The Burning God

He owed it to her to try.

She was a goddess. She was a monster. She’d nearly destroyed this country.

And then she’d given it one last, gasping chance to live.

Fix this? Fix this? What did he have left to work with? She’d broken everything.

Why? He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to shake her, throttle her, until she answered. Rin, what the fuck?

But he knew why.

He knew exactly what choice she’d made and what she’d intended. And that made everything—hating her, loving her, surviving her—so much harder.

Then the twitching stopped, and she was gone.

Kitay lay still beside him. He knew Kitay was gone, too—that Kitay had died a bloodless death the moment he plunged the blade into Rin’s heart, because Rin and Kitay were bonded in a way that he could never understand, and there was no world where Rin died and Kitay remained alive. Because Kitay—the third party, the in-between, the weight that tipped the scale—had chosen to follow Rin into the afterlife and to leave Nezha behind. Alone.

“Fix this,” she ordered.

Nezha’s fingers went slack in hers. She tightened her grip; she had enough resolve for the both of them. As the dirigibles descended toward Speer, she brought Nezha’s hand up to her chest and plunged the blade into her heart.

Come, now.” She linked her fingers around Nezha’s. Closed both his hands around the cold, cold hilt as lightning arced around them, between them. Brought the blade round to the front. “Properly this time.”

She couldn’t release him. Neither of them knew how. But she knew, as clearly as if he’d said it out loud, that he intended to follow her to the end. Their fates were tied, weighed down by the same culpability.

She glanced down at Kitay.

He was awake, his face set in resolve. He gave her a grim nod.

That was all she had to see. That was permission.

“You can’t do this for me,” he said. “I won’t let you.”

“It’s not for you. It’s not a favor. It’s the cruelest thing I could do.”

She meant it.