6. ASH IN HAND

Seize her.

As guards flood the tent, my gaze thunders to Crow's. I asked for a duet. He agreed. Now he admits he can't win with skill alone.

I don't know whether to scorn or applaud him.

Lotus knows only scorn. "Worm!" I spit.

Unmoved, Crow raises a hand.

The guards launch at me.

Ren's voice is in my ear: Duck. Dodge. Sidestep. But then Lotus takes over: I hurl one guard, headbutt another, flip the table, zither and all, into the mass before the entrance. More guards blockade it. Can't escape, so I won't. I round on a guard behind me and snap his arm. A howl. Sword on the ground. I dive for the weapon, through legs and feet, shoving back up to my own. The soldiers spin—and freeze.

Against my chest I hold Crow, snatched by his cloak.

I press my blade to his throat.

"Disarm. Now."

Swords fall, until only mine is lifted. My hand hums around the hilt. My other hand, clapped on Crow's shoulder, is all too aware of the bone underneath. He seems to be carved from it, statue-still as my blood races. Am I hurting him? My hand trembles, and Crow murmurs, "Steady now. You need me alive."

"Quiet."

I start to move.

The guards stay put.

We emerge from the tent, and conversation quiets. Hands slide to weapons. I press my sword closer—reducing the pressure when Dewdrop thinks, Your lover is bleeding.

Hostage, I correct her. A hostage who thankfully cooperates all the way to the final cordon of soldiers. The shields rise up, revealing the plain between our two camps. It should be desolate.

Would be, if not for Cloud. "Lotus!" she shouts, and my thoughts seize.

What's she—

You told her to wait for you, thinks Dewdrop.

Not in the plain. My mind spins, and Crow's chest inflates under my arm.

"Fire!" he yells.

The fool—!

I whirl and see Cloud, rushing for me. Whirl again, and I see archers among the enemy cordon. Think. I still have Crow. My human shield. He's my obvious recourse, and the cause for the split-second delay from his own archers.

A second is all I need. "Their retreat!" I scream to Cloud. My words must make it to her, even if I don't. "You mustn't—"

The arrow hits—

Follow their retreat.

—me. Back of my right shoulder. We fall—together, apart, Crow and I decoupled by the force. Then suddenly, I'm looking down at myself, my spirit in the air as Cloud reaches my body on the ground, retrieving me as Crow's soldiers retrieve him. Some go for Cloud—only to meet our soldiers, surging past her. The two sides crash like floodwaters.

I shout, but no one can hear me.

The world below vanishes.

High up in a sea of gray clouds, I awaken. Chains lash me upright to a cold, hard surface.

My frustration is a tighter bond. "What do you want?" Because surely she's here. My captor. The Masked Mother. The arrow wasn't fatal. She took me, ripped me away from the mortal realm.

"Answer me!" I yell over the rumble of thunder. "Where did you take me?"

"The Obelisk of Souls."

That's—

Not the Masked Mother's voice.

I don't quite believe my ears until I see her, walking out of the clouds ahead, a snake in her braid, another around her shoulders.

"Nadir?" I stare at my second sister. Or couldit be the Masked Mother? She stops before me, and I wait for her face to change. When it doesn't, I stammer, "What—how did—"

She holds out her palm, filled with shards. From a clay figurine. The last time she shattered one in my likeness, my memories returned. This time she must have shattered one to make me return. But why now, at the worst possible moment, when I'm most needed on earth? My glare lands on Dewdrop, hovering by Nadir's ear. Were you reporting on me?

Dewdrop buzzes, her non-answer as good as a guilty one, but Nadir says, "Please, Zephyr. Everyone knows you've been in the mortal realm. Including her."

Her.There's only one person Nadir would refer to with such deference and fear.

All gods fear her.

"Is that why you've recalled me?" I hiss, straining against my bonds. "To deliver me to the Masked Mother?"

Nadir's expression chills. "We're saving you, Zephyr."

"I don't understand—"

Lightning strikes the Obelisk at my back. One moment, I want to scream but can't. The next, I'm gasping, aftershocks crackling through the nebula of qì I've emitted. It glows, an unearthly blue, like the tail of a comet. But every comet has another tail, a white one of solid matter, and as I catch my breath, I notice the second intermingled substance, more opaque than the first.

The qì of another.

Lotus's. It's all around me. The tang of sweat. A pig's squeal, as it's killed by an ax.

This is Lotus's qì, and it's mixed with mine.

"Do you see now?" asks Nadir. "I'm saving your life."

"Gods can't die."

Nadir doesn't reply. Instead, she waits.

I look at the cloud of qì again.

Mine. Lotus's. So well blended.

It bleeds through me, Nadir's implication.

"When you were banished into Qilin, you had a seal placed on you by the Masked Mother. You didn't this time. Her"—Nadir refers to Lotus with the opposite of deference—"qì has been contaminating yours for months. Haven't you noticed? The way you act more like her, and less like yourself ?" Nadir steps in, eyes on my face. "Every day, you lose more of your godhood, starting with your powers."

No. You're wrong.

The words catch in my mouth.

Is this why Cloud could see my spirit? Why my qì created those zither scenes of the butchered pigs? Haven't I been succumbing to Lotus's temper more, recently?

No, it's just Nadir's theory. There's no proof, I think, as Nadir bends down, the clouds around her feet turning to mud. She scoops up a chunk and shapes it into an effigy of Lotus. Easy. Summoning some rain should be easy for me too. Bending an air current shouldn't leave me writhing. Has my power really been fading? Doubts cloud my mind, then clear as Nadir's snake twines down her arm and opens its mouth over the clay Lotus. "No. Wait—"

A jet of flame shoots out, bathing the figurine in white fire. Slowly, Lotus's qì drifts to it. Nadir's brow furrows, and I almost call out again. Wait!

