went back to her cabin and locked herself inside.
She thought—hoped, really—that Kitay would seek her out, but he didn’t. When she cried, there was no one to comfort her. She choked on her tears and buried her face in the mattress. She stifled her screams in the hard straw padding, then decided she didn’t care who heard her, and screamed out loud into the dark.
Baji came to the door, bearing a tray of food. She refused it.
An hour later Enki forced his way into her quarters. He enjoined her to eat. Again she refused. He argued she wouldn’t do any of them any favors by starving to death.
She agreed to eat if he would give her opium.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Enki said, looking over Rin’s gaunt face, her tangled, matted hair.
“It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t need seeds. I need the smoke.”
“I can make you a sleeping draught.”
“I don’t need to sleep,” she insisted. “I need to feel nothing.”
Because the Phoenix had not left her when she crawled out of that temple. The Phoenix spoke to her even now, a constant presence in her mind, hungry and frenzied. It had been ecstatic, out there on the deck. It had seen the cloud of ash and read it as worship.
Rin could not separate her thoughts from the Phoenix’s desire. She could resist it, in which case she thought she’d go mad. Or she could embrace it and love it.
If Jiang could see me now, she realized, he would have me locked in the Chuluu Korikh.
That was, after all, where she belonged.
Jiang would say that self-immurement was the noble thing to do.
No fucking way, she thought.
She would never step voluntarily into the Chuluu Korikh, not while the Empress Su Daji walked this earth. Not while Feylen ran free.
She was the only one powerful enough to stop them, because she had now attained a power that Altan had only ever dreamed of.
She saw now that the Phoenix was right: Altan had been weak. Altan, despite how hard he tried, could only ever have been weak. He was crippled by those years spent in captivity. He did not choose his anger freely; it was inflicted on him, blow after blow, torture after torture, until he reacted precisely the way an injured wolf might, rising up to bite the hand that hit him.
Altan’s anger was wild and undirected; he was a walking vessel for the Phoenix. He never had any choice in his quest for vengeance. Altan could not negotiate with the god like she did.
She was sane, she was convinced of it. She was whole. She had lost much, yes, but she still had her own mind. She made her decisions. She chose to accept the Phoenix. She chose to let it invade her mind.
But if she wanted her thoughts to herself, then she had to think nothing at all. If she wanted a reprieve from the Phoenix’s bloodlust, she needed the pipe.
She mused out loud to the darkness as she sucked in that sickly sweet drug.
In, out. In, out.
I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible.
Was she now a goddess or a monster?
Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.
Rin was curled up on her bed when the twins finally boarded the ship. She did not know they had even arrived until they appeared at her cabin door unannounced.
“So you made it,” Chaghan said.
She sat up. They had caught her in a rare state, a sober state. She had not touched the pipe for hours, but only because she had been asleep.
Qara dashed inside and embraced her.
Rin accepted the embrace, eyes wide in shock. Qara had always been so reticent. So distant. She lifted her arm awkwardly, trying to decide if she should pat Qara on the shoulder.
But Qara drew back just as abruptly.
“You’re burning,” she said.
“I can’t turn it off,” Rin said. “It’s with me. It’s always with me.”
Qara touched Rin’s shoulders softly. She gave her a knowing look, a pitying look. “You went to the temple.”
“I did it,” Rin said. “That cloud of ash. That was me.”
“I know,” Qara said. “We felt it.”
“Feylen,” she said abruptly. “Feylen’s out, Feylen escaped, we tried to stop him but—”
“We know,” said Chaghan. “We felt that, too.”
He stood stiffly at the doorway. He looked as if he were choking on something.
“Where’s Altan?” he finally asked.
She said nothing. She just sat there, matching his gaze.
Chaghan blinked and made a noise like an animal that had been kicked.
“That’s not possible,” he said