Chapter Twenty-Seven: With a Bang

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

WITH A BANG

My face goes colder than the rain streaming down it.

Chairman Kong is the leader of the Sages. And he has essentially declared that he’s giving up on us and the chance of the counterattack.

My eyes swing toward Sima Yi, but there’s only dread on his face, lit faintly by the rain-hazed lanterns across the camp. With the next flash of lightning, I realize how much of a toll these few days have taken on him as well. Water trickles down the sunken lines of his face and drips from his soaked beard.

He doesn’t meet my gaze. Just closes his eyes and says, “Understood.”

My heart plunges like a stone into a never-ending abyss.

An Lushan grins wider on the screen. He tips his chin. “Get them to the Vermilion Bird.”

Soldiers close in. One of them holds up a muzzle. Rain slicks across dark steel.

“Don’t put that on me!” Li Shimin shouts, the deep timbre of his voice rumbling through our armor. It actually jars the soldiers to a stop. He grips me tighter in his arms. “I’ll go. I won’t resist this time. I have her, now.”

A belated realization, or maybe more of a reminder, stirs in me. I’m not the only one supposedly being “tamed” by this arrangement.

But none of that is real. We’re not functional partners. We can barely look at each other. Our qi has been recharging for only six days.

This isn’t going to work.

Li Shimin starts following the soldiers, raindrops cluttering his glasses. Sima Yi does, too, but gets held back.

“Strategist Sima, there’s no need for you to accompany them,” An Lushan says with a smile and a wave of his hand, as if doing him a favor.

Sima Yi bares his teeth, but has no choice but to remain behind gunpoint.

“Remember, you can still try rapid-charging the Vermilion Bird itself!” he calls at us through the downpour. “Glean as much qi as you can from other Chrysalises, and it might be okay!”

No, it won’t! Who’ll lend qi to us? Xiuying might have, but she’s recharging as well. She won’t be part of this battle.

I want to push out of Li Shimin’s arms and run, but what use is there? I’m physically incapable of running. I can’t ever—!

Wait. Armor.

Maybe I can make a break for it.

I twist my body to unfurl my wings. They scrape across Li Shimin’s breastplate with a shing, then I go to flap them—

Bang.

A blinding white force throws me against him. A second later, pain detonates across my back. Spots flood my vision. My mouth opens, stretching, every muscle too taut to release a sound. Shouts drift in and out of my ears like I’ve plunged into ice water.

“—are you kidding me—”

“—how is she supposed to—”

The smell of gunpowder drifts on the damp air. Li Shimin is screaming my name—has he ever called it before?—and he’s cradling me, shaking me, yet I can’t focus. Pain devours all of my senses, gripping my every cell.

The world shifts.

We’re still being ushered onward. Faintly, through my shattering agony, I sense the detail of my drooping wings chafing across the flooded concrete path.

There is no escape.

Then we’re in a shuttle, speeding toward the Zhen’guan watchtower, where the Vermilion Bird is parked. Raindrops rake across the windows like luminous claws in the dark of night.

“Th-they actually shot me,” I wheeze, coiled stiff across Li Shimin’s lap, facing him. I might have said these words several times already. I can’t tell. Chilly sweat wobbles down my forehead.

“Stay with me.” He holds me by my shoulders, huddling me closer. “Stay until we link to the Bird. Then you won’t feel it anymore.”

My teeth chatter. I can’t stop shivering. Is this how he felt on that first night of detox? Under my armor, my wet conduction suit clings like ice to my skin.

Red light smolders under the metal feathers of his armor. Heat surges around me, rippling through the air. I take a trembling gasp.

“No…” I palm his breastplate. “Don’t—don’t waste qi…”

“It doesn’t matter at this point,” he mutters, irises sizzling red. The beads of moisture on his glasses evaporate rapidly. He rubs my armored hands to warm them up. His ashen features, however drained and tortured by withdrawal, tense in concentration. The storm whistles outside and pounds down on the metal around us like a thousand invading heartbeats. The shuttle jangles over drenched tracks. Rain shadows streak across his face. I stare up at him, slack-jawed.

“Why are you so nice to me?” I choke out through a thickening constriction in my throat. “When I’m terrible to you?”

His eyelids droop, so dissonantly tender over the demonic red of his irises. He laces his fingers between mine. “You’re the miracle I’ve been waiting for all this time, going into these battles, praying that something would be different. I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

My shivers travel down to the core of me. Warmth stings my eyes; my vision quivers. I turn toward his legs so he can’t see the evidence.

“I don’t hate you.” My voice pinches to its highest, flimsiest register. “Not that much. Not anymore. You just confuse me.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, hands slipping out of entanglement with mine.

I grasp them in place.

“I heard you write things real prettily.” I brush my thumb over his, my thoughts sloshing like the water outside. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. “You should do that again.”

A dry laugh breezes out of him. He flexes his fingers between mine. They twitch. “My hands…all the labor they made me do…I don’t think I can ever hold an ink brush properly again.”

My heart clenches. I clasp his hands to my chest, delirious. “You have to try. You have to try again.”

The shuttle screeches to a stop, rattling me against him. I cry out in pain. His hands break from mine to brace me. Soldiers rise around us, cocking their guns.

He tucks his arms under my body. “We have to go now. I’m going to pick you up.”

I nod, wincing.

Still, I’m not prepared for the anguish that lacerates through me with the large movement. Static froths through my eyes. I tense back a scream as I steady my head against his shoulder.

Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible to go into battle. At least I’d be free from this.

However, after we’re herded into the elevator that leads down to the docking platform, a fresh edge of fear slices through me, sharpened by the resignation on Li Shimin’s face.

Is he giving up?

“Li Shimin,” I plead. “Shimin.”

He turns a sad yet mellow gaze to me. The most mellow I’ve seen him look since I met him, since he walked out to me from this exact elevator, a prisoner jumpsuit on his body, a muzzle on his face, and fury in his eyes.

This won’t do.

I pull myself up by his neck and press my lips to his.

A sharp breath lances up his nose. He trips a step back. His armor gleams like a fanned ember, heaving warmth through the elevator. Sensation races in a circuit between us, bright above my pain like a lightning flash. It startles me just as much as him.

“Fight,” I breathe, mouth parting a little way from his. My heart hurls itself against our connected breastplates like a mad, freed monster. “Fight, no matter how much it hurts.” I drag my fingers across the back of his neck. “Because this is not how we deserve to die.”

He cradles me tighter, fingers digging into my armor.

The elevator doors open to the raging, howling, whirling wetness outside. The spill of light catches the Vermilion Bird’s long, arched neck at the end of the docking bridge. The soldiers file out, boots clanging on gridded metal. They line up on either side of the platform, pointing their guns because they hate us, yet getting out of our way because they need us.

Shimin marches between them to the Vermilion Bird, carrying me. The storm hisses off his armor in a halo of steam. Through my fever of pain, I glare down every single one of these cowards.

Just when I wonder how they’re supposed to force us into battle when we both don’t want to go, two soldiers hop into the cockpit after us. After we sit down in the yin and yang seats, they strap themselves into two side seats I haven’t noticed before.

Then they point their guns to our heads.