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Ziya is high when she finds him.
Daji can’t say that she’s surprised. After all, she’s only ever read about the instances in Jima’s monthly reports, all documented by Jun down to the hour and minute. Spends more time gardening than teaching, he’d written on several different occasions. Talks more to his plants than the students and staff.
When she’s feeling particularly irritable, she’d pen a reply along the lines of have you tried pretending to be a plant so he’ll talk to you but what actually happens is that she throws the note into the fire and has something more diplomatic written up every time.
Ziya stiffens when he sees her. Daji watches the way his shoulders straighten ever so slightly, motion traveling down his back and to his legs, rooting him in place. The remnants of their bond echo somewhere in her chest; she can feel the thrum of it, the ebb and flow deep in her bones. She knows the Masters will always complain, but there is simply no chance of sending Jiang Ziya away when he’s within her reach.
He is the first to break the silence.
“You,” Ziya says in a voice that wavers between lost and found.
“Me,” Daji agrees as she takes one step forward into the garden, satisfied with how he doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t take her eyes off of him even when Ziya looks away at all the greenery that could never pass as medicinal herbs. He’s always been good at that, she thinks offhandedly. Making something out of nothing.
“I heard you bid on Altan along with every other Master,” Daji says. Ziya’s gaze darts back to her and he has to know now that she’s not here to discuss whatever she’d told Jima (and by extension, Jun) in her letter. “Aren’t you wondering who he’ll choose?”
“No,” he says after a moment. “I have no reason to be. I already asked Jima to train him as my apprentice.”
Daji waits.
“You didn’t.” She senses the instant it registers, sees the second his expression twists as he meets her eyes. Denial colors his words as much as indignation does. “You saw what he did in the ring against Tobi. He needs my instruction more than ever.”
“I know,” Daji says. “And maybe Altan does, though that time has passed.”
But Ziya’s still shaking his head, retreating the same time she advances. He only stops when she’s got him backed in a corner with all the poppy flowers, a blur of red in her periphery.
“Altan is—” Ziya doesn’t finish, mouth closing on the last word even though she still catches what isn’t said, knows that he was just about to say mine, near soundless as it is. But he has to remember—has to know—that whatever ill-gotten things they’ve come to own in the past decades had all been borrowed, once.
Daji takes a chance when she reaches out and spreads her hand at the crook of his neck, fingers trailing up until her palm is cupping his jaw. Something splinters inside of her when he leans into her touch, the action more familiar than it has any right to be. His breath is hot against her skin. She can feel his pulse, can feel her own, heartbeat loud in her ears.
“There is a war,” she whispers. “There is always going to be a war.”
Her fingers dig in that much more, nails cutting into the softness there. Seal or no seal, bond or no bond—there is very little he can hide from her. That they can hide from each other.
He won’t fight her on this. She is sure of it. Whatever—whoever—remains of Ziya in this shell has to know. He has to know that there is knowledge that runs deeper than memory.
Her mouth is right next to his ear when she says, “And I have always done what was necessary.”
She met Ziya first.
She met him after she had lost everyone worth saving and before she found anyone else worth having. There is no other way to start the story.
One of the things Daji learned early on was that she had to make herself invisible if she wanted a chance to survive in the refugee camps. Children went missing every day, and there was very little anyone could or cared to do about it. Couldn’t call it a casualty if you looked the other way.
Maybe that was why she noticed him. He was the only other constant out there, digging from the same trash piles for scraps of food with desperation clinging like a second skin. Daji kept her distance for the first couple of days, just long enough so he’d stop looking at her with a mixture of wariness and fear. She couldn’t blame him because she knew just as well: kindness and trust were in short supply here. There was just no room for it.
It had taken a little more than a week to wear him down. She’d gotten lucky scavenging earlier in the day, fighting her way to the heaps outside the makeshift camp kitchen first and finding scraps of mantou before the older children could. She found him later, curled up on himself in an alleyway, looking like he’d just experienced a one-sided fight.
