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When Tikany failed to satisfy she turned her mind to Sinegard—that harsh, intimidating place that, paradoxically, now contained her happiest memories. She remembered studying in the cool basement chambers of the Academy library with Kitay, watching him pushing spindly fingers through his worried hairline as he riffled through scroll after scroll. Remembered sparring in the early mornings with Jiang in the Lore garden, parrying his blows with a blindfold tied around her head.
She got very good at exploring the crevices of her mind, excavating memories that she didn’t know she still had. Memories she hadn’t let herself acknowledge until now for fear they would break her.
She remembered the first time she’d ever laid eyes on Nezha, and then all the times thereafter.
It hurt to see him. It hurt so much.
They’d been so innocent once. It was agony to recall the face he wore just a year ago: pretty and cocky and unbearable at once, alternately grinning with delight or wearing the absurd snarl of an agitated puppy. But she was trapped here for an eternity. Those memories were the only things she had now, and the pain was the only way she’d feel anything ever again.
She retraced their entire history from the moment she met him first at Sinegard to the moment she felt his blade sliding into the muscles of her back. She remembered how childishly handsome he used to be, how she’d been both drawn to and repulsed by that haughty, sculpted face. She remembered how Sinegard had transformed him from a spoiled, petty princeling to a hardened soldier in training. She remembered the first time they’d sparred against each other and the first time they’d fought side by side in battle—how their animosity and partnership had both felt like such a natural fit, like slipping on a lost glove, like finding her other half.
She remembered how much taller than her he’d grown, how when they embraced, her head fit neatly under his chin. She remembered how dark his eyes had looked under the moonlight that night by the docks. Right when she thought he’d kiss her. Right before he’d pressed a blade into her back.
It hurt so much to riffle through those memories. It was humiliating to remember how readily she’d believed his lies. She felt like such a fool, for trusting him, for loving him, for thinking any of those thousands of tiny moments they’d shared during her brief time in Vaisra’s army meant that he really, truly cared for her, when in truth Nezha had been manipulating her just like his father had.
She relived those interactions so many times that they began to lose all meaning. Their sting faded to a dull burn, and then nothing at all. She’d numbed herself to their significance. She’d grown bored of her own pain.
So she turned to the last thing that could still hurt her. She went looking for the Seal and found that it was still there, ready and waiting in the back of her mind, daring her to enter.
She wondered briefly why the Seal had not disappeared. It was the product of the goddess Nüwa’s magic, and there was no connection to the gods in the Chuluu Korikh. But perhaps when Daji had brought the magic into the world, the connection severed, the same way venom lingered after the snake had died.
Rin was grateful for it. Here was at least a single distraction from her own mind. Something she could play with, flirt with. For prisoners in solitary confinement, a knife was better entertainment than nothing.
What happened if she touched it now? She might never come back. Here, with nothing from reality to distract her, she might end up trapped in a poison-soaked lie forever.
But she had nothing else. No reality to come back to, save her own stale memories.
She leaned forward and fell through the gate.
“Hello,” said Altan. “How did we end up here?”
He was standing far too close. Only inches separated them.
“Stay back,” she said. “Don’t touch me.”
“And I thought you wanted to see me.” Ignoring her command he reached out, took her chin in his fingers, and tilted her head up. “What’s happened to you, darling?”
“I’ve been betrayed.”
“‘I’ve been betrayed,’” he mimicked. “Fuck that nonsense. You threw everything away. You had an army. You had Leiyang. You had the south in the palm of your hand and you fucked it all up, you mangy, dirt-skinned piece of shit—”
Why was she so afraid? She knew she had control. Altan was her imagination; Altan was dead. “Get back.”
He only moved closer.
She felt a flash of panic. Where were his chains? Why wouldn’t he obey?
He cast her a mocking smile. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“You’re not real. You only exist in my mind—”
“My darling, I am your mind. I’m you. I’m all you’ve got left. It’s just you and me now, and I’m not going anywhere. You don’t want peace. You want accountability. You want to know exactly what you’ve done and you don’t want to forget it. So let’s begin.” His fingers tightened around her chin. “Admit what you did.”
“I lost the south.”
He smacked a palm against her temple. She knew the blow wasn’t real, that everything she felt was a hallucination, but still it stung. She’d let it sting. This was her imagination, and she’d decided she deserved this punishment.
“You didn’t just lose the south. You gave it away. You had Nezha at your mercy. You had your blade pressed to his skin. All you had to do was bring your arm down and you would have won. You could have killed him. Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know.” Another ringing blow, this time to her left temple. Rin’s head jerked to the side. Altan seized her throat and dug his fingernails into the skin around her larynx. The pain was excruciating. “Because you’re pathetic. You need to be someone’s dog. You need someone’s boots to lick.”
Rin’s blood ran cold—not with self-induced misery, but with true, uncontrolled fear. She didn’t know where this was going; she couldn’t predict what her mind would do next. She wanted to stop. She should have left the Seal alone.
“You’re weak,” Altan spat. “You’re a stupid, sentimental, sniveling brat who betrayed everyone around her because she couldn’t get over her schoolyard crush. Did you think he loved you? Do you think he ever loved you?”
He drew his fist back again. A tremor rippled through the Seal. Altan’s image wavered like a reflection on a lake dispelled by a stone. There came a second tremor. Altan disappeared. Then Rin understood this wasn’t a hallucination—something was slamming into the stone inches from her face.
The third time, she felt it, a shake that started in her nose and vibrated through her entire body. Her teeth rattled.
Her teeth rattled.
Movement. Which meant—
A fourth tremor. The stone shattered. Rin spilled off the plinth and tumbled hard onto the stone floor. Pain shot up her knees; it felt wonderful. She spat the rag out of her mouth. The air inside the mountain, stale and dank as it was, tasted delicious. The suffocation she’d felt earlier was gone; compared to immurement, the open air tasted like the difference between mild humidity and being underwater. For a long time she knelt with her head hanging between her shoulders and just breathed, marveling at how it felt when air rushed in and out of her lungs.
