The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,70

Chaghan, like a predator sniffing out some new and interesting prey, and saw his mouth open in some soundless scream of agony.

Then they weren’t on Speer anymore.

This was nowhere she had ever seen.

They were somewhere high up on a mountain, cold and dark. A series of caves were carved into stone, all glowing with candle fire on the inside. And sitting on the ledge, shoulders touching, were two boys: one dark haired and one fair haired.

She was an outsider in this memory, but the moment she stepped closer her perspective shifted and she wasn’t the voyeur anymore but the subject. She saw Altan’s face up close, and she realized she was looking at him the way Chaghan once had.

Altan’s face was entirely too close to hers. She could make out every last terrible and wonderful detail: the scar running up from his right cheek, the clumsy way his hair had been tied up, the dark lids over his crimson eyes.

Altan was awful. Altan was beautiful. And as she looked into his eyes she realized the feeling that overcame her was not love; this was a total, paralyzing fear. This was the terror of a moth drawn to the flame.

She hadn’t thought that anyone else felt that way. It was such a familiar feeling that she almost cried.

“I could kill you,” said Altan, muttering the death threat like a love song, and when she-as-Chaghan struggled against him he pressed his body closer.

“So you could,” Chaghan said, and that was such a familiar voice, the coy, level voice. She’d always marveled at how Chaghan could speak so casually to Altan. But Chaghan hadn’t been joking, she realized, he’d been afraid; he had been constantly terrified every time he was around Altan. “So what?”

Altan’s fingers closed over Chaghan’s; too hot, too crushing, an attempt at human contact with absolute disregard for the object of his affection.

His lips brushed against Chaghan’s ear. She shuddered involuntarily; she thought he might bite her, move his mouth lower against her neck and rip out her arteries.

She realized that Chaghan felt this fear often.

She realized that Chaghan probably enjoyed it.

“Don’t,” Chaghan said.

She didn’t listen; she wanted to stay in this vision, had the sickening desire to watch it play out to its conclusion.

“That’s enough.”

A wave of darkness slammed down onto them, and when she opened her eyes she was back in the infirmary, sprawled on top of her bed. Chaghan sat bolt upright on the floor, eyes wide open, expression blank.

She grabbed him by the collar. “What was that?”

Chaghan stirred awake. His features settled into something like contempt. “Why don’t you ask yourself?”

“You hypocrite,” she said. “You’re just as obsessed with him—”

“Are you sure that wasn’t you?”

“Don’t lie to me!” she shrieked. “I know what I saw, I know what you were doing, I bet you only wanted to get in my mind because you wanted to see him from another angle—”

He flinched back.

She hadn’t expected him to flinch. He looked so small. So vulnerable.

Somehow, that made her angrier.

She clenched his collar tighter. “He’s dead. All right? Can’t you get that in your fucking head?”

“Rin—”

“He’s dead, he’s gone, and we can’t bring him back. And maybe he loved you, maybe he loved me, but that doesn’t fucking matter anymore, does it? He’s gone.”

She thought he might hit her then.

But he just leaned forward, shoulders hunched over his knees, and pressed his face into his hands. When he spoke he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I thought I could catch him.”

“What?”

“Sometimes before the dead pass on, they linger,” he whispered. “Especially your kind. Anger depends on resentment, and your dead exist in resentment. And I think he’s still out there, drifting between this world and the next, but each time I try all I get is fragments of memories, and as more time passes I can’t even remember the beautiful things, and I thought maybe—with the venom—”

“You don’t know how to fix me, do you?” she asked. “You never did.”

Chaghan didn’t answer.

She released his collar. “Get out.”

He packed up his satchel and left without a word. She almost called him back, but she couldn’t think of a single thing to say before he slammed the door.

Once Chaghan was gone, Rin shouted down the hallway until she got the attention of a physician, whom she berated until she obtained a sleeping draught in twice the recommended dosage. She swallowed that in two large gulps, crawled back onto her bed, and fell into the deepest sleep she’d