Daji didn’t stop to think. She offered him half her stash and came no closer even when he had eaten it in one bite. She told him her name, said, “it’s the only thing I own,” and pretended to understand when he didn’t offer anything in reply.
But something shifted all the same.
He didn’t leave her side when he found her the next day, following her wherever she went like a second shadow. She tried to talk to him, wanted to say, “there is no debt to settle,” but found that she rather liked the company.
She heard the scuffle first. Daji whipped her head up just in time for him to barrel into her, the force of it almost enough to knock both of them down. He grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the trash heap as two other boys tackled the space she’d occupied. She vaguely recognized them as the same group she’d stolen the mantou from days earlier.
If there was anything she would discover about the boy she’d taken in, it was that he was a lot stronger than he looked. Faster, too, as he practically dragged her behind him as they raced through the back alleys.
He only slowed down once they were completely out of sight.
“You didn’t have to,” she said, panting and out of breath.
“No,” he said. His voice was like nothing she’d imagined: pitched high and clear, honest. “But I wanted to.”
Daji leaned against a wall, patted her pockets, and felt a rush of relief when she realized that she hadn’t dropped everything while they were running. She pulled out two sticks of dried fish, offering him one.
“Jiang Ziya.” It came unprompted, spoken between bites. He held her gaze as he told her. “It can be another thing for you to own.”
She had looked down. He was still holding her hand.
They met Riga much later.
By then, it was Daji and Ziya, Ziya and Daji. Riga appeared one day out of the blue and never left, skinny and starving as he was. She will recall this fact much later: Riga might’ve gotten them out of the occupied zone, but she was the one who pulled him away from death in the first place.
“Is he dead?” Ziya asked as they stood over the body. “He hasn’t moved for the past hour.”
Daji crouched down and held her hand under his nose, feeling the faintest brush of warm air there. She straightened and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “But he will be.”
She let the sentence hang. Then she turned and looked back at Ziya over her shoulder, figure silhouetted by the sun. That was how comfortable they got with each other—she’d never needed permission before, but that seemed to be the only thing she wanted these days.
Ziya knelt down next to her in answer. “Well,” he said, “it’ll take both of us to carry him.”
Yin Riga, as they came to know, had a lot more to offer than just his name. He began to tell them stories, ones about emperors and gods and monsters, when the nights were long and particularly stormy. It was cold comfort, but when you had nothing—well. You couldn’t live off of power, but you could live off the things it could bring you.
“That’s what I’m going to get when I find a way out of here,” Riga said one morning. “I swear it.”
At the other end of their hut, Ziya stirred. “And how are you going to do that?”
“The Pantheon is real,” Riga said. “I just need a way to access it. My father told me before he was exiled from Arlong. He said there was old power that surrounded us in the waters of the House of Yin. If I had the power of a god, I could do anything.”
Ziya yawned. “Being a Warlord isn’t enough for you?”
Riga sat up. He had been a sickly boy when they took him in, but now he was the furthest thing from it. She’d always thought that he was beautiful, but now he looked positively ethereal bathed in the early morning light.
His eyes were hard as he spoke. “No. It’s not. And it won’t be.”
She should’ve known, then. She should’ve looked at Riga at that moment and caught the look on his face, called it for what it was. The look she had dismissed as determination was more akin to hunger than anything else.
To some degree, they were always hungry in the camp. For food, for shelter, for a better tomorrow. For a future. But nothing had matched the glint in his eyes when he spoke about power.
And if there was anything else she would discover about Riga in time, it was that he always kept his word.
Because it was Riga who got them out of the camp when the Mugenese finally tore it apart and it was Riga who guided them north through the forests. It was Riga who led them to the border of the Hinterlands and it was Riga who carried the two of them to the heart of it.
It was Riga who begged and bargained with the Sorqan Sira for the power of the heavens. It was Riga who held down divinity in the palms of his hands and it was Riga who dragged Ziya back from the edge of insanity and it was Riga who showed them how to bend without breaking and it was Riga, Riga, Riga—
There was no going back, now.
