Yin followed the path up the mountain until, eventually, there was no real path anymore. Her only guide for climbing safely was the odd deer trail cutting through the undergrowth, but eventually she was left clambering over bare rock again. Clouds gathered overhead; eventually she climbed high enough for the lowest ones to dampen her hair. The air smelled of the coming spring rain.
That was good, on most days. The mountain would need rain, if it was going to replenish the flowers on Kaveh’s pyre.
By the time she reached the cloud-crowned peak, a comfortable ache had set into her limbs, offset by the cold, wet air. Her arms rippled with gooseflesh.
Standing at the top of the mountain she called home, Yin turned her single eye toward the gathering rainclouds, and called for her mother.
For a moment, nothing happened. An oddly warm breeze swept by her, carrying the smell of lightning. Her ears popped. She blinked, and Mama stepped out of the mist like a ghost.
She towered over Yin, as she had towered over her husband before his death. Tiny beads sparkled in her hair and around the base of her delicate branching horns, like glass pearls or frozen raindrops. Her ruqun shimmered in shades of blue and gray, from the deep indigo skirt to the storm-shadow of her jacket. Her eyes shone with the same gold in Yin’s.
“Daughter,” the Thunder Dragon greeted. “You look happy and harried.”
“Kaveh will burn soon,” said Yin. “We’re building his pyre. It’s the first he’s made himself in centuries.”
The Dragon’s hands were clasped in front of her, but Yin saw how her fingers strayed toward her wrists. “So soon,” her mother murmured.
“His last one was…” Yin hesitated. “It restored a lot of things.”
“Ha,” her mother said dryly.
“But not everything,” Yin went on. “We’re doing what we can, Cass and I. We want this one to be more restful.”
“This is good to hear,” the Dragon said, turning her head upward. “Would the coming rains disrupt his immolation?”
“Under normal circumstances, I doubt it,” Yin admitted. “But it’s only been a year since his last one, and he’s been as weak as a new kitten ever since. I want to make sure nothing goes wrong.” She clasped her hands and bowed at the waist. “Could you delay the rain until after he’s reborn? It should only be a day.”
A gentle hand slid beneath her chin and raised her head. Yin met her mother’s eyes just in time to see them flicker to the blue of a clear day.
“They make you so happy,” the Thunder Dragon murmured.
“I hope you find this happiness too,” Yin said earnestly. “Your last husband left much to be desired.”
Her mother laughed. “I have not seen a new scar on you since you sent that bastard to the Underworld. This peaceful life looks good on you. I promise you, daughter, that no rain will touch the pyre until your lover’s ashes have cooled.”
Yin’s heart lifted. “Thank you, Mama. It’ll give Cass less to fret about.”
“Hm.” The Dragon’s thumb trailed against Yin’s face, tracing the edge of the burn that had taken her eye. “He won’t live to the phoenix’s next pyre without help, like you will. When his time comes, I’ll carry him up to the stars so he has a good view.”
“I—” Yin’s breath caught. “I don’t like to think about that.”
“Ahh. You’re young. You don’t think ahead.” The Dragon pulled away.
Yin held her mother’s hand for a moment, watching as the sleeve pulled back from the mother’s scarred wrist. “When his time comes, I’ll let him know,” she said.
“Good,” her mother said as she melted back into the clouds. “I shouldn’t owe him so much.”
Yin stood there, breathing in the smell of rain and distant lightning, and started back down the mountain.
Her first thought of the Oracle was that he was a weak and pampered child in a man’s body, and his uncle an arrogant fool.
“What price will you pay?”
“I came for an audience with the Oracle, not you,” the princess snapped.
“The Oracle meets with no one without—” Lucanus was flat on his back before anyone could blink. Her foot rested lightly on his breastplate, and the tip of her guandao tickled his throat. In an instant, twenty guards had their bows trained on her.
“I came for an audience with the Oracle,” the princess repeated. “I will speak with him alone, or you will die on the ground.”
“And you will follow,” Lucanus hissed.
“Which will do you little good.” Threads of lightning darted along the edge of the blade. This man was no demon. How easy it would be, to kill him where he lay. “How many arrows will it take to slay a dragon’s daughter?”
