The Burning God (The Poppy War #3) - R.F. Kuang Page 0,81

her mind that for brief seconds at a time she fooled herself into thinking she’d really done it.

She could not sustain her panic forever. Eventually it ebbed away, replaced by a dull, empty helplessness. Her body at last resigned itself to the truth—she would not escape. She would not die. She would remain standing here, half-dead and half-alive, conscious and thinking for eternity.

She had nothing now except for her own mind.

Once upon a time Jiang had taught her to meditate, to empty her mind for hours at a time while her body settled into the peaceful daze of an empty vessel. That was, no doubt, how he had survived in here all this time, why he had ever entered this place willingly. Rin wished she had that skill. But she had never once achieved that inner stillness. Her mind rebelled against boredom. Her thoughts had to wander.

She had nothing else to do but probe through memories for entertainment. She pored over them, picked them apart and stretched them out and relished them, prolonging every last detail. She remembered Tikany. Remembered those delicious warm afternoons she spent in Tutor Feyrik’s room discussing every detail of the books he’d just lent her, stretching her arms to receive more. Remembered playing games with baby Kesegi in the yard, pretending to be every known beast in the Emperor’s Menagerie, roaring and hissing just to get him to laugh. Remembered quiet, stolen minutes in the dark, brief interludes when she was all alone, free of the shop and of Auntie Fang, able to breathe without fear.

When Tikany failed to satisfy she turned her mind to Sinegard—that harsh, intimidating place that, paradoxically, now contained her happiest memories. She remembered studying in the cool basement chambers of the Academy library with Kitay, watching him pushing spindly fingers through his worried hairline as he riffled through scroll after scroll. Remembered sparring in the early mornings with Jiang in the Lore garden, parrying his blows with a blindfold tied around her head.

She got very good at exploring the crevices of her mind, excavating memories that she didn’t know she still had. Memories she hadn’t let herself acknowledge until now for fear they would break her.

She remembered the first time she’d ever laid eyes on Nezha, and then all the times thereafter.

It hurt to see him. It hurt so much.

They’d been so innocent once. It was agony to recall the face he wore just a year ago: pretty and cocky and unbearable at once, alternately grinning with delight or wearing the absurd snarl of an agitated puppy. But she was trapped here for an eternity. Those memories were the only things she had now, and the pain was the only way she’d feel anything ever again.

She retraced their entire history from the moment she met him first at Sinegard to the moment she felt his blade sliding into the muscles of her back. She remembered how childishly handsome he used to be, how she’d been both drawn to and repulsed by that haughty, sculpted face. She remembered how Sinegard had transformed him from a spoiled, petty princeling to a hardened soldier in training. She remembered the first time they’d sparred against each other and the first time they’d fought side by side in battle—how their animosity and partnership had both felt like such a natural fit, like slipping on a lost glove, like finding her other half.

She remembered how much taller than her he’d grown, how when they embraced, her head fit neatly under his chin. She remembered how dark his eyes had looked under the moonlight that night by the docks. Right when she thought he’d kiss her. Right before he’d pressed a blade into her back.

It hurt so much to riffle through those memories. It was humiliating to remember how readily she’d believed his lies. She felt like such a fool, for trusting him, for loving him, for thinking any of those thousands of tiny moments they’d shared during her brief time in Vaisra’s army meant that he really, truly cared for her, when in truth Nezha had been manipulating her just like his father had.

She relived those interactions so many times that they began to lose all meaning. Their sting faded to a dull burn, and then nothing at all. She’d numbed herself to their significance. She’d grown bored of her own pain.

So she turned to the last thing that could still hurt her. She went looking for the Seal and found that it was still there,