They had altered the course of the future in the span of a single night and there was nothing else but the three of them standing in the aftermath.
That was how it started, every time—it began with one, and then there were three.
There is no other way to tell the story.
Ziya is asleep when she finds him.
Her guards had brought him in after the attack on Sinegard. There is no chance of hiding who he was now, not when the beasts of the Jade Emperor’s menagerie had materialized in the sky and decimated Federation and Militia troops alike.
So Daji sits with him now, waiting for him to come back to himself. She’s not sure how much time has passed but he eventually opens his eyes, blinking slowly. As if he’s trying to piece together what had happened and if it was real. His gaze is bleary, unfocused, but they sharpen that much more when they land on her. He used to say that she’d been his anchor before they had the word for it. Good to know some things haven’t changed.
“Empress,” he says in a voice that is more breath than sound.
She nods once. She doesn’t need any more confirmation that her Seal was beginning to erode. Looking at him now, Daji gets the impression that he’s more afraid of the past catching up with them than she is.
“You didn’t tell me about your apprentice,” she says instead. Daji runs the name over in her mind before she speaks. “Fang Runin.”
“There was no reason to. She’s not another Altan. I taught her to be better—”
Daji appraises him. “That’s not what it looked like from the frontlines. She called the fire, you know. She called the Phoenix.”
“No.” Ziya’s voice hardens. She can’t tell who he’s trying to convince more. “I taught her—I taught her to yield. I told her the true cost of power like that will be more than what anyone could possibly pay. I made sure she knew the risks before I showed her the Pantheon myself.”
“Teaching and listening and following are three entirely different things.” We should know, she doesn’t say.
“She’s not Altan,” he insists. “She can be saved.”
First it was Suni, then Baji, Altan, and now Runin. It always began like that, didn’t it? Always something else—someone else—to save. If you couldn’t save yourself, you might as well try to save others. But if you became the type of person who needed saving, then you’ve already lost.
Ziya should know. The Sorqan Sira, Tseveri, and even Hanelai had all said it at some point. Saving was something you needed to do for yourself. No one could do it but you.
Daji rises to her feet. She can see it in his eyes—he is starting to remember. The bond is a delicate, fragile thing; she doesn’t want to witness the moment when the weight of the truth finally sinks in.
“There are always two sides to a cycle.” She pauses at the door and looks back. “There will always be two forces, in equal and opposite measures.”
He should know the next words. He was the one who told her in the first place.
Daji recites them anyway.
“And the one that will win,” she says, “is the one you yield to.”
The march to Arlong had been a journey in itself, prolonged by Ziya’s silent anguish and their collective guilt. But by then they were already crafting the narrative that would define them for decades to come and it would be a lie to say that she was immune to the whispers that trailed them from dusk to dawn.
Being in the city itself was no better. The Dragon Warlord had welcomed them with all the appropriate measures, but everyone looked at them like they still didn’t know where to place them.
It had been easier for Riga and Ziya. She suspected it was easier to believe that they could turn the tides when you looked the part. Or maybe she was that much better at hiding the blood on her hands. The dead didn’t have much to tell, after all.
“You’re separating yourself from the story,” was what Riga said to her one summer day. “You’re not playing into the narrative.”
She looked up sharply. Riga was leaning against the doorway of her room, standing there like he’d been there the entire time. He smiled in response to her glare and crossed the room, seating himself at the edge of her desk. She sighed and put down her book. She couldn’t ignore him even if she tried.
“I’m not following.”
Riga glanced at the array of texts spread across the table. “Diplomacy? Domestic relations?” He raised a brow and nodded at the open scroll and inkwell in front of her. “One might say that you’re aiming high.”
She didn’t take the bait. “I recall that you were the one who always said to be at least two steps ahead. Or even three, depending on perspective.”
He laughed and she turned towards the sound without meaning to. She found herself doing that lately, truth to be told. Daji caught herself leaning in, wanting to—needing to—be in proximity; she blamed the bond, told herself that the line that tied them tighter together every day was the cause of it but knew deep inside that it was a lie.
