Xiran Jay Zhao

Female. That label has never done anything for me except dictate what I can or cannot do.

“I strangled his kid form in his creepy jungle realm and then stabbed his grown form over fifteen times.”

Cold metal fingers grasp my face and wrench me to my feet. Burning white eyes glare into mine.

“Be their nightmare, Wu Zetian.”

Too bad. I am exactly the kind of ice-blooded, rotten-hearted girl he fears I am. And I am fine with that.

May he stay unsettled.

“I…um…used to have the Four Classics,” he says. “You know. Outlaws of the Hundun Wilds. Dream of the Red Watchtower. Romance of the Three Provinces. Journey to the Western Stronghold. I read them so many times, I memorized them. If I pretend hard enough, I can read them all over again.”

This is not true power. True power is when I stood on the Nine-Tailed Fox with Yang Guang’s corpse at my feet, playing by my own rules. Victorious by my own standards. Reliant on no one but myself.

The bloodlust in his eyes rouses something primal and deep-rooted inside me, something that finds it so…

Utterly relatable.

“Thanks for the assist,” he says, barely discernible under the realm of noise. “You all right?”

However, when I look within myself for the logical strength to care, all I find is a flat relief, like the calm I felt about death after realizing how much I hated living.

When he looks me in the eye again, a small smile cracks across his face.

A startling sensation shivers through me, like a hundred butterflies fluttering free in my chest. I tear my gaze from him, lashes batting.