The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,150

pulled open to let the steam escape.

“Don’t move,” said the Sorqan Sira.

The Sorqan Sira placed a hand over Rin’s chest, clenched her fingers, and started to chant. Sharp nails dug into Rin’s skin.

Rin screamed.

It wasn’t over. She felt a terrible pulling sensation, as if the Sorqan Sira had wrapped her fingers around Rin’s heart and wrenched it out of her rib cage.

She looked down. The Sorqan Sira’s fingers hadn’t broken skin. The tugging came from something within; something sharp and jagged inside her, something that didn’t want to let go.

The Sorqan Sira’s chanting grew louder. Rin felt an immense pressure, so great she was sure that her lungs were bursting. It grew and grew—and then something gave. The pressure disappeared.

For a moment all she could do was lie flat and breathe, eyes fixed on the blue circle above.

“Look.” The Sorqan Sira opened her palm toward Rin. Inside was a clot of blood the size of her fist, mottled black and rotten. It smelled putrid.

Rin shrank instinctively away. “Is that . . . ?”

“Daji’s venom.” The Sorqan Sira made a fist over the clot and squeezed. Black blood oozed through the cracks between her fingers and dripped onto the glowing rocks. The Sorqan Sira peered curiously at her stained fingers, then shook the last few drops onto the rocks, where they hissed loudly and disappeared. “It’s gone now. You’re free.”

Rin stared at the stained rocks, at a loss for words. “I don’t . . .” She choked before she could finish. Then it happened all at once. Her entire body shook, racked with a grief she hadn’t even known was there. She buried her head in her hands, whimpering incoherently, fingers thick with tears and snot.

“It’s all right to cry,” the Sorqan Sira said quietly. “I know what you saw.”

“Then fuck you,” Rin choked. “Fuck you.”

Her chest heaved. She lurched forward and vomited over the stones. Her knees shook, her ankle throbbed, and she collapsed onto herself, face inches from her vomit, eyes squeezed shut to stem the tide of tears.

Her heart slammed against her rib cage. She tried to focus on her pulse, counting her heartbeats with every passing second to calm down.

He’s gone.

He’s dead.

He can’t hurt me anymore.

She reached for her anger, the anger that had always served as her shield, and couldn’t find it. Her emotions had burned her out from the inside; the raging flames had died out because they had nothing left to consume. She felt drained, hollowed out and empty. The only things that remained were exhaustion and the dry ache of loss in her throat.

“You are allowed to feel,” the Sorqan Sira murmured.

Rin sniffled and wiped her nose with her sleeve.

“But don’t feel bad for him,” said the Sorqan Sira. “That was never him. The man you know has gone somewhere he’ll be at peace. Life and death, they’re equal to this cosmos. We enter the material world and we go away again, reincarnated into something better. That boy was miserable. You let him go.”

Yes, Rin knew; in the abstract she knew this truth, that to the cosmos they were fundamentally irrelevant, that they came from dust and returned to dust and ash.

And she should have taken comfort in that, but in that moment she didn’t want to be temporary and immaterial; she wanted to be forever preserved in the material world in a moment with Altan, their foreheads pressed together, eyes meeting, arms touching and interlacing, trying to meld into the pure physicality of the other.

She wanted to be alive and mortal and eternally temporary with him, and that was why she cried.

“I don’t want him to be gone,” she whispered.

“Our dead don’t leave us,” said the Sorqan Sira. “They’ll haunt you as long as you let them. That boy is a disease on your mind. Forget him.”

“I can’t.” She pressed her face into her hands. “He was brilliant. He was different. You’d have never met anyone like him.”

“You would be stunned.” The Sorqan Sira looked very sad. “You have no idea how many men are like Altan Trengsin.”

“Rin! Oh, gods.” Kitay was at her side the instant she emerged from the yurt. She knew, could tell from the expression on his face, that he’d been waiting outside, teeth clenched in anxiety, for hours.

“Hold her up,” the Sorqan Sira told him.

He slipped an arm around her waist to take the weight off her ankle. “You’re all right?”

She nodded. Together they limped forward.

“Are you sure?” he pressed.

“I’m better,” she murmured. “I think I’m better