Sometimes, it wasn’t enough to be close to fire just for the heat.
Sometimes, she felt like she wanted the burn.
“All of this planning isn’t going to help us if we lose what we have now.”
Daji glanced at him but he was already looking at her. “No one is losing anything,” she said. “We’ve come too far for that to happen.”
“Good to know you’re not getting soft on me.” He gestured out the window in the direction of the Red Cliffs before turning back to her. “Whether or not you believe the words carved into stone out there—the world doesn’t exist or nothing lasts—you need to make sure the story survives us. It has to be the one thing that does.”
“Is that what your father told you?”
“There’s a reason why he’s remembered even though there are no portraits of my family within these walls.” They were very close now. She could see the shadow of his lashes on his cheekbones, veins on the pale column of his throat, the subtle rise and fall of his chest. She dropped her gaze down just for a second and when she looked back up his eyes were still on her, sharp and steady and knowing. “You don’t think I know my uncle wants me gone? He might’ve welcomed me back, but we both know it’s because we have something the other wants. I need the Province’s troops. And he wants to be a part of history.”
He straightened and she was reminded of how he looked when they first marched into the city. Riga had walked through the gates like he was headed for the throne, like there was no crown too heavy to wear. The crowd had parted for him and no one had turned away, looking after him even in his wake. She understood it then: maybe it wasn’t enough to just be in his orbit. Maybe you wanted him to be in yours, too.
“If you want to rule,” Riga continued, “they either have to love or fear you.” His mouth curled upwards and there she went again, leaning into the sun. “They’re not mutually exclusive. But between the both of them, you can make anyone do anything.”
They had fear in spades. That much was certain.
It was a lot easier to demand obedience and force allegiances when people were more worried about what they could do to them rather than what they could do for them. Riga liked to say that loyalty could be bought if fear was your currency.
“People go about it all wrong,” he said one night. They were making camp in the outskirts of Ram Province, well on their way to Hare by sunrise. “Show a man what he might want and you’ll have him for half a lifetime. But show a man what he doesn’t want to lose and you’ll have him forever.”
Daji rolled out her sleeping mat beside Ziya, who was already fast asleep. “You said the same thing about love a year ago.”
“Did I?” Riga paused. “Suppose I did. But people can’t love you the way you need them to because they’ll put themselves first. You’ve seen the Warlords, haven’t you? They’re incapable of seeing beyond the edge of their provinces to know what’s at stake. They’ve never been pushed to do what was necessary.”
It was impossible not to know. She’d been the one to hold them down, demanding answers and extracting promises.
But Daji had asked because she couldn’t pinpoint the moment fear had eclipsed the love or when the narrative began to own them instead of the reverse. Somewhere between Arlong and Khurdalain and Lusan, they had emerged as the Vipress, Gatekeeper, and the Dragon Emperor.
She couldn’t pinpoint the moment where she began to revel in the power she wielded, if she had lost the part of her that was human when she became one part myth and one part legend or if it was already lost when they had called down the gods and didn’t count the cost.
She knew desire. Daji knew the lengths she’d gone to get what she wanted and that was why she was scared. Not because of the things they have done but of the things they could do. Would do.
She had thought the anchor to be the most solid thing between the three of them but now she knew there might’ve been cracks.
Because that was the other thing about desire: people rarely knew what to do with what they wanted when they had it.
What comes next? she wanted to ask, what do we do when we’re done?
But she knew better. There is a war, Riga would say, there will always be a war. And we’ll be done when it’s done with us.
Without meaning to, she thought of Tseveri. One will die, one will sleep for eternity, and one will rule.
That was how it ended, every time—it began with three, and then there was one.
There is no other way to tell the story.
Ziya is gone when she tries to find him.
She’d woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, hand to her chest like something had slipped out when she wasn’t looking. It’s futile, of course, because all that remains is a loss that she feels keenly. A glass half full turned empty kind of situation.
Daji had learned to live with the absence of Riga, had grown around and through it. But not with Ziya.
