“The first time I saw that grotto, there were faces all along the cave floor. It took me a while to realize I was fated to become one of them.”
Rin withdrew her finger, suppressing a shudder.
“So now you know,” Nezha said. He yanked his shirt back on. His voice hardened. “You’re disgusted—don’t say you aren’t, I can see it on your face. I don’t care. But don’t you tell anyone what I’ve just told you, and don’t you ever fucking dare call me a coward to my face.”
Rin knew what she should have done. She should have said she was sorry. She should have acknowledged his pain, should have begged his forgiveness.
But the way he said it—his long-suffering martyr’s voice, like she had no right to question him, like he was doing her a favor by telling her . . . that infuriated her.
“I’m not disgusted by that,” she said.
“No?”
“I’m disgusted by you.” She fought to keep her voice level. “You’re acting like it’s a death sentence, but it’s not. It’s also a source of power. It’s kept you alive.”
“It’s a fucking abomination,” he said.
“Am I an abomination?”
“No, but—”
“So what, it’s fine for me to call the gods, but you’re too good for it? You can’t sully yourself?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Well, that’s the implication.”
“It’s different for you, you chose that—”
“You think that makes it hurt any less?” She was shouting now. “I thought I was going mad. For the longest time I didn’t know which thoughts were my own and which thoughts were the Phoenix’s. And it fucking hurt, Nezha, so don’t tell me I don’t know anything about that. There were days I wanted to die, too, but we’re not allowed to die, we’re too powerful. Your father said it himself. When you have this much power and this much is at stake you don’t fucking run from it.”
He looked furious. “You think I’m running?”
“All I know is that hundreds of soldiers are dead at the bottom of Lake Boyang, and you might have done something to prevent it.”
“Don’t you dare pin that on me,” he hissed. “I shouldn’t have this power. Neither of us should. We shouldn’t exist, we’re abominations, and we’d be better off dead.”
“But we do exist. By that logic it’s a good thing the Speerlies were killed.”
“Maybe the Speerlies should have been killed. Maybe every shaman in the Empire should die. Maybe my mother’s right—maybe we should get rid of you freaks, and get rid of the Hinterlanders, too, while we’re at it.”
She stared at him in disbelief. This wasn’t Nezha. Nezha—her Nezha—couldn’t possibly be saying this to her. She was so sure that he would realize he’d crossed the line, would back down and apologize, that she was stunned when his expression only hardened.
“Don’t tell me Altan wasn’t better off dead,” he said.
All shreds of pity she’d felt for him fled.
She pulled her shirt up. “Look at me.”
Immediately Nezha averted his eyes, but she grabbed at his chin and forced him to look at her sternum, down at the handprint scorched into her skin.
“You’re not the only one with scars,” she said.
Nezha wrenched himself from her grasp. “We are not the same.”
“Yes, we are.” She yanked her shirt back down. Her eyes blurred with tears. “The only difference between us is that I can suffer pain, and you’re still a fucking coward.”
She couldn’t remember how they parted, only that one moment they were glaring at each other and the next she was stumbling back to the barracks in a daze, alone.
She wanted to run after Nezha and say she was sorry, and she also wanted never to see him again.
Dimly she understood that something had broken irreparably between them. They’d fought before. They’d spent their first three years together fighting. But this wasn’t like those childish schoolyard squabbles.
They weren’t coming back from this.
But what was she supposed to do? Apologize? She had too much pride to grovel. She was so sure she was right. Yes, Nezha had been hurt, but hadn’t they all been hurt? She’d been through Golyn Niis. She’d been tortured on a lab table. She’d watched Altan die.
Nezha’s particular tragedy wasn’t worse because it had happened when he was a child. It wasn’t worse because he was too scared to confront it.
She’d been through hell, and she was stronger for it. It wasn’t her fault that he was too pathetic to do the same.
She found the Cike sitting in a circle on the barracks floor. Baji and Ramsa were playing dice while Suni watched from a top bunk to make sure Ramsa didn’t cheat, as he always did.
“Oh, dear,” Baji said as she approached. “Who made you cry?”
“Nezha,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ramsa clicked his tongue. “Ah, boy trouble.”
She sat down in between them. “Shut up.”
“Want me to do something about it? Put a missile in his toilet?”
She managed a smile. “Please don’t.”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
Baji tossed the dice on the floor. “So what happened up north? Where’s Chaghan?”
“Chaghan won’t be with us for a while,” she said. She took a deep breath and willed herself to push Nezha to the back of her mind. Forget him. Focus on something else. That was easy enough—she had so much to tell the Cike.
Over the next half hour she spoke to them about the Ketreyids, about Augus, and about what had happened in the forest.
They were predictably furious.
“So Chaghan was spying on us the entire time?” Baji demanded. “That lying fuck.”
“I always hated him,” Ramsa said. “Always prancing around with his mysterious mutters. Figures he’d been up to something.”
“Can you really be surprised, though?” Suni, to Rin’s shock, seemed the least bothered. “You had to know they had some other agenda. What else would Hinterlanders be doing in the Cike?”
“Don’t call them Hinterlanders,” Rin said automatically.
Ramsa ignored her. “So what were the Hinterlanders going to do if Chaghan decided we were getting too dangerous?”
“Kill you, probably,” Baji said. “Pity they went back north, though. Would have been nice to have someone deal with Feylen. It’ll be a struggle.”
“A struggle?” Ramsa repeated. He laughed weakly. “You think last time we tried to put him down was a struggle?”
“What happened last time?” Rin asked.
“Tyr and Trengsin lured him into a small cave and stabbed so many knives through his body that even if he could have shamanized, it wouldn’t have done a lick of good,” Baji said. “It was kind of funny, really. When they brought him back out he looked like a pincushion.”
“And Tyr was all right with that?” Rin asked.
“What do you think?” Baji asked. “Of course not. But that was his job. You can’t command the Cike if you don’t have the stomach to cull.”