Lucanus lifted his chin defiantly—as best he could, from an awkward position. “Less than twenty, little girl.”
The princess stared at him, dead-eyed.
“You may have your audience,” Lucanus said eventually. “But not alone.”
“Then you will be silent until it is over.”
Lucanus smiled his wolf’s smile. “So glad to discuss these things like adults.”
“How can I help you free your mother?” the Oracle asked, once everyone was off the floor and the weapons were put away. “I am no warrior.”
“You’re a seer,” the princess replied. “I need you to see how I can free her.”
“I need guidance. Who is your mother? Who imprisoned her? How?” He likely had an idea in his head already—a demon-slayer as accomplished as the Rain Princess could only come from so many places.
The princess hesitated only a moment before replying. “My mother is the Thunder Dragon. My father imprisoned her.”
“Then there is nothing we can do,” said Lucanus. The princess rounded on him, furious.
“You said you would be silent!”
“Until your audience was over, which it is.” His polite smile mocked her. “The Rain Emperor is a powerful friend and ally. We would be fools to move against him.”
“He has no power without me,” she spat. “I made him the Rain Emperor. I can un-make him.”
“Or you could,” the Oracle spoke up. “If he did not hold your mother hostage.”
“You see my dilemma.” The princess’s knuckles turned white against the handle of her weapon. “You know my deeds. You know the blood I have spilled for the glory of someone I hate. Imagine what I would do for someone I love.”
“I find it strange, that if you’re the source of his glory, he could bind a dragon in the first place.” The Oracle’s eyes darted at his uncle. The princess read the warning in his eyes; time—and Lucanus’s patience—was short.
“The Eternal Priestesses of the Cleansing Fire helped him,” she said quickly. “They have a divine beast of their own. Is there a way I could make them undo it?”
“I don’t need to be an oracle to know the answer,” said Lucanus. “The priestesses will not move against the emperor, and he will not risk their alliance.”
The conversation was over. The Oracle did the only thing he could, and flung himself into the tides of Fate.
It was a storm-tossed sea, as it always was, but the princess had given him enough to find the right current. Images flashed past as he fought toward the surface. Fire—wind and rain—the glint of a silver chain—
He broke the surface and gasped back into his body. “You are wrong, Uncle,” he called out. “The Eternal Priestesses do not need the emperor. They will turn against him.” His eyes vanished behind fields of blinding white. “They hunger forever, like the cleansing flames they serve. They will suffer no ruler above them, nor beside.”
She took the prophecy back to the Rain Emperor.
Her father wasted no time starting a war.
Yin came down the mountain looking damper than usual, but a great deal lighter. She passed the pyre without a word and continued down to the house, and was back within half an hour with a bag slung over her shoulder.
Setting aside his knitting, Cassius sidled up to her. “What’s in the bag?”
Yin’s face lit up. Once she reached the pyre she upended it, spilling out smooth, colorful pebbles and a few handfuls of bright yellow flowers. “I pick a stone every time we visit the river. Better than jewels, I’d say. And I spotted more flowers on the way. I know we already have some, but we can always have more, can’t we?”
Kaveh scooped up the flowers readily. “Of course—but are you sure about the rocks? I don’t want to ruin your collection, and my fire will scorch all these nice colors—”
He only stopped when Yin pressed his hands to either side of his face, squeezing his mouth into a pucker. “Kaveh. They are rocks.”
“But they’re your rocks,” Kaveh mumbled.
“False,” she declared. “I got them for you, therefore they are your rocks. If you don’t want them then tell me so, but please, if you do, decorate your pyre with them. It’s why I collected them in the first place.”
Kaveh’s face melted between her hands, and his eyes went watery. “I love them,” he admitted.
Smiling, Yin pressed a kiss to his lips, then his nose. “Good.”
In spite of his initial misgivings, Kaveh was immediately placing each river pebble on the pyre with the delicacy of a jeweler placing gems in a crown. Yin sat with Cassius to watch him work, and Cassius kissed her heavily scarred cheek.
“He deserves all the flowers and nice rocks on the mountain.”
“He does,” Yin sighed.
“I just wish I could do more.”
Yin glared at him. “You’re doing exactly what you need to do. We both know I’d make a mess of knitting with my awful stubby hands.”
