kitay knew that. Kitay knew everything that crossed her mind.
He sat quietly for a long time.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he finally said. “And I don’t want you to take it as a judgment, I want you to take it as a warning.”
She gave him a wary look. “What?”
“You’ve known Nezha for a few years,” he said. “You met him when he’d perfected his masks and pretensions. But I’ve known him since we were children. You think that he’s invincible, but he is more fragile than you think. Yes, I know he’s a prick. But I also know that he’d throw himself off a cliff for you. Please stop trying to break him.”
