Her ears were ringing.

  Everything was fuzzy in the way she didn’t know where her limbs were — up was down and down was up, her cheek pressed ft against something hard and bck.

  Blood was dripping down her hair.

  She nearly threw up.

  Her gaze stumbled up. It took a bit for her eyes to quite fall into focus, and a further while to realise that she was held tight in Eight’s embrace, her body worn and tumbled. The man himself could hardly be called human; there wasn’t a single shred of skin on his body that wasn’t torn, no joints that couldn’t be seen, and no piece unstained by red. It pooled onto the silent tiles below, devoid of lifeforce and cold like river water.

  It was too quiet.

  She struggled to her feet, pain coursing through every meridian in her body. She was dry of qi — whatever she had left was only enough to keep her barely alive.

  Eight’s body, sck and wet, fell off her shoulders, crumpling into Seven who y dead at her feet, eyes still wide with shock. Not too far away was the emperor, motionless but for the tiniest rise and fall of his chest.

  …Her qi had backfired.

  She had tried to attack Seven when her qi still held her love. It had killed him and Eight.

  Terror, a mix of hate, grief, panic and sickening nausea bubbled up in her throat, thick like sludge. Her fists, clenched so hard that her skin ripped, burned from the strain of her tearing muscles and hot salt running down her cheeks.

  What had she done?

  She squashed the horror and thoughts down.

  Not now. She could grieve and cry and panic ter — but not now, not when she had to live and save her love.

  Xi Yu.

  Xi Yu!

  She pushed through the puddles of blood and clutched at the bars of the cage. Her princess y unconscious in the cage with the Sixth Prince — fear, a boundless fear like the deep ocean seized her, dragging her under as she gripped those steel bars, tears and blood caking in her palms as she yanked that lock, pulling and ripping and it was wrenched free —

  She stumbled into the cage panting, muscles screaming, and gently scooped up her Xi Yu, checking the princess over.

  Relief went off in her head like fireworks.

  Xi Yu was breathing, her breaths quiet but strong, airways empty and clear. There were no visible injuries on her skin, no poisoned pallor on her face, and no pain on her lips or eyes. Her lifeforce, a gentle warmth that wasn’t violent nor powerful, flowed smoothly in her meridians with only harmless ripples — the very ones that had likely knocked her out.

  She was alright.

  Tears sprang to Hu Yingliu’s eyes.

  Cradling Xi Yu in her arms, she turned to look out at her fallen brothers.

  The only way for her to have survived her backfiring qi, the only way for Xi Yu and Xi Chanzui to have survived the explosion as regur mortals, was for someone else to take the brunt of it.

  Eight.

  He’d led Hu Yingliu’s rampaging lifeforce into his own body, shattering every meridian in his flesh and tearing from the force.

  And now he was dead.

  What would Nine do without him?

  She crushed the thoughts down in her head.

  There was no time for dwelling. She had to run. She could cry ter. Later, ter, ter!

  Hu Yingliu held Xi Yu in her arms as she stood, the princess’s head ying limp against her chest. Her muscles burned; using them now, just after a backfire, was splitting tears across her skin and veins. Pain, itching like ant bites, broke out across her back and shoulders.

  She stood to run, but a thought clung to her as though it were a dog biting her ankles.

  Would Xi Yu be upset if her brother was left to die?

  …Probably, dammit.

  Gritting her teeth, she knelt down to sp Xi Chanzui’s face. ‘Oi. Wake up!’

  The man’s head lolled, his tongue sliding out of loose lips.

  ‘If you don’t get up, I’m going to leave you here.’

  His eyes cracked open. ‘I couldn’t fool you, could I?’

  ‘No. Your qi is too strong for a regur mortal’s.’ Holding back a snarl she spat, ‘I’ll only carry you on my back. And you’ll have to grip on yourself — if you fall, I won’t help you.’

  ‘My father taught me.’ He pushed himself to his feet, brushing the dust and splinters off his legs. ‘You don’t need to carry me.’

  ‘Good.’ She turned away, stepping out of the cage, ‘Let’s run, before that man wakes up —’

  ‘It’s too te.’

  She whipped around.

  A figure stood up, rising from the seabed of shattered wood, toppled tables and spilled coals. His shape, white and thin, was twisted into strange shadows by the dancing waves of heat from a crackling fire. Then he bent over, pulling the unconscious emperor from his seat. With a chilling smile thinner than ke ice, he gripped the other man’s head, his fingers curled like hawk’s talons. They tensed, each finger straining with a bright white light, until finally with a bang, Bao Jinmeng’s head exploded into a plume of bloody mist. And just like that, the terrifying man who once gave her his grief died.

  The standing figure’s paper-thin smile split into a grin that darker than a bckened well. Waves of dust billowed across the vast hall, like the auspicious clouds that were said to accompany a mortal’s ascension into the heavens as a deity.

  Prince Qianzhong.

  Of course he hadn’t fainted, not for long.

  Those red eyes of his fluttered open and closed, as unseeing as ever.

  And of course he didn’t need his eyes to see.

  ‘You know, I once tried everything to make him and Mother stay. I stole a very important thing from him as bckmail,’ Xi Chanzui said. ‘All I got was the lifetime of a beating from him.’

  Hu Yingliu asked, ‘Did he get the thing back?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She ughed, ‘Good.’

  ‘But while I could hide it,’ Xi Chanzui said, ‘we can’t hide. He will catch us in the end, regardless. The two of us… we’ll need to cooperate.’

  She turned to watch him, as the morning rays of sunlight fell across his face like a bde.

  ‘Here’s to a happy cooperation then,’ she said, handing him a knife. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I killed your mother.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘You weren’t the one who killed her.’