And that is what scares her now, she thinks. She’s survived a war before. But she had not survived it by being alone.
She looks down at her hands and curls her fingers, one by one, into a fist. She blinks and there is blood underneath the nails, blinks again and there is nothing but some dirt and grime. It had been a while since she’d held a sword; Riga was the one who introduced her to poison-tipped needles.
Master the slow death, he’d said, and you’ll find that the dead will have a lot of answers to give.
She doesn’t have them on her now. The attack on Sinegard had left her with a single dagger, still strapped across her waist. She’d forgotten how it felt to be so terribly unarmed, more human than weapon. Unable to properly cut, lacking the edge she had before. For the first time, she may be more handle than blade.
It’s times like these where it’s impossible to not think of Riga. The ghost of him still lingers in the back of her mind more often than not but in the wake of violence, he is front and center, meeting her at every crossroad. She wonders what he would say if he could see her now. Actually, no—she doesn’t need to wonder. Daji knows exactly what he’ll say.
The question was never about when it started. It was about when it had ended.
Winter was different in the north.
To be fair, Daji wasn’t a stranger to the cold. If anything, she was more familiar with it compared to the heat down south. She’d like to think that the years spent on the frozen steppes of the Baghra Desert had prepared her for the worst, but nothing could quite compare to how it was at Sinegard. The cold lingered in this half-empty palace, seeping into the ceilings, floorboards, walls—she felt the chill all the way down to her bones.
She crouched down in front of the hearth to feed the fire in Riga’s room, careful not to disturb Ziya who was curled up a few feet away, mumbling incoherently in his sleep. In times like these, it seemed like he was walking the line of insanity again. Of the three of them, she knew that Ziya had never wanted divinity, not truly. Of the three of them, he had been the one who understood that there were worse things to lose than your life.
Against her better judgment, she looked up at Riga across the room, still seated at his desk despite the hour.
“This can’t go on forever,” Daji said. “This isn’t going to last.”
For a moment, she thought that Riga couldn’t hear her over the crackling of the fire. She had learned to read his moods like the weather and taught herself how to navigate Riga like an impending storm, knowing when to seek shelter or to ride it out. But the shuffling of papers was too careful, too calm. Deliberate.
Daji got the distinct impression that she had walked into one rather than away.
“Your problem isn’t that you have regrets,” Riga finally said. His voice was quiet, but it still cut through the silence like nothing else. “It’s that you still have room for them.”
“And what is so wrong about that?” She should’ve known that Riga would point that out as weakness. “Am I not allowed to feel?”
“No, no.” Daji watched him set aside his papers and prop his chin on his hand, studying her. She stood up, unable to handle the heat at her back combined with his scrutiny. “I just thought that it’s interesting how you didn’t do anything to stop the hand that held the blade. You were so content letting someone die for the answers instead of learning to live with the questions.”
“What would you rather have me do?” Daji crossed the room, not stopping until she was in front of his desk. Anger was a ball held tight in her chest, hands fisted together at her sides. “Would you have wanted me to stop you?”
“That’s the wrong question to ask, don’t you think?” Riga smiled, all teeth. “But could you?”
That stilled her thoughts. She tried to reach into herself, to find whatever argument she had stashed inside but came up empty because he did have a point. This one was a shared burden because that was what happened when you were no longer three but one.
He got to his feet, the action slow, tempered, and she reflexively braced herself. “I got us out of the camps.” Riga circled around the desk before he stopped in front of her, backlit by a dying fire. “I brought us the Pantheon. I made all the sacrifices and I sold anything and everything to get where we are today.” He took a single step forward and she stepped back, forgetting where she was for a second. The edge of his desk dug in uncomfortably against the backs of her thighs; she swallowed and he didn’t miss the motion, mouth slanting upwards. Like there was a victory within reach she wasn’t aware of. “I’ve always done what was necessary.”
Of course. With Riga, it was always about necessity. A zero-sum game in which anything less than winning was losing. But he should know. It depended on how you kept score.
