The Dragon Wakes with Thunder

One

You may burn bamboo, but it will still stand straight. You may shatter jade, but its color will not fade.

-Book of Odes, 856

Time bore the quality of a tangled spool of thread. I could not unravel the knots, could not sense where things ended, could not recall where things began.

I started, like always, from what I knew: I was in the palace dungeons, in the capital city of Anlai, my home. My home when I had no ability to choose where I called home.

I had been here for some time now. I had not tried to count the days, which had bled into weeks or months or years. By the chill in the air, and the fur lining of my jail warden's coat, winter was fast approaching.

Snow would be settling on the branches of Xiuying's beloved plum trees, which she pruned every spring. The snow would spread across the garden like colorless jewels, catching the winter sunlight and refracting it in every direction. Rouha would be chiseling out exuberant ice sculptures, and Plum would be trying to eat snow. Uncle Zhou would be simmering his favorite winter melon soup, which tasted heavenly on a cold snowy morning.

The taste of life had been sweet, hadn't it? But it tasted sweetest when it was taken from you.

I remembered the thrill of unfathomable power surging through my veins, that eddy of sheer delight as roiling waves rose to meet my call. Racing through a darkening forest, fighting side by side with my comrades in arms. Knowing my platoon had my back. Knowing I had friends to call my own.

Friends, they said, before betraying me. But we didn't think about that anymore.

I remembered climbing onto a terrace railing and looking out over the dark expanse of water, the waiting ocean like a well of black, black ink. The recklessness that felt like a drug, better than a drug, the thrill of knowing the waves would catch me. Will you obey me? I'd asked the sea. Will you obey me as you obey the dragon?

And yet, down here in the dungeons, my memories felt as distant as dreams.

The outer door to my prison cell clanged open. I heard the thud of footsteps, even and heavy. Three sets of them.

"Good evening, sweetheart. Let's continue where we left off last time, shall we?"

My heart began to stutter. A practiced response, a trained step in the choreography. Already I could feel the nerves in my hand tingling, anticipating the pain to come. Perhaps the anticipation was worse than the pain itself, for these days, pain lingered beneath every waking moment. There was the pain of separation: of no longer hearing the dragon's voice. The pain of dependency; I needed lixia in my bloodstream like a person needed water. Then there were the more insidious hurts, carved into me like scars: the marks of betrayal, of loneliness. Of knowing there could be no happiness for someone like me.

A perversion. A threat to the state. A girl who desired more.

"Get up."

I did not move. They unlocked the door to my cell and lifted me. Still I did not resist. I felt them clasp chains around my legs, securing me to the interrogation chair.

"Your greed is unending," the dragon had once told me. "An ocean's hunger."

They fit wooden sticks around my fingers, opting for my left hand this time. Slowly, the guards pulled the ropes connecting the sticks, not enough to inflict pain, only discomfort. Ironically, the zanzhi, finger crushing, was a torture method reserved for women, as it was considered more humane than jiagun, leg twisting. But I had endured both.

"Where are the remaining black magic practitioners hiding?" asked Warden Hu.

I tried to speak but no sound emerged. It must have been days since I'd last spoken aloud.

"Give her water."

One of the guards forced a canteen of water down my throat, and I sputtered, coughing.

"Where are the black magic practitioners hiding?" he asked again.

I cleared my throat. "There are no others."

"You lie." He nodded once. My throat tightened with the ropes.

I gasped as the pain came, sharp and staggering. Although the pain was concentrated along the base of my fingers, my entire arm reverberated with feeling. Despite the chill in the air, I was soon sweating.

They released the ropes. I sagged against the chair, my hand throbbing with pain. I stared at the useless appendage as if it belonged to a stranger. My right hand was too sore to use, and now my left would soon follow. How did they expect me to eat and drink? How did they expect me to live?

Or had this been their intention all along? To bide their time until Sky forgot me, until my family forgot me, until I faded into oblivion, an unnamed scratch in the annals of history?

"The might of the sea," Qinglong had said, "is yours."

"Where are the remaining black magic practitioners hiding?" Warden Hu asked a third time, his voice as calm as a still lake.

"I know of no others," I said hoarsely. "But perhaps . . . there could be minor spirit summoners in the south? They are more open to lixia practitioning in Ximing . . ."

"Ximing?" He leaned in. "Is that where-"

"Let me through!"

