Chapter Fifteen: The Supposed Pinnacle of Female Existence

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE SUPPOSED PINNACLE OF FEMALE EXISTENCE

In the stories about Emperor-General Qin Zheng, they say his spirit pressure was so strong and his mastery of it was so fine that he could integrate the spirit metal of Hunduns right on the battlefield to extend his Chrysalis, the Yellow Dragon, indefinitely. Some say the Yellow Dragon was the inspiration for the Great Wall. So, when I was little, I pictured the Wall exactly like a dragon that straddled mountain peak after mountain peak, huddling us in the safety of its embrace.

In reality, as I’ve come to discover through my constant shuttle trips, the Wall is more of a road system between watchtowers and army bases. A lot of the middle parts are straight up nothing but rail tracks cutting across the sides of the barren frontier mountains. That imposing monolith of steel and concrete that looks so reassuring in army promos comes in sporadic fragments when it has to plug up valleys and canyons to prevent common Hunduns from pouring into Huaxia.

Our shuttle screeches and skates toward the Tiger Cage training camp, where qi-depleted pilots are meant to make productive use of their recharging periods. The tracks take huge, winding turns to stay on the fringe of the Tang Mountains. A grainy, rushing blur of rock dominates the windows on one whole side, while cloudy gray light steeps in from the side that towers over the Hundun wilds.

My body teeters and rocks with the steel-cold train car. I clench my stomach, still not used to traveling in something so fast. The whiff of motor grease and chemical cleaners clings to my lungs, making me sharply aware of every breath.

Li Shimin and I sit opposite each other as if we’re in the yin-yang realm, my black-clad knees almost touching his white-clad ones. We’re wearing the uniforms of proper pilots, mine black with white accents, his white with black accents. They consist of a conduction suit that’s skintight to make it easy to wear under spirit armor, then a long, sleeveless coat overtop for modesty, drawn in by a wide belt.

Li Shimin has never had the privilege of wearing this, and girls are technically only allowed a uniform if they’ve been crowned a Balanced Match, but the army has been forced to change their approach to us. Sima Yi, having traveled all the way from the Sanguo province overnight, burst into our bunker at five in the morning and announced two things: first, the army’s Central Command Committee has appointed him our official coach; and second, we are to immediately make a media debut as a pair. The panicked rumors and speculation after the Vermilion Bird’s monstrous transformation have grown out of hand. Journalists are coming to take some candid shots of me to prove I’m a normal human girl, not a malevolent spirit. A girl with a freakishly strong spirit pressure, but nothing supernatural.

Funny how they didn’t have to do this for Li Shimin, the literal murderer.

Sima Yi took us to the watchtower closest to Li Shimin’s bunker so the aunties there could clean us up for the cameras. It basically felt like being prepared as a concubine again. Hours of scrubbing and creams and powders have covered up the toll left by my imprisonment and qi exhaustion, while making it seem like I’m not wearing makeup at all. The front half of my hair has been twisted into girlish loops on the sides of my head; the back half is gathered into a tall bun on top. No tassels or jewelry—they’re really going for that “ordinary girl” look. I could fool myself into believing I woke up among the ranks of the beautiful and powerful.

I stare down at my white-patterned black uniform, a surreal sight I’ve spent my whole life believing I would only see on army promos of Balanced Matches. This is it, the supposed pinnacle of female existence. What I’ve been taught to wish for, what so many little girls dream about. I have been permitted to share a male pilot’s glory, instead of merely dying to fuel it. What’s more: I am not only the strongest female pilot in Huaxia, I’m tied for the strongest pilot in general.

Yet it doesn’t take much thinking beyond the surface glory to lose any pride I might’ve taken in it.

This is not true power. True power is when I stood on the Nine-Tailed Fox with Yang Guang’s corpse at my feet, playing by my own rules. Victorious by my own standards. Reliant on no one but myself.

I will never get that feeling back as long as the army is maneuvering me like a shadow puppet.

In fact, I am what the worst kind of hope looks like. The kind that has driven group after group of girls here to be prettied into concubines. Families will point at me—this tamed, airbrushed image of me—to calm down their daughters about being sold to the army.

I want to vomit. I want to tear my hair out and rip this uniform off my body.

But I can’t give up the chance to go back into the Vermilion Bird. Worse than being a beacon for false hope is being another female corpse easily erased and forgotten. Only in a Chrysalis can I go out with as much force and defiance as possible.

The shuttle shrieks and swerves onto a new curve, throwing me against the windows.

Li Shimin’s hand darts out toward me.

I raise my brows at it, then at him.

Eyelids stammering, he returns to sipping from his flask.

“Don’t drink too much,” Sima Yi chides in the seat beside him. “You can’t be wobbling in front of the cameras!”

