The Burning God (The Poppy War, #3)

by R.F. Kuang

Heat surged through her veins. She forced her mouth onto Nezha’s. Flames erupted underwater, and the river exploded around them. Nezha’s grip broke loose. She saw bubbles roiling over his skin, searing pink marks across his face.

Deep within the grotto, something moved. Nezha gave a low moan of terror. “Rin, what have you done?”

The world exploded into red; she could perceive nothing else. She couldn’t tell if Nezha was safe, or if he’d been burned alive by their mere proximity.

She went there to kill him and still worries if hes safe :(

All she could see now was a vast black plain, and two forces darting and dueling within it. She couldn’t feel Kitay. In that moment, he seemed so distant that they might not have been anchored at all. Hello again, little bird. The Dragon’s voice was a rumbling groan, deep, yawning, and suffocating. It sounded how drowning felt. You are persistent.

The Phoenix lunged. The Dragon reared back. Rin struggled to make sense of the colliding gods.

She could see only hints of it; great explosions of sound and color in unimaginable shades and registers as forces of fire and water tangled, two forces strong enough to bring down the world, each balanced only by the other.

She felt the impact later, an earth-shaking crash that left her ears ringing. But she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even hurt. She opened her eyes, confused, then glanced up. A great shield of water stood above her. Beside her stood Nezha, hands stretched to the sky. His mouth was moving. Several seconds passed before his shouts became audible through her ringing ears. “—you fucking idiot—what were you—” “I thought I could kill it,” she murmured, still dazed. “I thought . . . I really thought—” “Do you know what you’ve done?” He nodded toward the city.

He protected her ughhhh i love him sm

“Help me up,” Rin whispered. “I almost did it, I can try again—” “You can’t. You’re too weak.” Nezha spoke without inflection or spite. It wasn’t an insult, it was simple fact. As he watched the dark form moving beneath the surface toward the city, his scarred face set in resolve. He dropped the water barrier—it was hardly necessary now—and began striding toward the Dragon. Rin reached instinctively for his hand, then drew back, confused by herself. “What are you—” “Keep down,” he said. “And when you get the chance, run.” She was too stunned to do anything but nod. She couldn’t get past how bizarre this was; how they had suddenly stopped trying to kill each other; how they were, of all things, fighting again on the same side. She couldn’t fathom why Nezha had saved her. Nor could she understand the way her heart twisted as she watched him walk forth, arms spread and vulnerable, offering himself to the beast.

“Do you remember?” Nezha shouted. “You ate Mingzha. You were so hungry, you didn’t keep him for your cave. But you wanted me. You’ve always wanted me, haven’t you?”

The Dragon did not stir. Rin clamped her hand over her mouth, terrified beyond words.

He looked so small. “I’ll go,” Nezha said. “We’ll go into that grotto. You don’t have to be alone anymore. But you have to stop. Leave this city alone.”

No pookie

“Nezha,” she whispered, “what the fuck?”

Rin glanced to Nezha. He stood stock-still, eyes wide in horror.

The lightning now landed on Nezha. He stood with his back to her, arms splayed out like he was being crucified, twitching and jerking as crackling brightness ricocheted across his body.

Bro loves you so much

The bolts thickened, doubled, and intensified. Harsh, ragged sobs escaped Nezha’s throat.

Focus, child, the Phoenix urged. Strike now.

Rin’s first instinct was to rush toward him. She took two steps, then caught herself, utterly bewildered. Why would she help him? Because he’d just saved her? But that was his mistake, not hers—she shouldn’t bother, she should just let him die— Shouldn’t she?

HELP HIM GIRL

For a moment, they merely looked at each other, taking stock of one another, staring as if they were strangers. Rin’s gaze dropped to the golden circlets around his wrists. Her stomach twisted as she realized what they were. Not jewelry. Conductors. They hadn’t attracted the lightning by accident. They’d been designed for it. Then it dawned on her, what Nezha must have gone through in the year since she’d left Arlong. After Rin escaped, Petra had needed a shaman upon whom to experiment.

Slowly, miserably, Nezha stood and wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. It came away bloody. “Is she alive?” Rin was so bewildered that his words didn’t process. Nezha nodded at Pipaji and repeated the question. “Is she alive?” “I—I don’t know,” Rin said, startled into a response. “She—I’ll try.” “I didn’t want to . . .” Nezha coughed again. His chin glistened red. “It wasn’t her fault.”

“You should have killed me,” she said at last. He gave her a long look. She couldn’t read his face; what she thought she saw confused her. “But I never wanted you dead.” “Then why?”

“Duty,” he said. “You couldn’t understand.” She had nothing to say to that.

He watched her in silence, his sword dangling uselessly at his side. His face spasmed, as if he, too, was struggling with thoughts he could never say out loud.

