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Rin snorted. “So there’s the impasse.”
“Come on. You know that’s not what I’m here for.” He pressed his fingers against his temples. “You won, Rin. Fair and square. I’m not angling for the throne. I’m just trying to make this less painful for everyone involved.”
“You seem so certain that I’ll be an awful ruler.”
“It’s not an insult. I just think you have no interest in ruling at all. You don’t care about statecraft. You’re not an administrator, you’re a soldier.”
“I’m a general,” she corrected.
“You’re a general who’s conclusively wiped everyone else off the map,” he said. “You won, all right? You beat me. But your role—that role, at least, is over. You’ve got no wars left to fight.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“It can be true,” he insisted. “This isn’t what Hesperia wants. This war continues if you bring it to them. But if you work with them, if you let them believe you’re not a threat, they won’t treat you like one. If you make concessions, if you stay in their good graces—”
“That’s bullshit,” she snapped. “I’ve heard that logic before. Su Daji initiated the Third Poppy War because she thought losing half the country was better than losing it all. And what happened then, Nezha? How’d you get that scar on your face? How’d we get to Golyn Niis?”
“What you’re doing,” Nezha said quietly, “will be worse than a thousand Golyn Niises.”
“Not if we win.”
He gave her a wary look. “This is a peace negotiation.”
“It’s not,” she said softly. “You know it’s not.”
His eyes narrowed. “Rin—”
She pushed her chair back and stood up. Enough of these pretensions. She hadn’t come to sign a peace treaty, and neither had he.
“Where is the fleet?” she asked.
He tensed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Call them out.” She let flames roll down her shoulders. “That’s what I came for. Not this charade.”
Kitay stood up. “Rin, what are you doing?”
She ignored him. “Call them out, Nezha. I know they’re hiding. I won’t ask again.”
Nezha’s expression went slack. He exchanged a bewildered glance with Kitay, and the sheer patronization of that gesture made her flames jump twice as high.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”
Then she turned toward the ocean and unleashed a brilliant flare into the sky.
A fleet of dirigibles immediately emerged over the horizon.
I was right. She felt a hot wave of satisfaction. The Hesperians hadn’t been bold enough to conceal their airships on Speer—smart of them, for she would have decimated them otherwise—but they’d kept them waiting all along the coast of Snake Province.
So much for Nezha’s cease-fire. This confirmed everything she’d suspected. The Hesperians weren’t interested in peace, and neither was she. Both just wanted to finish this. They’d come for an ambush, and she’d just called their bluff.
Nezha stood up. “Rin, they’re not—”
“Liar,” she snarled. “They’re right there.”
“They’re backup,” he said. “In case—”
“In case what?” she demanded. “In case you couldn’t get the job done? You wanted to end this, so let’s end this. Let’s answer this question once and for all. Let’s pit their god against mine. Let’s see which one is real.”
Her beacon surged higher, a pillar so searingly bright it cast an orange hue over the entire shore. The fleet surged forth. They were already halfway across the channel; they’d be over Speer in seconds.
Rin watched the horizon and waited.
She and Kitay had determined her maximum radius a long time ago. Since they had been anchored, it had always been fifty yards in any direction. She could never push farther without Kitay collapsing, without losing access to the Phoenix.
But now she was on Speer. Everything changed on Speer.
When the first of the airships drew close enough that she could see its cannons, she swept it out of the sky. The cannons never fired; it plummeted straight into the ocean like a rock.
The rest of the fleet advanced, undaunted.
Keep coming, she thought, exhilarated. I’ll smite you all.
This was it. This was the moment she rewrote history. The Hesperian fleet would crowd the sky like storm clouds, and she’d destroy it in minutes. This would be more than a crushing victory. It would be a display of force—an undeniable, irrefutable display of divine authority.
Then the Hesperians she permitted to survive would flee, this time for good. They would never return to the eastern hemisphere. They would never dare threaten her people. And when she demanded gold and grain, they wouldn’t dare say no.
This was what Speer had always been capable of, what Queen Mai’rinnen Tearza had been too afraid to do. The last Speerly queen let her homeland become an island of slaves because she thought unleashing the Phoenix might burn down the world. She could have had everything, but she didn’t have the will.
Rin would not make that same mistake.
“I didn’t want this.” Dimly, over the roar of the flames, she heard Kitay pleading to Nezha. “That’s not what she—”
“Stop her,” Nezha said.
“I can’t.”
Nezha stood, pushing his chair to the ground. Rin grinned. When he lunged, she was ready. She’d seen the bulge under his shirt where he’d concealed a knife. She knew that when he had the initiative, he favored a right-handed strike to the upper torso. She twisted to the side. His blade met empty air. When he tried tackling her, she mirrored his momentum and rolled with him to the ground.
Subduing him was so easy.
It should have been a struggle. Nezha had all the advantages in hand-to-hand combat—he was just taller and heavier, his limbs were longer, and every time they’d ever brawled, unless she pulled a gimmick, he’d always managed to pin her through sheer brute force.
But something was wrong.
That formidable skill wasn’t there. Strength, speed—both gone. His strikes were stiff and sluggish. She couldn’t see proof of any wounds, yet he winced with every motion, as if invisible knives were digging into his flesh.
And he wasn’t calling the Dragon.
Why wasn’t he calling the Dragon?
If Nezha had demanded more of her focus she would have noticed the way his golden circlets rang eerily every time he moved, darkening the skin around his wrists and ankles. But her mind was not on Nezha. He was just an obstacle, a great, blockish object that she needed out of the way. In that moment, Nezha was an afterthought.
Her mind was on the sky; her focus was on the fleet.
Was this how Jiang had always felt on the battlefield, when he’d felled columns with little more than a thought? The difference in scale was inconceivable. This wasn’t fighting. There was no struggle involved in this, no effort. She was simply writing reality. She was painting. She pointed, and balloons incinerated. She clenched her fist, and carriages exploded.
