The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,202

first of Vaisra’s sons to die.

The Dragon paused, then rose up out of the water, its head cocked back toward Nezha.

“Do you remember?” Nezha shouted. “You ate Mingzha. You were so hungry, you didn’t keep him for your cave. But you wanted me. You’ve always wanted me, haven’t you?”

Astonishingly, the Dragon lowered its head, dipping low until its eyes were level with Nezha’s. Nezha reached out as if to stroke its nose. The Dragon did not stir. Rin clamped her hand over her mouth, terrified beyond words.

He looked so small.

“I’ll go,” Nezha said. “We’ll go into that grotto. You don’t have to be alone anymore. But you have to stop. Leave this city alone.”

The Dragon remained very still. Then, ever so slowly, the waters began to recede.

The Dragon made a slight motion toward Nezha that seemed bizarrely affectionate. Rin stared, mouth agape, as Nezha pressed his hand against the Dragon’s side.

I’ll go.

With that one gesture, he’d prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths. He’d tamed a god that she’d woken, he’d prevented a massacre that would have been her fault, and he’d thrown her this victory.

“Nezha,” she whispered, “what the fuck?”

Too late, she heard a faint and distinctive drone.

The aircraft emerged over the side of the cliff and dove, fast and low, straight over the grotto. It was much smaller than the bomber dirigibles that had pursued Rin through the mountains; its cockpit seemed large enough for only one person. Stranger still was its underbelly—extending from the bottom of its basket where its cannon should have been was a long, glinting wire that branched into several curved points like a reaching claw.

Rin glanced to Nezha. He stood stock-still, eyes wide in horror.

But the Hesperians were his allies. What did he have to fear?

She pulled fire into her hand, deliberating whether to attack. Before, she wouldn’t have hesitated. But if the dirigible had come to fight the Dragon . . .

The dirigible veered sharply toward her. That answers that. She aimed her palm at the cockpit. But before she could pull her fire forth, a thin line of lightning, lovely and absurd, arced through the blue sky. A second later, she saw a blinding white light. Then nothing.

She wasn’t hurt. She felt no pain. She was still standing; she could hear and move and feel. Though her vision blurred for a moment, it returned after several blinks. But something had shifted about the world. It seemed, somehow, stripped of its life and luster—its colors were drained, blues and greens muted into shades of gray, and its sounds reduced to sandpapery scratches.

The Phoenix went quiet.

No—the Phoenix disappeared.

Rin strained in her mind, flailing desperately through the void to pull the god through Kitay’s mind into hers, but she grasped at nothing. There was no void. There was no gate. The Pantheon was not drifting beyond her reach, it simply wasn’t there.

Then she screamed.

She was in the Chuluu Korikh again. She was drowning in air, sealed and suffocating, imprisoned this time not in stone but in her own heavy, mortal body, pounding helplessly against the walls of her own mind, and that was such unbearable torture that she barely registered the lightning still coursing through her body, making her teeth chatter and singeing her hair.

You are nothing but an agent of Chaos. Sister Petra’s voice rose unbidden to her mind—that cold, clinical voice speaking with assured confidence that until today had never seemed justified. You are not shamans, you are the miserable and corrupted. And I will find a way to contain you.

She’d found it.

Child. Rin heard the Phoenix’s voice. Impossible. And yet the fire returned; a warm heat surged over her body, cradling her, protecting her.

The lightning now landed on Nezha.

He stood with his back to her, arms splayed out like he was being crucified, twitching and jerking as crackling brightness ricocheted across his body. Sparks arced back and forth from his golden circlets, which seemed to amplify the electricity before it burrowed deep into his flesh.

The bolts thickened, doubled, and intensified. Harsh, ragged sobs escaped Nezha’s throat. The Dragon, too, seemed racked with pain. It was performing the oddest dance, head jerking and body writhing, flailing back and forth through the air in a way that would have been funny if it weren’t so horrific.

Rin’s mouth filled with bile.

Focus, child, the Phoenix urged. Strike now.

Rin’s glance darted between the Dragon and the dirigible.

She knew she had one chance to attack—but which target? Nezha had saved her from the dirigible; the dirigible was saving