“You might’ve done all of that,” she said, “but don’t you dare forget who pulled you back from death.”
“Oh?” His tone was still lazy but she saw the clench of his jaw as his eyes narrowed. He was just as wound up as she was, tension thick and tangible between them. “But I guess we’ll never know if you couldn’t or wouldn’t.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t.”
Riga was the first to move.
She had to give him credit—he was fast.
But he had to know. She taught herself how to fight.
He taught her how to be better.
Daji caught his backhand by the wrist, using the momentum to force his arm down. He recovered just as quickly, sidestepping before lunging forward, sweeping his fist up. Daji blocked that one too, the force of it reverberating down to her toes.
He was not pulling his punches. Good, Daji thought, near manically, because neither was she.
She’d seen Riga out in battle, all fluid grace armed with steel when the world had narrowed down to nothing but the enemy. She’d fought with him too, back to back, never going in blind with Ziya in their periphery, cracking open the sky. To fight him, against him, went against everything they’ve done. They were not armed now, but they might as well be. She would know. He knew how she moved and she knew him in turn. The body was the most dangerous weapon; it was where the map turned into the territory. Every place she hit she had guarded before.
One misstep on her part and Riga was on her, grabbing her by the arm and twisting, pushing her back against the wall. They were both breathing hard now as he pinned her arms together.
He was very close now, separated only by a few inches. His mouth was even closer when he shifted, moving a knee between her legs as he leaned in.
“I think,” he said, tone dark and eyes even darker, “that you wouldn’t.”
What happened next was entirely accidental: she brought both of her arms down, hard, twisting out of his grip before shoving him backwards. It didn’t do her that much good, but he was unbalanced now and that was all she needed.
“You don’t know a thing,” she all but snarled at him, watching the way surprise on his face was replaced by something she chose not to name. The fire was nearly gone now, shrouding both of them in shadow.
One of the things Daji had told herself was that every storm had an eye. She should’ve known that some of them were just disasters through and through.
“Come here,” Riga said instead, never taking his eyes off of her once.
She heard her heart pound, felt the echo of it in her bones. Sweat trickled down her brow, landed salty on her lips. Daji blinked away the dizziness in her vision and curled her hands into fists.
She was the first to move.
But Riga had always known what to do with weakness.
She fucked him before she ever kissed him. Daji couldn’t tell if they were always this predisposed to doing things backwards or it was just the nature of it all. That’s one takeaway from the story.
He aimed for her legs, not forgetting about the first time she’d slipped and she was on her back in a second. He pinned her arms above her head again, legs bracketing her own, most of his weight there. She could feel him too, hard against her thigh as she shifted under his grip.
Against her better judgment, she pushed up with her hips and felt his free hand tighten on her waist, fingers digging into her shirt, the skin underneath. A warning.
“You think I don’t know you?” His voice was low. Dangerous. He leaned down, mouth next to her ear when he said, “because I think I do.”
Daji couldn’t stop the moan that escaped when he moved his knee between her legs, rubbing up and on her. The hand at her waist traveled down to the apex of her thighs, sliding under the fabric there, and when he cupped her where she wanted him to, ran his fingers against her slit, they came away wet. Riga didn’t stop there, though; she heard him laugh, rich and dark and full of promise, tickling the hairs at her neck, and then he was touching her again, testing, before he curled two fingers into her cunt, knuckle deep, palm rocking into her clit when she whimpered into his chest.
He brought her to the edge like that, impossibly close, had her gasping, and then he withdrew, leaving her empty and wanting. She must’ve cursed him under her breath at that moment because he laughed again, said, “I know exactly what to do with you when you’re like this,” and then his teeth were grazing her throat, biting at her jawline.
He released her arms just long enough for them to undress, no question about where this was going. Where they have already gone. Daji kept her shirt on; the floor was still cold. She wiggled out of her pants in one hurried motion, the legs catching around her ankles. Riga was still above her, his shirt off first, and she could see the stark outline of his cock in his pants before his hands landed there, pushing down the waistband.