I wish we could’ve gotten the nicer-seeming Chief Strategist Zhuge, but Sima Yi was apparently Li Shimin’s first coach, after plucking him out of the death row labor camp. I have no idea why he doesn’t just confiscate the liquor.

Li Shimin makes a hum of acknowledgment, then clutches the flask to his chest and turns his attention beyond the windows. Trails of condensation tremble near the bottom of the glass, trying to hold on despite the speed.

Gritting my teeth, I glare at his profile, at the “prisoner” tattoo on his cheek. He has yet to lash back at me for what I said last night. It makes me more anxious than if he had retaliated instantly.

To make matters worse, the aunties have transformed him even more drastically than me. When I first reunited with him outside the dressing rooms, I couldn’t believe it was him. His stubble has been shaved clean, making him look like an actual nineteen-year-old. A black head wrapping in the Tang province style, which has a stiff cap inside that’s meant to house a topknot, blatantly hides his short, condemning hair.

But what’s throwing me off most are the ridiculous glasses he’s wearing. He gazes at the elapsing wilderness through lenses thicker than liquor-bottle bottoms, the area around his eyes so distorted it doesn’t align with the rest of his face.

I thought it was some try-hard trick to make him look less Rongdi, but, as it turns out, this is his actual prescription. He is basically blind. When the elevator to the top of the Wall first opened, he actually stumbled back from the onslaught of the view.

My eyes bounce between different parts of him. It’s like my brain frantically wants to categorize him, to make sense of him, but can’t. It’s receiving nothing but a jumble of conflicting cues. Han versus Rongdi. Danger versus docility. Drunkard criminal versus invincible pilot. Iron Demon versus human boy.

Abruptly, I pick out another aspect of what’s making him so unnervingly different: the distinct lack of scowling.

Skies, was all that scowling just squinting?

“How in the world did your eyes get this bad?” I blurt, the first thing I’ve said to him since last night.

With a start, he turns his attention to me.

“Torched them studying,” he mutters, eyes traveling over my face like a shaky touch, as if trying to memorize the details of my features in case he loses the ability to see them again.

Even though I have never cowered from his worst scowling or squinting or whatever, I have to look away from this.

“You need to make sure he doesn’t misuse those this time,” Sima Yi says, leering at me.

“How do you misuse glasses?” I scoff.

“Well, supposedly, you smash the lenses, sharpen the biggest fragment on the floor of your bunker, hide it in your collar, and try to slit a soldier’s throat with it.” Sima Yi shakes his head at Li Shimin, who turns back to the window with a much duller gaze than before. “Seriously, I will not be able to get them back for you a second ti—” Sima Yi does a double take on me. “Don’t look impressed!”

“Wh—I’m not impressed!” My hands flash open. “I’m—why am I responsible for his behavior, anyway?”

“You’re basically his wife now! That’s what you’re supposed to be.”

A crushing exhaustion weighs down on my face, my brain, my bones, my everything. I swear, people cannot make up their minds about who are supposed to be the clueless infants who can’t live without supervision: men or women.

“Strategist Sima,” Li Shimin grumbles, features twitching with a surprisingly similar exhaustion. “Leave her out of this. She’s not responsible for my anything.”

“Yeah, does it look like I’m capable of controlling him?” I say.

Sima Yi snorts. “Please. He may be a beast to everyone else, but he’s soft to his girl. You should’ve seen him with his last partner. I could barely stand to watch all that mushiness.”

Everything in me screeches to a halt.

“His what?”

“Partner” is strictly reserved for Balanced Matches. A concubine-pilot would not be referred to as that.

Pain passes Li Shimin’s face. “Strategist Sima—”

“Right, this was never public info. Well, there was this girl who we thought—”

“Sima Yi!” Li Shimin raises his voice. It booms through his chest and snaps off into the cold, buzzing air.

I shrink against my seat. He has never spoken louder than a murmur, and now I know why. The soldiers guarding us jerk alert in the seats all around, reaching for their guns.

The shuttle lurches over a bump, rattling us all. My blood pulses beneath my cold skin.

Sima Yi’s brows have shot high, but he recovers after a second, calming the soldiers with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t speak of her,” Li Shimin tells him, then addresses me. “She’s dead.”

Even though questions spark and sizzle in my head—how could he have had a partner if no girl has survived a battle with him before me?—the crushing aura around him chokes my throat shut. His fingers clench around his flask, the skin tightening around the many scars riddling them. I shiver. It’s moments like these that give me an uncomfortable hint of the level of fury and violence that he’s holding back. At any moment, he could tip over the edge. I’m making a mistake, constantly challenging him, pushing at his buttons.

Two weeks, I remind myself, making my body relax. All I have to do is ride out these two weeks, then I’ll have my rematch with him.

Strip away our mortal flesh and pulverize our bones, and whatever still exists for the both of us, exists with the same ferocity.

I will not fail a second time.