Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (Song of the Last Kingdom, #1)

by Amélie Wen Zhao

But in rare moments like this, when the sun hung ripe and swollen as a mandarin over the glittering sea, there was still a shattered-glass beauty to be found in the remnants of a conquered land.

Lan raised her eyes heavenward and mouthed the words along with him—words she had heard a hundred times: “There are old gods and new gods, kind gods and fickle gods—and most powerful of them all are the Four Demon Gods.”

The long, booming tolls of the dusk bells echoed in the distance, cutting through her memories. Her eyes flew open, and there it was again, the empty sea looming so lonely before her, echoing with all that she had lost.

because, well, how did you destroy a people? You began by cutting off their roots.

“But what they do not know is that, so long as we live on, we carry inside us all that they have destroyed. And that is our triumph; that is our rebellion.”

Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.

fate had come knocking at her door and presented her with this chance. She would take it. She would no longer be the flower. She would be the blade.

“When you are able to pierce my heart with this dagger,” Zen said, “you will be good enough to stand as my equal in practitioning.”

“Yīn is as bad as shadows are bad. Or darkness, or cold, or death. Such concepts are normally dreaded or given negative connotations compared to light and warmth and life…and yet, can you think of a world without them?”

the recognition in his eyes felt like coming home: a longing and grief for a part of her history and her identity that she had never known.

“I wish for you to not go anywhere without me. In this world and the next. I wish for you to choose me.” A pause, and softer: “That is, if you would wish it.”

Tonight, there was tranquility in Zen’s gaze, the shimmer of something that might have been joy as he beheld her, drinking her in. They remained like that, lying side by side, gazing at each other and marveling at the small miracle of two lives having crossed, two souls having found each other in this vast world.

“I have chosen my path. If you are not with me, then you are against me,” he said, and she knew she had lost him.

“Live not for those whose souls rest in eternal slumber in the next world…but for those still struggling to find that peace in this one.”