The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,20

personal vendetta just because you think the Empress got your stupid commander killed. So you can stop pretending to be my friend, Rin, because I know that’s all you came for.”

“I don’t just think that,” she said. “I know it. And I know the Empress invited the Federation onto Nikara land. She wanted this war, she started the invasion, and everything you saw at Golyn Niis was Daji’s fault.”

“False accusations.”

“I heard it from Shiro’s mouth!”

“And Shiro didn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”

“Daji doesn’t have any motivation to lie to you?”

“She’s the Empress,” Kitay said. “The Empress doesn’t betray her own. Do you understand how absurd this is? There’s literally no political advantage—”

“You should want this!” she yelled. She wanted to shake him, hit him, do anything to make that maddening blankness in his face go away. “Why don’t you want this? Why aren’t you furious? Didn’t you see Golyn Niis?”

He stiffened. “I want you to leave.”

“Kitay, please—”

“Now.”

“I’m your friend!”

“No, you’re not. Fang Runin was my friend. I’m not sure who you are, but I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“Why do you keep saying that? What did I ever do to you?”

“How about what you did to them?” He grabbed for her hand. She was so surprised that she let him. He slammed her palm over the lamp beside him, forced it down directly over the fire. She yelped from the sudden pain—a thousand tiny needles, pressing deeper and deeper into her palm.

“Have you ever been burned before?” he whispered.

For the first time Rin noticed little burn scars dotting his palms and forearms. Some were recent. Some looked inflicted yesterday.

The pain intensified.

“Shit!” She kicked out. She missed Kitay but hit the lamp. Oil spilled over the papers. The fire whooshed up. For a second she saw Kitay’s face illuminated in the flame, absolutely terrified, and then he yanked a blanket off the floor and threw it over the fire.

The room went dark.

“What the hell was that?” she screamed.

She didn’t raise her fists, but Kitay flinched away as if she had—his shoulder hit the wall, and then he curled toward the ground with his head buried under his arms, raw sobs shaking his thin frame.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know what . . .”

The throbbing pain in her hand made her breathless, almost light-headed. Almost as good as it felt when she got high. If she thought about it too hard she would start crying, and if she started crying it might tear her apart, so she tried laughing instead, and that turned into tortured hiccups that shook her entire frame.

“Why?” she finally managed.

“I was trying to see what it was like,” he said.

“For who?”

“How they felt. In the moment that it happened. In their very last seconds. I wanted to know how they felt when it ended.”

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” she said. A wave of agony shot up her arm again, and she slammed her fist against the floor in an attempt to numb out the pain. She clenched her teeth until it passed.

“Altan told me about it once,” she said. “After a bit you’re not able to breathe. And then you’re gasping so hard you can’t feel it hurt anymore. You don’t die from the burning, you die from lack of air. You choke, Kitay. That’s how it ends.”

Chapter 5

“Try some ginger rock,” Ramsa suggested.

Rin gagged and spat until she was sure her stomach would expel nothing else, and then pulled her head back over the side of the ship. Remnants of her breakfast, a phlegmy, eggy mess, floated in the green waves below.

She took the shards of candy from Ramsa’s palm and chewed while fighting the urge to dry-heave. For all their weeks at sea, she’d still never gotten used to the constant sensation that the ground was swirling beneath her feet.

“Expect some choppier waves today,” Baji said. “Monsoon season is kicking up in the Omonod. We’ll want to avoid going upwind if this keeps up, but as long as we have the shore as a breakwater we should be all right.”

He was the only one of them who had any real nautical experience—he’d worked on a transport ship as part of his labor sentence shortly before he’d been sent to Baghra—and he flaunted it obnoxiously.

“Oh, shut up,” Ramsa said. “It’s not like you do any real steering.”

“I’m the navigator!”

“Aratsha’s the navigator. You just like the way you look standing at the helm.”

Rin was grateful that they didn’t have to do much maneuvering