The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,203

her from the Dragon. Who was her enemy now?

She raised her left hand. The dirigible darted backward several yards, as if sensing her intentions. She opened her palm and aimed a thick stream of flame at its balloon, forcing it faster and higher, hoping desperately that she had the range.

A ripping noise shattered the sky. The dirigible balloon glowed orange for an instant, burst, then vanished. The basket hurtled toward the cliffs; the lightning disappeared.

Nezha crumpled.

Rin’s first instinct was to rush toward him. She took two steps, then caught herself, utterly bewildered. Why would she help him? Because he’d just saved her? But that was his mistake, not hers—she shouldn’t bother, she should just let him die—

Shouldn’t she?

The water turned icy cold around her knees. She felt a wave of exhausted dread.

But the Dragon did not attack. Incredibly, it seemed frightened into submission. It turned its head toward the grotto and slithered back into the dark. Suddenly the air was not so heavy. The gray clouds disappeared, and sunlight was again visible against the glinting waves. Gravity took hold over the river once again, and the suspended waters dropped with a resounding crash.

I must get to shore.

The thought ran like a mantra several times through Rin’s mind before it finally registered into action. Swaying and stumbling like a drunkard, she made her way to the riverbank. She felt detached, distant, as if someone else were clumsily controlling her body while her mind raced with questions.

What had just happened? What had Nezha just done? Was that a surrender?

Had she won?

But none of her dreams of victory had looked anything like this.

She heard a faint, pitiful gurgle. She turned. Pipaji lay farther down the sands, curled into a fetal position. Her face was barely above water; Rin didn’t know how she hadn’t drowned. But her narrow shoulders rose and fell, and her fingers scratched tiny, desperate patterns in the mud as she whimpered.

Rin hastened to her side.

“Oh, gods.” She propped Pipaji up in her arms and slammed her fist against the girl’s narrow back, trying to force the water from her lungs. “Pipaji? Can you hear me?”

Water dribbled from Pipaji’s mouth—just a little trickle at first, and then her shoulders heaved and a stinking torrent of river water and bile spewed from her mouth. Pipaji gagged and slumped weakly against Rin’s chest, breathing in shallow, desperate hitches.

“Hold on.” Rin slung Pipaji’s right arm around her shoulder and pulled her to her feet. The positioning was awkward, but Pipaji was so thin and light that Rin found it surprisingly easy to drag them both forward, one step at a time. “Just hold on, you’re going to be fine, we’ll just get you to Lianhua.”

They’d made it ten steps up the shore when Rin heard a vicious fit of coughing. She twisted her head over her shoulder. Nezha was doubled over on his knees in the shallows, shoulders heaving.

She halted.

He was only several yards away. He was so close she could make out every detail on his face—his chalk-white pallor, his red-rimmed eyes, the faded scars on porcelain-pale skin. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d stood so close without trying to kill each other.

For a moment, they merely looked at each other, taking stock of one another, staring as if they were strangers.

Rin’s gaze dropped to the golden circlets around his wrists. Her stomach twisted as she realized what they were. Not jewelry. Conductors. They hadn’t attracted the lightning by accident. They’d been designed for it.

Then it dawned on her, what Nezha must have gone through in the year since she’d left Arlong. After Rin escaped, Petra had needed a shaman upon whom to experiment.

After the Cike were killed, that left only one in the Republic.

The skin around his wrists and ankles was badly discolored, mottled shades of bruised purple and angry red. The sight made her chest tighten. She’d seen Nezha’s body stitch itself together from wounds that should have killed instantly. She’d seen his skin smooth itself over from burns that had turned it black. She’d thought the Dragon’s powers could heal anything. But they couldn’t heal this.

Rin had once been so absolutely sure the Pantheon constituted the whole of creation. That there was no higher power, and that the Hesperian religion, their Divine Architect, was nothing more than a convenient story.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Slowly, miserably, Nezha stood and wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. It came away bloody. “Is she alive?”

Rin was so bewildered that his