Warden Hu startled at the sounds of a scuffle. A figure clad in white shoved past the stationed guards, striding toward me like a mirage. His complexion was so fair and his robes so clean, he looked like he belonged in a heavenly realm, one set apart from the filth of this place.

"Warden Hu?" Sky's surprise was evident. "What are you . . . ?"

His eyes flicked to me-and I caught the horror in them. Without meaning to, I shrank from his gaze, as if I had anywhere to hide here. It stung for him to look at me like that, to see me with pity, and beneath it, revulsion.

Sky whirled on the warden. "What are you doing to her?"

Warden Hu straightened his shoulders. "Your Highness-"

"My father strictly forbade torture of any kind!"

"The Imperial Commander authorized me to conduct this interrogation," Warden Hu said, careful to keep his tone neutral.

Sky glared at him. "Then why sneak around like this-in the middle of the night, as if . . ." His face changed as the answer came to him. "To keep me from finding out," he finished flatly.

Sky was always like this, as expressive as an open flame. It endeared him to me, but also, it made me resentful. Because no woman could live like that. No, what we were trained to do was conceal, conceal, conceal. Every emotion flung far beneath a smiling mask of good humor and grace.

"Your father believes you have more pressing matters to attend to, Your Highness. You need not concern yourself with the welfare of a state traitor."

Sky ignored him, seizing the bars of my cell. "Meilin," he said urgently, and up close he was so lovely and clean and pure it was difficult to look at him. He radiated health and vigor, like nothing else in these dungeons. "I'm going to get you out of here. I promise," he said. "Just-hold on a bit longer. I'm sorry."

I did not feel any particular emotion, and yet my eyes filled with tears. I did not know why I was crying.

"Meilin," Sky said again, but his face had become an indistinct blur in my vision.

"Conserve your qi," the dragon had warned me. "You must learn to harness your power."

The Azure Dragon had lied about many things, but he had not lied about this. No matter-I had not listened. At first, I'd fled from my power, and when I'd finally embraced it, I'd broken every rule, believing myself the exception. I'd overused my lixia, draining my qi-all to keep going, to keep fighting. For what? To save my family, my kingdom? Yes, I had saved them. Yet still I felt empty. Because all along, what I'd really wanted was to prove myself.

I'd wanted to show everyone that I belonged. No-more than belonged. I'd wanted to become the hero of legend, to have my name whispered through the streets, my deeds etched in the stones of history.

Instead, Warden Hu had informed me I had become a stain in the war annals, a cautionary tale passed from parent to child. Like my mother before me, my legacy would be one of madness and decay-a rot spreading in dark places, remembered not for what it built but for what it destroyed.

That young girl from a year ago, the one who'd dreamed of adventure, of seeing the world beyond the women's quarters. She had sought wonder, wildness. She had believed in the world's capacity for beauty.

Only a year had passed, and yet I could no longer recall what that felt like. To believe in the goodness of people. To seek justice but live with compassion. To hope for better days.

There was no hope for someone like me.


Some time later, I woke to a dark silhouette against my cell, slashing the light of the flickering lantern. His long shadow stretched across the length of the corridor like a grasping hand.

"Did I wake you?" the Ximing prince asked. Against the icy air of my cell, his low baritone felt like the crackle of a warm fire.

I pushed myself upright, wincing as I put weight on my throbbing hands. "I no longer sleep these days."

"That doesn't sound healthy," he said, his tone light and teasing.

I was in no mood for his banter. "What do you want, Lei?"

He peered down at me through the bars, his eyes narrowing. "I heard you've been refusing food."

I looked away. "I'm not hungry."

It was a lie. I was hungry all the time. Hungry for lixia, for the intoxicating surge of spirit power in my veins. I needed it, craved it, ached for it all the time. I could feel the nearness of my jade, its energy thrumming just out of reach. The lack left me breathless and off-balance, as if I were missing a vital sense.

"Funny," said Lei, his expression unreadable. "You used to strike me as a survivor."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I snapped, losing my temper. How dare he judge me from his seat of privilege? "Go gloat somewhere else, will you?"

He crouched in front of me, so that we were eye level through the bars. "From one prisoner to the next-" He tilted his head, his amber eyes seeming to absorb the flickering firelight. "If you lose your will to live, it's simple. You die."

With that, he rose to his feet. "Do you want to die? If you die, they win. Remember that."