Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White by Amélie Wen Zhao

Author:Amélie Wen Zhao [Zhao, Amélie Wen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2024-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

If you strike the grass, you startle the snake.

—Lady Nuru Ala Šuraya of the Jorshen Steel clan, Classic of War

Lan awoke early the next morning to a feeling she couldn’t quite place. Darkness poured through the cracks of her wooden shutters, dawn still a bell or so away. In these ghost hours between night and day, the desert was so silent, it was almost stifling—no chirp of crickets, no song of birds, not even sandsong to break the stillness. There was something in the air that was deeply unsettling to her core.

A shadow by her bed moved. Lan had just grabbed her ocarina when a hand clapped over her mouth. It smelled familiar: sword steel. A gray eye flashed in the darkness, a curved crimson mouth.

“It’s me,” Dilaya hissed.

Lan rolled her eyes as her friend withdrew her hand. “Rather than descending upon me like an assassin in the night, did you think of knocking on the doors first?”

“No, but I think of knocking you out with every clever retort you give.” Dilaya’s tone turned urgent. “Where have you been?”

Quickly, Lan filled her friend in on how she had spent the day learning the practitioning art that allowed access to the mind and to thoughts. How this art had been passed down through Hóng’yì’s bloodline. Dilaya’s mouth grew slacker and slacker with disbelief until finally she let out an audible noise when Lan spoke of her betrothal to the imperial heir.

“This is an alliance we need,” Lan said, and drove her point home: “He has the Crimson Phoenix, Dilaya.”

Dilaya drew Falcon’s Claw in a flash of steel. “That rabbit-whelped bastard of a coward! He’s had a Demon God bound to him all along, and he chose to stay holed up in this delusional realm of comforts?”

“He’s at the mercy of the Phoenix, Dilaya. He must be. We don’t know how much control it already holds over him.” Lan’s fingers twisted on her silk bedsheets as she thought of Zen, of his great-grandfather the Nightslayer. “The Demon Gods corrupt their binders over time as the binders continue to call on the gods’ power.”

“People make those choices, Sòng Lián,” Dilaya retorted, pointing her sword dramatically at Lan. “No matter how much you still love him, Temurezen made the choice to bind the Black Tortoise. He chose to betray and forsake you for power.”

Lan inhaled sharply and looked away.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Dilaya mumbled, as close to an apology as she would get. Awkwardly, she sheathed her sword. “By way of example, you have the Silver Dragon bound to you, but you are not in danger of losing yourself to it.”

Lan made sure the Dragon’s access to her thoughts was cut off before she responded. “My bargain with it is different,” she said quietly. “The Dragon is sworn to my mother’s soul. She made it promise to protect me.” Lan made no mention of the new bargain she had made with the Dragon: that she had promised her own soul in exchange for freedom for her mother’s.

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