He was on her again before she could blink, weight familiar now between her legs, anticipation making her reach for him, the heat of him, wanting more, always more, but he knocked her hands away to seize her by the throat, nothing gentle about the motion. She closed her eyes, almost reflexively, but then the truth was that she was afraid to see what he was doing to her, what she was doing to him. To each other.
“Look at me,” he said—no, commanded—and she almost wanted to laugh, wanted to say it was her line but the sentence was choked back down by his fingers curling tighter around her throat, thumb pressing down on the pulse point, hard enough for bruises to bloom. All that came out was a gasp; that was cut off too when he tightened his grip that much more, said, “look at me,” again, and all she could think about was how the marks could match Ziya’s now; how fucked up was that. And when he said, “fucking look at me, Daji,” she finally opened her eyes and he must’ve seen it then, how she could not look away even if she tried because he’ll always be in her line of sight, filling the space in every room, burning bright and inescapable.
He had to know. When she was with him it always felt like flying straight into the sun.
“Fuck you,” Daji managed to spit out, just barely, as his grip loosened by a fraction. He shifted, leaning down, torturously slow, cock hard and leaking against her cunt and the wetness there. She couldn’t tell if she was angrier at herself for yielding or at the fact that her desperation was all on display and that she was laid bare before him while he still wore control like a second skin.
“Oh, I want to.” He kissed the column of her throat before he raised his gaze back to meet hers. “But I won’t until you admit it.” He leaned in and she reflexively angled her hips up for some friction but he only pulled away. “All you have to do is say it.”
“Say what?” It was damn near pathetic now, how breathless she sounded, how she was begging now, willing to take whatever he had to offer, anything and everything.
“Would you do it all over again?” He was looking at her like he knew that there was nowhere she could hide from herself, caught like an animal in a trap. She reached out and then her hands were on his shoulders, nails digging in, breaking skin, pulling him closer or holding him back when she finally found her words.
“Yes,” she said, halfway to breaking. Then softer, for the truth: “I would.”
Whatever breath that remains in her lungs was forced out of her lungs when he finally fucked into her. Riga set a brutal pace; punishing maybe, hips snapping against hers, hand falling away from her throat and maybe that’s trust or what could masquerade as it now that they’ve crossed whatever line that had barely existed before. She was close now, cunt clenching around him, whinier—needier—than she thought she’d ever be; said, “please,” one too many times, each more drawn out than the last.
He fucked her through her orgasm, had her crying out, biting down into his shoulder, a little more than a wreck split open. Then he suddenly pulled out of her before he dragged her back up, body bent over his desk.
The angle was that much better and worse when he slid back into her, cunt still oversensitive. His hand caught in her hair, fisting it at the nape, pulling just hard enough to make her back arch and for him to press down on her in turn. It was good, almost better like that, all this violence tempered between the two of them. Maybe she wanted him to break, too.
Daji bared her teeth when he wrapped his hand around her throat again, the other remaining at her hips, holding her to him as he fucked her deeper. “We have always done what was necessary,” he said, breath ragged on her back, her neck; hotter, still, when he tugged her head to the side, mouth finally slanting against her own in the kindest imitation of a kiss.
She bit down hard enough to draw blood and didn’t say a word.
Daji is dreaming when she finds Ziya.
There is no mistaking the facade of the Chuluu Korikh even in the dreamscape. The bond is already stretched thin, pulled taught with the distance. Everything is hazy here, but he’s still the clearest thing for miles.
Ziya turns around when he senses her behind him.
“Daji,” he says in a voice that trembles between broken and whole.
She catches up to him in four easy strides and holds out her hand, fingers outstretched in a silent invitation. “I’m not going to stop you. I promise.”
“But you could,” Ziya says. He still reaches out all the same. “If you really wanted.”
She shakes her head. “No. I wouldn’t.”
Daji doesn’t miss the way he looks at her like he can’t quite believe what she’s saying. But he should know—she’s never lied to him. She’s not going to start now when they both know the truth. She can let him go, but he’ll find his way back to her, one way or another. He always did, in the end.
