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Rin shut her eyes and redoubled her efforts, grasping around the void until she found a tiny filament, the barest hint of divine presence. That was enough.
Break him, she told the Phoenix.
She heard a shattering sound in her mind, a porcelain cup dashed against stone.
She saw a flash of red. The beach disappeared.
They were alone in the plane of spirit, standing on opposite sides of a great circle, both of them naked and fully revealed. It was all there, laid out between them. All their shared fury, vindictiveness, bloodlust, and guilt. Her cruelty. His complicity. Her desperation. His regret.
She saw him across the circle and knew that if she wanted to subdue him, all she had to do was think it. She’d nearly done it before—the instant they were anchored, in the first moments after she’d reestablished her bond with the Phoenix, she’d nearly erased him. She could rip the god’s power through his mind like he was nothing more than a flimsy net.
He knew it, too. She felt his resignation, his wretched surrender.
Surrender, not agreement. They were enemies now—and she could bend his will, but she’d never again have his heart.
Yet something—sentiment, heartbreak—compelled her to try.
“Kitay, please—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Just—go ahead. But don’t.”
His body went limp. The spirit world disappeared. Rin came to her senses just as Kitay slumped to the ground, falling heavily against her arms. Then, somehow, she was kneeling above him with her hand on his neck, her thumb resting against the bulge of his throat.
Their eyes met. She felt a shock of horror.
She recognized the way he was looking at her. It was how she’d once looked at Altan. It was the way she’d seen Daji look at Riga—that look of wretched, desperate, and reproachful loyalty.
It said, Do it.
Take what you want, it said. I’ll hate you for it. But I’ll love you forever. I can’t help but love you.
Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you.
She almost took that for permission.
But if she did, if she broke through his soul and took everything she wanted . . .
She’d never stop. There would be no limits to her power. She’d never stop using him, ripping his mind open and setting it on fire every hour and minute and second, because she would always need the fire. If she did this then her war would extend across the world and her enemies would multiply—there would always be someone else, someone like Petra trying to banish her god and crush her nation, or someone like Nezha trying to foment rebellion from within.
And unless she killed every single one of them, she would never be safe and her revolution would never succeed, and so she’d have to keep going until she reduced the rest of the world to ashes, until she was the last one standing.
Until she was alone.
Was that peace? Was that liberation?
She could see her victories. She could see the burned wreckage of Hesperian shores. She could see herself at the center of a conflagration that consumed the world, scorched it, cleansed it, ate away its rotted foundations—
But she couldn’t see where it ended.
She couldn’t see where the pain stopped—not for the world, and not for Kitay.
“You’re hurting me,” he whispered.
It was like being doused in ice water. Repulsed, she gave a sharp sob and jerked her hand away from his neck.
The humming above crescendoed to a deafening roar.
Too late, Rin glanced up. Lightning enveloped her body, a dozen painless arcs of light a thousand times brighter than the sun. The Phoenix went silent. So did the rage; so did the crimson visions of a world on fire. The lightning vanished her divinity, and all that it left behind was utter horror at what she’d nearly done.
Kitay moaned, touched two fingers to his temple, and went limp. Rin clutched him against her chest and rocked back and forth, dazed.
“Rin,” croaked Nezha.
She twisted around. He was sitting up. Blood dribbled down the side of his head, and his eyes were bleary, unfocused. He stared at the electricity dancing across Rin’s body, mouth agape. He rose slowly, but she knew he wasn’t going to attack. He was the furthest thing from a threat at that moment—he just looked like a young boy, scared and confused, utterly at a loss for what to do.
There’s nothing he can do, Rin realized. Neither Nezha nor Kitay could determine what happened next. They weren’t strong enough.
This choice had to be hers.
She saw it in a flash of utter clarity. She knew what she had to do. The only path, the only way forward.
And what a familiar path it was. It was so obvious now. The world was a dream of the gods, and the gods dreamed in sequences, in symmetry, in patterns. History repeated itself, and she was only the latest iteration of the same scene in a tapestry that had been spun long before her birth.
So many others had stood on this precipice before her.
Mai’rinnen Tearza, the Speerly queen who chose to die rather than bind herself to a king she hated.
Altan Trengsin, the boy who burned too bright, who became his own funeral pyre.
Jiang Ziya, the Dragon Emperor’s blade, the monster, the murderer, her mentor, her savior.
Hanelai, who fled to her death before she knelt.
They’d wielded unprecedented power, unimaginable and unmatchable power capable of rewriting the script of history. And they’d written themselves out.
Now here they were again: three people—children, really; too young and inexperienced for the roles they’d inherited—holding the fate of Nikan in their hands. And Rin was poised to acquire the empire Riga had wanted, if only she could be just as cruel.
But what kind of emperor would Riga have been? And how much worse would she be?
Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.
She could see the future and its shape was already drawn, predetermined by patterns that had been set in motion before she was born—patterns of cruelty and dehumanization and oppression and trauma that had pulled her right back into the place where the Trifecta had once stood. And if she did this, if she broke Kitay like Riga would have broken Jiang, she would only re-create those patterns—because there would be resistance, there would be blood, and the only way she could eliminate that possibility was by burning down the world.
Yet a single decision could escape the current, could push history off its course.
It’s a long march to liberation, Kitay had said.
Sometimes you’ve got to bend the knee.
Sometimes, at least, you’ve got to pretend.
She finally understood what that meant.
She knew what she had to do next. It wasn’t about surrender. It was about the long game. It was about survival.
She stood up, reached for Nezha’s hand, and curled his fingers around the handle of the knife.
He stiffened. “What are you—”
“Get their respect,” she said. “Tell them you killed me. Tell them everything they want to hear. Say whatever you need to to get them to trust you.”
“Rin—”
“It’s the only way forward.”
He understood what she meant him to do. His eyes widened in alarm, and he tried to wrench his hand away, but she clenched his fingers tight.
“Nezha—”
“You can’t do this for me,” he said. “I won’t let you.”
