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But I don’t care how indebted I am to the elders or the gods. If they don’t respect me just because I’m from the “wrong” half of the population, I’m not respecting them back.
That’s the way I feared Big Sister would die when our family forced her to enlist under a Prince-class pilot, the second most powerful rank. But she never made it to the battlefield. The pilot killed her the traditional, physical way. For what, I don’t know. Our family only got her ashes back. They’ve been devastated for eighty-one days now…because they didn’t get the big war death compensation they were banking on.
That’s not true though
“What is it about gender that matters so much to the system, anyway? Isn’t piloting entirely a mental thing? So why is it always the girls that have to be sacrificed for power?”
I wouldn’t live and suffer for anyone else, but I would die to avenge my sister.
But it’s piloted by Li Shimin, the Iron Demon, a half-Rongdi death-row inmate who murdered his own father and both brothers at just sixteen.
But I have no faith in love. Love cannot save me. I choose vengeance.
Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. From most yáng to most yīn, in that order. They’re more metaphorical than literal, and interact with each other in countless combinations.
“It can be pretty magical, don’t you think?” “Are you sure about this, curious girl?” “It’s going to be okay. Believe in me. Believe in us.” The spirit metal flower appears over and over. Same lines, same moves, different girls.
Light fissures under my hand. White light, the color of Metal qì, which represents forces of firmness, persistence, precision, and control. This must be what’s dominant inside me. It’s perfect for sculpting razor-sharp weapons out of spirit metal. My fingers claw into my breastplate, grabbing hold of a hilt.
“You’ve been living a dream for long enough!” I yell at the cameras between bursts of maniacal laughter, raising my arms. “Welcome to your nightmare!”
Iron Widow. Even if that’s not what I really am, even if this is just a fluke, the mere possibility of girls like that sends my heart racing and my head spinning. But what happened to them? Would the army really rather kill them than use their power? Do they honestly fear girls more than Hunduns?
I understand the game now. It’s not that girls are always worse at piloting Chrysalises. It’s that whenever there’s a girl with a tremendously high spirit pressure, she gets shoved with a boy with an even higher one, so no male will ever be overpowered.
My laughter flows into the shadows at random intervals. Did I actually think, even for a moment, that what I pulled off in the Nine-Tailed Fox would matter? That they would let me live after I murdered one of their most popular and powerful pilots?
Skies, am I turning into one of those girls who totter to their deaths under the delusion that they could be the one-in-ten-thousand Iron Princess? That’s really what you are, though.
It’s hilarious. Men want us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.
“What do you mean?” I shake my head over and over. “It’s one less monster in the world.” “And there are tens of thousands more just like him.” An ache spreads through me, wringing every fiber of my soul. “So what am I supposed to do?” “Your worst, of course.” She smiles. “Don’t let them fool you, Tian-Tian. There’s more strength in you than you can imagine. Don’t run away. Don’t let them get what they want.”
Suddenly, her hazy figure morphs into the Nine-Tailed Fox’s Heroic Form. Cold metal fingers grasp my face and wrench me to my feet. Burning white eyes glare into mine. “Be their nightmare, Wu Zetian.”
We stare at each other, the Iron Demon and the Iron Widow,
He will not kill me. He does not get to make me a statistic.
But if I don’t detach myself from this fear, they will pummel me with it, choke me with it, enslave me with it.
“You think this scares me?” I say, unbelievably calm for how rabidly I’m fraying apart on the inside. “You think I ever liked being alive? Go ahead. Do me a favor.”
He’s strangling someone with his own chains. I shouldn’t be happy about this. It won’t end well. Yet I can only watch in awe, feeling the rising pulsation of a single word inside me: Finally.
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.
What I have learned through this madness is that you can absolutely solve your problems by throwing money at them.
“Yes, because love doesn’t solve problems,” I say. “Solving problems solves problems.” “Poor guy.” Li Shimin gazes at the kitchen doors, then back at me, shaking his head slightly. “Don’t you ever let that boy go again.”
How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey.
Shimin and I have had enough of begging for forgiveness for being what we are.
It takes no effort to imagine Yizhi becoming him, or him having once been kind and gentle like Yizhi. Which is the most terrifying part of looking at him. This world can make monsters out of anyone.
Make no mistake, though. He is dead. As soon as Shimin and I take Zhou back and receive credit for it, I will come here and slaughter Gao Qiu in the worst possible way. He doesn’t understand how far I’m willing to go to get what I want, and this is how I’ll gain the advantage over him. This isn’t his victory. This is my temporary mercy.
What I hate is the pilot system that insists girls are an unavoidable sacrifice in the process.
Funny that this isn’t even the Hunduns’ world, yet they can use this resource in a way we can’t.
Maybe we’re devalued precisely because we’re so valuable. The world is too afraid of not being able to obtain and control us to respect our true worth.
Despite their best efforts, I find myself worthy of happiness.
The very force of their judgment and hatred will make me unstoppable.
Me, just another person in a long line of people who’ve used him like a tool.
“His skin is so smooth. It’s like porcelain.” I blink. Sometimes, I wonder if Shimin’s range of attraction extends just as far as Yizhi’s.
“Yizhi’s the one you should choose.” I lean forward with a growl, digging my nails into the edge of the bed. “Choose? Why do I have to choose only one of you?”
You may have some undeniably monstrous parts inside you, but that’s okay. I have them too. No matter what anyone says, I’m proud to call you my co-pilot, Iron Demon.”
To have kept choosing to wake up every day and face what life has dealt him, he is the strongest person I can imagine.
There’s something fundamentally different about the kind of pain I endure and the kind of pain he does. My pain is solely due to being born a girl. I know it for sure, I know it’s ridiculous, and I can hate and rebel to my heart’s content. But for him, it’s complicated. Wrapped up in fault, in guilt. A tangle of impossible choices, each of which has bound him into a deeper mess. Even when he did what he believed was right, the universe only punished him for it.
“You didn’t do nothing. You were still fighting for Huaxia. And it’s not wrong to want to live, in any circumstance. Sorry that I ever…implied otherwise. I didn’t value my own life back then.”
An Lushan didn’t treat us like humans, so why should we treat him like one?
An Lushan breathes in shallow spurts, squeezing his eyes shut. “The yīn seat has less active input, more passive input.”
“Are you saying…” He breathes deeply. “A girl’s spirit pressure is actively dampened in a Chrysalis?”
all Balanced Matches are not really balanced matches. A girl would have to overcome this artificial dampener to truly balance with a boy. The girl would have to be stronger.
“Can’t get eager pilots…if they’re afraid of their partners…every battle.” “You don’t think girls are afraid?” “Girls…know how to sacrifice.”
What have I done? My thoughts tangle up. What have I unleashed? But I catch myself the next second, because it’s not me who has wronged him. It’s everyone else. That kind of guy, they called him. That kind of girl, they called me. Well. Here we are. Meeting expectations.
My killer boy, my sweet boy. The final line in this triangular formation we’ve been dancing in, making us stronger than ever.
But the holes are so clean-cut, the only explanation is that they meticulously reuse the same stepping spots. That idea is simultaneously absurd yet disheartening. How can they be better at treating this world than us?
“Wu Zetian,” a medley of voices whispers in my head. Not just Shimin’s, but Big Sister’s as well. And Yizhi’s. And my mother’s. And my grandmother’s. And so, so many nameless girls who have suffered under the lies I must expose. “Be their nightmare.”