His hand is warm and solid in hers. Familiar. Same bony knuckles and rough calluses; she runs her thumb over the scars there and feels his fingers tighten in response. There is nothing she can say to fill the silence between them as they climb, but she supposes there’s very little to be said in the first place. I’ve known you all my life, she thinks. Don’t be a stranger now.
The mouth of the cave is very close. She walks him as far as she can get, right up the ledge. Daji curls her free hand over his heart like she is trying to capture each and every beat in an attempt to fill the spaces between her own.
Ziya doesn’t move away when she rests her cheek against his.
“We have always done what was necessary,” she says. “But I have always done what was for the best.”
It’s the last thing she tells him.
“Tell me something you’re afraid of.”
The garden in the palace was the only place that had remained largely intact during the war, mainly due to the fact that no one had any use for the scenery. Ziya had taken a liking to it almost immediately, and that was where she would find him on most nights if he was not in his room.
She had come to know that Ziya didn’t compartmentalize loss like her; if she still had room for regret, then Ziya had a separate house for them. An entire chamber of his heart solely reserved for the reminders so if there was ever a wound it would bleed from only one place.
“Just one?” He didn’t turn around at her approach and only patted the space on the bench beside him. She made her way over and sat down, knee bumping against his. “Having to choose is already scaring me.”
“Fine,” she said. “Tell me everything, then.”
“I’m scared of the concept of infinity. Or having to count to it. How long eternity really is and how we only have minutes in the long run. Of losing my mind. Again, for the record. Dying.” Then, quieter: “Losing.”
She leaned into him, head resting on his shoulders, breath misty in the air. He drew his arm up and around her, warm against her back. Daji curled in and towards, shifting so she could bury her face in his chest.
“What do you want to be in another life?”
She felt him laugh before she heard it, that quick breath of air forced out of his lungs in the span of a second.
“A bit too late to be asking those kinds of questions, don’t you think?”
“Humor me.”
He was silent for a long time. “I don’t know. Maybe a scholar or a teacher. Maybe I can show people how to be better. That there’s more to life than fighting.”
She pulled away to squint up at him. “I’m trying to imagine you as a teacher. Though Master Jiang does have a nice ring to it.”
“Not if you say it like that.”
“What? Master Jiang?” Her voice is pitched high, dragging on the syllables of his name. When he laughed, the sound was drawn out. She could feel it. “I can see it now. You’ll hold your classes outdoors, maybe in a garden like this one. You’ll compare your students to plants because at least they wouldn’t talk back. And then,” she continued, softer now, “you’ll teach them lessons that you hope they’ll listen to.”
Ziya didn’t laugh this time, only looked at her, something faraway in his eyes. “Your turn. What are you afraid of?”
It didn’t take long for her to unearth the truth.
“I’m scared,” she said, “of who I might become and who I might already be.”
Ziya pulled her close again, resting his chin on top of her head.
“There are always two sides to a cycle,” he said. She felt him swallow, once, twice, before he brushed his lips across her forehead, impossibly gentle. “There will always be two forces, in equal and opposite measures. And the one that will win is the one you yield to.”
Daji feels the eruption before she sees it. She’d felt the tremor in the spiritual plane first before the earth rumbled beneath her feet. Smoke had clouded the sky not long after, swallowing the sun.
Fang Runin. Daji runs the name through her mind again before she turns away from the coast. She’s seen this exactly once before.
Everything had come full circle, then. She supposes that it’s only fitting that the last Speerly would be the one to end one war but would light the match for another.
Perhaps the Sorqan Sira was right. There were no new stories or games, only recycled iterations with a different set of cards. Daji has played her hand. All she can do now is wait for the next round to start.
She thinks of a grave on top of a mountain and the prison at the bottom of another.
She thinks she owes them this much. There is no other way to end this story.
“I didn’t want to die,” Ziya had said, “not owning anything but our names.”
It was the last thing he told her.