That's the last of Lotus's spirit.

So?asks another voice of mine. It's not yours. It's mortal weakness. Temper and chaos.

It won't help you win.

The rest of Lotus's qì vanishes into the figurine.

Only mine glows in the nebula now.

"You're always like this, Zephyr." Nadir's voice is quiet. Frayed. As if she too was struck by lightning. "Doing things without thought or consideration for others."

"And have you considered me?" My words surprise me. My anger is cold and true and strictly my own. "I want to help them."

"Why? They'll never be worthy. If they act like they cherish you, it's because of what you can do for them. We love you for who you are," Nadir says, and I know. I haven't forgotten how Dewdrop would heist back wines from the celestial vineyard for me, how Nadir knew all my drinking buddies by name and would clean up after our messes. "We're your family," my sister says, and I can't refute it, but I also want to say it's different.

Somehow, it's different.

"I just need time, Nadir. Just a little longer."

"Longer? Any longer, and you wouldn't have been able to return to the heavens at all!" Nadir's eyes shine, damp like her next intake of breath. "Don't you understand?" she asks, and her voice is closer to the mothering tone I'm used to. "The people you serve are bound by fate, and they're fated to fail. Haven't the dreams shown you that by now?"

"How do you know . . ." My dreams. My gaze whips to Dewdrop. "You have been reporting on me."

"No, Zephyr." I look back to Nadir. "I sent the dreams to you," says my sister. "They're glimpses of fate as it'll happen."

Wethoughtthatifyou feltdoomedto fail, you'dgiveup, Dewdrop thinks to me. You may like winning, but you hate losing more.

"You don't know me at all, then. Yes, maybe I was like that. But I don't ever want to be that person again."

"That person is you," Nadir insists.

"No." Heaven makes me that person. You make me that person by expecting nothing more of me. But even hurt, I can't bring myself to hurt Nadir back. "I will change the fates."

"You can't."

"I can!"

Thunder claps. Lightning flashes, bleaching Nadir's face.

She snaps her fingers.

The clouds vanish, the Obelisk too. I collapse on a stone-tiled floor. A scroll joins me on the ground, a stretch unfurled. I see Ren's name.

I grope for the scroll.

Her fate stares up at me in black ink.

No.

"Who, then?" I croak.

Who, if not Ren?

"It doesn't matter." Nadir gazes down at me. "You shouldn't care," she says, and we're so far apart. She is heaven, above.

And I am earth. Unyielding as the stone beneath me, I spit, "You cared about humans, enough to make them," and Nadir stiffens. I rise. "Why can't I?"

I go through the many shelves, one by one. Scrolls tumble and fall, my qì yanking them out when my hands can't move fast enough.

"Look all you want!" Nadir cries.

I intend to, with or without permission. But there are too many scrolls. I could be here for days. Dewdrop's bees fly the scrolls I've dislodged back into place, striking an idea in my mind. I pick up Ren's scroll and throw it at the bees. They take it to a shelf. I follow them, and finally find the fates of the people I know, starting with Cloud's.

The siege fails; Cloud is tricked north and killed. Ren will march against Miasma, only to be outflanked by Cicada from the rear. Her fate ends there.

Decades later, Cicada, middle-aged, dies to illness.

The scroll shakes in my grip.

Who, then? Who prevails? Who unites the empire?

I tear Miasma's scroll open.

Death finds her too, just not on the battlefield. It starts from within her skull. A growth, is the physician's diagnosis. She'll offer to remove it, and be executed on suspicion of being an assassin. But not long after the physician's head falls, Miasma will fall herself. She'll never wake up. As the kingdoms continue to war, Xin Bao, empress without heirs, will land under the control of Plum.

Plum. I read on, searching for another name, for Crow's or anyone else's, anyone more relevant, less random.

There is none.

Plum. A senior registrar. Advisor. General, at the peak of her late career, as the fates have recorded. But still—Plum. All our efforts, all this bloodshed, and it's Plum who ascends the throne when she eventually deposes Xin Bao?

Plum's descendants who unite the three kingdoms?

No. It must be Ren. This scroll—it's but paper. I'll destroy it.

Clenching it shut, I walk. I dispel the damper qì in the air in one step, concentrate the dry in my next. It's as second nature as breathing, now that I'm unhindered by Lotus's qì, and in three steps, the conditions are perfect.

All that's missing is the spark.

I close in on Nadir; she frowns. "What are you—"

I grab the neck of one of her snakes and squeeze out a flameforked tongue.

The library combusts.

Fates burn like kindling. We burn too, our clothes char, then soot. In my hand, the scroll becomes ash. Nadir stares at me, the firestorm reflected in her pitch-black irises.

"You—" Shock flattens her voice. "The Masked Mother—"

"I know." Do no harm. Do no good. I'd already broken the fundamental rule of noninterference between mortals and gods. Now I've burned an entire library of destinies.

I know the repercussions will be beyond my fathom.

"What did I tell you, Nadir?"

The voice rings from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Then, out of the flames, steps a qilin.

"For her to accept fate," says the Masked Mother, "she'll have to taste it."

She clops over to my sister, but Nadir doesn't acknowledge her. Her eyes haven't left my face.

"You would go this far for them?" she finally asks, and I clench the ash in my fist.

"I would."

"Why? You're not them. You're not human."

I want to be.The words spear through me, wild and sudden.

If we could all choose who to be, I'd want to be them.