The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,225

soon.”

“I will,” Rin promised.

“You’re sure?” Kitay pressed.

She read the concern on his face. We’re running out of time.

“I’ll be out here for an hour,” she said. “Tops.”

“Good.” Kitay turned to leave with Venka. Their footsteps faded down the staircase, and then it was just Rin and Nezha left on the rooftop. The night air had suddenly become very cold, which at that point seemed to Rin like a good excuse to sit closer to Nezha.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Splendid,” she said, and repeated the word twice when the consonants didn’t seem to come out right. “Splendid. Splendid.” Her tongue sat heavy in her mouth. She’d stopped drinking hours ago, had nearly sobered up by now, but the evening chill had numbed her extremities.

“Good.” Nezha stood up and offered her his hand. “Come with me.”

“But I like it here,” she whined.

“We’re freezing here,” he said. “Just come on.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll be fun,” he said, which at that point sounded like a good reason to do anything.

Somehow they ended up on the harbor. Rin lurched into Nezha’s side as she walked. She hadn’t sobered up as quickly as she’d hoped. The ground tilted treacherously beneath her feet every time she moved. “If you’re trying to drown me, then you’re being a little obvious about it.”

“Why do you always think someone’s trying to kill you?” Nezha asked.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

They stopped at the end of the pier, farther out than any of the fishing crafts were docked. Nezha jumped into a little sampan and gestured for her to follow.

“What do you see?” he asked as he rowed.

She blinked at him. “Water.”

“And illuminating the water?”

“That’s moonlight.”

“Look closely,” he said. “That’s not just the moon.”

Rin’s breath caught in her throat. Slowly her mind made sense of what she was seeing. The light wasn’t coming from the sky. It was coming from the river itself.

She leaned over the side of the sampan to get a closer look. She saw darting little sparks among a milky background. The river was not just reflecting the stars, it was adding its own phosphorescent glow—lightning flashes breaking over minuscule movements of the waves, luminous streams washing over every ripple. The sea was on fire.

Nezha pulled her back by the wrist. “Careful.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the water. “What is it?”

“Fish and mollusks and crabs,” he said. “When you put them in the shadow they produce light of their own, like underwater flames.”

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

She wondered if he was going to kiss her now. She didn’t know much about being kissed, but if the old stories were anything to judge by, now seemed like a good time. The hero always took his maiden somewhere beautiful and declared his love under the stars.

She would have liked Nezha to kiss her, too. She would have liked to share this final memory with him before she fled. But he only stared thoughtfully at her, his mind fixed on something she couldn’t guess at.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked after a pause.

“Anything,” she said.

“Why did you hate me so much at school?”

She laughed, surprised. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

She had so many answers, it seemed a ridiculous question. Because he was obnoxious. Because he was rich and special and popular, and she wasn’t. Because he was the heir to the Dragon Province, and she was a war orphan and a mud-skinned southerner.

“No,” said Nezha. “I mean—I understood I wasn’t the nicest to you.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that. But, Rin, we managed to hate each other so much for three years. That’s not normal. That goes back to first-year jitters. Was it all because I made fun of you?”

“No, it’s because you scared me.”

“I scared you?”

“I thought you were going to be the reason why I’d have to leave,” she said. “And I didn’t have anywhere else to go. If I’d been expelled from Sinegard, then I might well have died. So I feared you, I hated you, and that never really went away.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said quietly.

“Bullshit,” she said. “Don’t act like you didn’t know.”

“I swear that never crossed my mind.”

“Really? Because it had to. We weren’t on the same level, and you knew it, and that’s how you got away with everything you did, because you knew I could never retaliate. You were rich and I was poor and you exploited it.” She was surprised by how quickly the words came, how easily she could still feel her lingering resentment toward him. She’d thought she’d put it behind her