Zen stood before her, black páo billowing in the slight breeze. The drumbeat of terrible yīn energies had vanished, the stillness gone without a trace as the lake waters rippled, the pines around them swayed, the clouds above them shifted. “Lan,” Zen said, and it was his voice, his face, her name in his mouth that she had heard over the course of the past several weeks. Relief crashed into her. “Why are you here?” She stared at him, at that cool, unreadable face he had had the first night they’d met. The one she had found her way past little by little, like sun melting snow. Now it felt like
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