But she couldn’t make the flame come. That required rage, and she couldn’t even summon the faintest memory of anger. She couldn’t curse, or shout, or do any of the million things she’d imagined she might do if she had the chance to confront him like this. How many chances, asked Altan, are you going to throw away? At least one more, she thought, and ignored his jeering laughter. If she could remember how to hate Nezha, she would have killed him. But instead, she turned her back and let him make his retreat while she made hers.

“Please,” she said. Her eyes flickered the faintest brown. “While I’m here.” Rin held her gaze, stricken. Death or the Chuluu Korikh. Five simple, devastating words. Rin had known them from the start. There were only two possible fates for the Cike: death or immurement. A commander made sure it was the first. A commander culls.

“You still have to fight it. You can’t poison me.” “I won’t,” Pipaji whispered. “Thank you.” Rin

the Dragon’s wrath. Vaguely she understood that she had won. Arlong was destroyed. The Hesperians had fled. Nezha and his government had made a hasty retreat out the channel. Rin learned these facts over the next hour, had them repeated to her over and over again by ecstatic officers, but she was drifting about in a fugue state, so tired and confused that she thought they were joking. For how could this be called a victory?

“I don’t understand,” she kept saying to Kitay. “What happened?” “It’s over,” he told her. “The city’s ours.” “But how?”

He responded patiently, the same way he had all afternoon. “The Dragon destroyed the city. And then you banished the Dragon.” “But I didn’t do that.” She gazed out at the flooded canals. “I didn’t do anything.” All she’d done was poke a beast she couldn’t handle. All she’d done was lie flat on her ass, scared out of her wits, while Nezha and a Hesperian pilot fought a battle of lightning that she didn’t understand.

“They were like children,” she said. “I didn’t—I didn’t want . . .” “You never want to hurt them.” Altan sounded gentler than she’d ever heard him—gentler than she’d ever permitted his memory to be. “But you have to. You have to put them through hell, because that’s the only way anyone else will survive.” “I would have spared them if I could have.” For once, he didn’t jeer. He just sounded sad. “Me too.”

“I think I understand you now,” she said after a long silence. “Oh?” Altan cocked his head. “What do you understand?” “Why you pushed me so hard. Why you hurt me. I wasn’t a person to you, I was a weapon, and you needed me to work.” “You can still love your weapons,” Altan said. “You can beat them into shape and then watch them destroy themselves and know that it was all fully necessary, but that doesn’t mean you can’t love them, too.”

“Does it ever get easier?” she asked. “What? Sending people to their deaths?” Altan sighed. “You wish. It’ll never stop hurting. They’ll think that you don’t care. That you’re a ruthless monster in single-minded pursuit of victory. But you do care. You love your shamans like your own family, and a knife twists in your heart every time you watch one of them die. But you have to do it. You’ve got to make the choices no one else can. It’s death or the Chuluu Korikh. Commanders cull.” “I didn’t want it to be me,” she said. “I’m not strong enough.” “No.” “It should have been you.” “It should have been me,” he agreed. “But you’re the one who got out. So see this through to the end, kid. That’s the least you owe to the dead.”

“That’s not the point. We have to keep vigil.” “Do we have to?” “Thousands of people died to win you this war. It wasn’t just your shamans. It was soldiers whose names you never even learned. You’re going to honor them. You’re going to keep vigil.”

His voice trailed away. His eyes widened, focused on something just over her shoulder. Too late she heard it as well, the crunch of footsteps over burned grass and bone. When she turned, she saw only one silhouette against the dark. Nezha had come alone. Unarmed.

He always looked so different in the moonlight. His skin shone paler, his features looked softer, resembling less the harsh visage of his father and more the lovely fragility of his mother. He looked younger. He looked like the boy she’d known at school.

Rin wondered briefly if he’d come...

Kitay broke the silence. “We br...

Nezha held out a hand. Kitay passed him the bottle as he approached. Nezha didn’t bother to sniff for poison; he just tossed ...

Kitay had been the first to reach out with his fingers, and then all three of them were holding hands, Nezha and Rin on either side of Kitay, and it felt and looked absolutely, terribly wrong and still Rin never wanted to let go.

Was this how Daji, Jiang, and Riga had once felt? What were they like at the height of their empire? Did they love one another so fiercely, so desperately? They must have. No matter how much they despised one another later, so much that they’d precipitated their own deaths, they must have loved one another once.

She wondered what she would say if she could reach her dead. She would tell Pipaji and Dulin that they had done well. She would tell Suni, Baji, and Ramsa that she was sorry. She would tell Altan that he was right. She would tell Master Jiang thank you.

“I wish things had been different,” Nezha said.

When the sun came up, Rin and Kitay got up, shook the ache from their bones, and trudged back toward the city. Nezha walked in the other direction. They didn’t care to watch where he went.