“Your hands are lovely,” Cassius informed her, letting his head rest on Yin’s shoulder. Together they watched Kaveh continue fussing with the pyre.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “He said he isn’t in pain, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s… it’s alright that we’re here, isn’t it?” Yin asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Phoenixes in stories always do this alone.” Yin watched Kaveh’s back as he tucked flowers and herbs among the branches. “And the people at his last few pyres were either hurting him or burning with him.”
“It’s different,” Cassius reminded her. “We’re different. We’re going to stay a safe distance from the pyre—”
“I think he’s more nervous about that than about burning to death and re-emerging from the ashes.”
“And we’d both rather cut our own hands off than lay them on him.”
“As if you ever have a problem putting your hands on him—”
Cassius shoved her. It was like pushing against a tree trunk, but Yin obligingly tumbled into the nearest patch of grass. From the half-finished pyre, Kaveh laughed at them.
Yin lay on her back and stared up at the clouds. “I just don’t want to remind him of the bad times by accident.”
“If he didn’t want us here, we wouldn’t be here.”
She sighed. “Yes, because he’s so good at asking for what he wants. It’s not as if he ties himself in guilty knots when we try to suggest something nice for the pyre. You heard him, he almost didn’t take the rocks. Rocks, Cassius!”
Retrieving his project, Cassius resumed knitting. “If you think that was bad, just wait until I have to convince him to put this on it.”
“Isn’t it odd that one of his biggest problems is one of the reasons we love him?” Yin remarked. “He always thinks of others and almost never of himself.”
Cassius snorted. The little noise held a lifetime of vengeance. “We both know whose fault that is.”
“—but I don’t see you telling your emperor where to shove his orders.”
Glaring at the phoenix gave her no satisfaction; she had never seen the face of a bird look so weary. “I can’t,” she said. “Your people made sure of that.”
The phoenix looked away.
“That’s what happened to you too, isn’t it?” she went on. “They chained you, just like they did my mother. Is that why you convinced them to turn on the Emperor?”
“I did no such thing. The Emperor struck first.”
“Only because the Oracle of Imperium told us your priestesses would have if we didn’t,” she shot back.
“Did he now,” the phoenix said thoughtfully.
“And anyway, prisoner or not, no one can force my mother to do anything. You’re immortal and divine—how can they force you to the pyre?”
For the first time, the great bird turned to look her in the eye. She blinked, and he was a bird no longer.
He was not beautiful—which surprised her. A phoenix in human form ought to be beautiful. But his human face held things that had been invisible on a bird’s. Hatred tinged his features with a subtle ugliness.
“My high priestess hates this form,” he told her. “She says it’s beneath me. But I think she hates that it doesn’t hide what she is.”
He shifted his shoulder toward her, so that she could see his back. She wished the scars across it surprised her, but they only brought the priestess’s earlier words into sharp focus.
“When my body is ready to die, it burns and remakes itself,” the phoenix told her. “Sometimes, she likes to hasten the process.”
The dagger hung heavy in her hand. “And if I killed you now? What would stop you from burning this temple to the ground?”
Before the phoenix could reply, a shriek of rage rang through the temple. Within moments the phoenix was a bird again, and they were surrounded by guards and priestesses, with the furious high priestess at their head.
“After all we’ve done for him, the Rain Emperor sends his assassin against our Lord?” Agape hissed.
“You already turned on him.” The princess rose to her feet, dagger in hand. “It’s a little late to protest now.”
“We do not bow in fear to the emperor.” Agape’s voice dripped with contempt. “Nor his half-breed bastard. And we will aid him no longer.”
From beneath her robe she drew a silver chain, wound around her wrist like a bracelet. Sparks of lightning ran along it, fragments of the divine beast it held back. Grasping it in both hands, she raised it over her head to the light of the dying sun.
“The Emperor forgets his debts,” she said with a terrible smile. “So we will remind him.”
With a wrench, she ripped the chain in two.
Every ear in the room popped. The smell of the air changed, ozone overtaking incense. Whatever Agape said next was drowned out by a sudden cacophony of thunder that shook the temple to its foundations.
As the princess fled, leaving no corpses in her wake, she added her wild laughter to the din.
