The Dragon Republic. R.F. Kuang

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       CHAPTER 2

      The last time Rin had encountered the Empress Su Daji, she had been burning with fever, too delirious to see anything but Daji’s face—lovely, hypnotic, with skin like porcelain and eyes like moth’s wings.

      The Empress was just as arresting as ever. Everyone Rin knew had emerged from the Mugenese invasion looking a decade older, jaded and scarred, but the Empress was as pale, ageless, and unmarked as ever, as if she existed on some transcendent plane untouchable by mortals.

      Rin’s breath quickened.

      Daji wasn’t supposed to be here.

      It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

      Images of Daji’s body flashed through her mind. Head cracked against white marble. Pale neck sliced open. Body charred to nothing—but she wouldn’t have burned immediately. Rin wanted to do it slowly, wanted to relish it.

      A slow cheer went up through the crowd.

      The Empress leaned out through the curtains and raised a hand so white it nearly glimmered in the sunlight. She smiled.

      “We are victorious,” she called out. “We have survived.”

      Anger flared inside Rin, so thick she almost choked on it. She felt like her body was covered with ant bites that she couldn’t scratch at—a kind of frustration bubbling inside her, just begging her to let it explode.

      How could the Empress be alive? The sheer contradiction infuriated her, the fact that Altan and Master Irjah and so many others were dead and Daji looked like she’d never even been wounded. She was the head of a nation that had bled millions to a senseless invasion—an invasion she’d invited—and she looked like she’d just arrived for a banquet.

      Rin barged forward.

      Unegen immediately dragged her back. “What are you doing?”

      “What do you think?” Rin wrenched her arms out of his grip. “I’m going to get her. Go rally the others, I’ll need backup—”

      “Are you crazy?”

      “She’s right there! We’ll never get a shot this good again!”

      “Then let Qara do it.”

      “Qara doesn’t have a clear shot,” Rin hissed. Qara’s station in the ruined bell towers was too high up. She couldn’t get an arrow through—not past the carriage windows, not past this crowd. Inside the palanquin Daji was shielded on all sides; shots from the front would be blocked by the guards standing right before her.

      And Rin was more concerned that Qara wouldn’t shoot. She’d certainly seen the Empress by now, but she might be afraid to fire into a crowd of civilians, or to give away the Cike’s location before any of them had a clear shot. Qara might have decided to be prudent.

      Rin didn’t care for prudence. The universe had delivered her this chance. She could end this all in minutes.

      The Phoenix strained at her consciousness, eager and impatient. Come now, child … Let me …

      She dug her fingernails into her palms. Not yet.

      Too much distance separated her from the Empress. If she lit up now, everyone in the square was dead.

      She wished desperately that she had better control over the fire. Or any control at all. But the Phoenix was antithetical to control. The Phoenix wanted a roaring, chaotic blaze, consuming everything around her as far as the eye could see.

      And when she called the god she couldn’t tell her own desire apart from the Phoenix’s; its desire, and her desire, was a death drive that demanded more to feed its fire.

      She tried to think of something else, anything other than rage and revenge. But when she looked at the Empress, all she saw were flames.

      Daji looked up. Her eyes locked on to Rin’s. She lifted a hand and waved.

      Rin froze. She couldn’t look away. Daji’s eyes became windows became memories became smoke, fire, corpses, and bones, and Rin felt herself falling, falling into a black ocean where all she could see was Altan as a human beacon igniting himself on a pier.

      Daji’s lips curved into a cruel smile.

      Then the firecrackers set off behind Rin without warning—pop-pop-pop—and Rin’s heart almost burst out of her chest.

      Suddenly she was shrieking, hands pressed to her ears while her entire body shook.

      “It’s fireworks!” Unegen hissed. He dragged her wrists away from her head. “Just fireworks.”

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