She shot him an exasperated look. “Don’t tell me you want to take him prisoner, too.”
“No,” he said. “I want to do it.”
She stepped back and gestured to Chang En’s limp form. “All yours.”
“I’ll need a sword,” he said.
Wordlessly, she handed hers over.
Nezha traced the tip of the blade over Chang En’s face, jabbing it into the blistered skin between his crackled cheekbones. “Hey. Wake up.”
Chang En’s eyes opened.
Nezha forced the sword point straight down into Chang En’s left eye.
Chang En grabbed at empty air, trying to wrench the blade from Nezha’s grasp, but Nezha gave him a savage kick to the ribs, then several more to the face.
Nezha wanted to watch Chang En bleed. Rin didn’t try to stop him. She wanted to watch, too.
Nezha pressed the sword point to Chang En’s neck. “Stop moving.”
Whimpering, Chang En lay still. His gouged eye dangled grotesquely on the side of his face, still connected by lumpy strings. The other eye blinked furiously, drenched in blood.
Nezha grasped the hilt with both hands and brought it down hard. Blood splashed across both of their faces.
Nezha let the sword drop and backed away slowly. His chest heaved. Rin put her hand on his back.
He leaned into her, shaking. “It’s over.”
“No, it’s not,” she whispered.
It had barely just begun. Because the air had suddenly gone still—so still that every flag in the channel dropped, and the sound of every shout and clash of steel was amplified in the absence of wind.
She reached out and grabbed Nezha’s fingers in hers, just as the ship ripped out from beneath them.
Chapter 32
The force of the gale tore them apart.
For a moment Rin hung weightless in the air, watching driftwood and bodies floating absurdly beside her, and then she dropped into the water with the rest of what used to be the ship’s upper deck.
She couldn’t see Nezha. She couldn’t see anything. She sank fast, weighted down by the wreckage. She flailed desperately around in the black water, trying to find some path to the surface.
And there it was—a glimmer of light through the mass of bodies. Her lungs burned. She had to get up there. She kicked, but something tugged at her legs. She’d gotten tangled in the flag, and wet cloth underwater was strong as iron steel. Panic fogged her mind. The flag only ensnared her more the harder she kicked, dragging her down to the riverbed.
Calm. She forced herself to empty her mind. Calm down. No anger, no panic, just nothingness. She found that silent place of clarity that allowed her to think.
She wasn’t drowned yet. She still had the strength to kick her way to the surface. And the cloth wasn’t tied in such a hopeless knot, it was simply looped twice around her leg. She reached forward. A few quick movements and she broke free. Relieved, she swam upward, forcing herself not to panic, focusing on the simple act of pushing herself through the water until her head broke the surface.
She didn’t see Nezha as she dragged herself to shore. She scanned the wreckage, but she couldn’t find him. Had he surfaced at all? Was he dead? Crushed, impaled, drowned—
No. She had to trust that he was fine. He could control the water itself; it couldn’t possibly kill him.
Could it?
The howl of unnatural wind pierced the channel and lingered, punctuated only by the sound of splintering wood.
Oh, gods.
Rin looked up.
Feylen hung suspended in the air above her, slamming ships against the cliff wall with mere sweeps of his arm. Driftwood and debris swirled in a hazardous circle around him. With winds as fast as these, any one of those pieces might kill her.
Rin’s mouth had gone dry. Her knees buckled. All she wanted was to find a hole and hide. She stood paralyzed by fear and despair. Feylen was going to batter their fleet around the channel until there was nothing left. Why fight? Death would be easier if she didn’t resist . . .
She ground her fingernails into her palm until the pain brought her to her senses.
She couldn’t run.
Who else was going to fight him? Who else possibly could?
She’d lost her sword in the water, but she spied a javelin on the ground. Fat lot of good it would do against Feylen, but it felt better to hold a weapon. She scooped it up, opened her wings, and summoned a flame around her arms and shoulders. Steam fizzled around her, a choking cloud of mist. Rin waved it away, hoping