Part 3 · Chapters
Reluctant Companions
Victory can lift your head—and make you lose sight of those beside you.
To reach the Valley of Wind, they had to cross the Steam Marsh.
It lay where the lands of fire and ice met. Underground hot springs touched permanently frozen soil, filling the air with mist so thick they could not see their own hands. The marsh creatures absorbed single elements. Fireballs and ice blades only made them larger.
At the third fork, Xiao Jin heard someone calling for help in the distance.
“East.” He turned at once.
Shuang Ya caught his cloak. “The wind is coming from the west. That voice could be a lure.”
“Or it could be a real person.”
“We're carrying evidence that could stop a war. We can't leave the route every time we hear a voice.”
Xiao Jin shook off her hand. “If we won't save the people in front of us, who are we stopping the war for?”
He rushed into the mist, following the cries. Shuang Ya cursed under her breath, but ran after him.
Two herb gatherers were trapped in the mud, with a steaming mud beast circling them. The moment Xiao Jin's blade entered its muddy body, it was absorbed, and the creature swelled. Shuang Ya froze the surface, but heat inside blew the ice apart.
“Don't attack it directly.” Shuang Ya studied the marsh. “Heat the water.”
“Doesn't it absorb fire?”
“I don't need fire. I need steam.”
Xiao Jin spread his small flames over the water while Shuang Ya instantly froze the rising steam. Countless tiny ice crystals hung in the air. Without direct elemental energy, they could not be absorbed. She closed her hand. The crystals stabbed in from every direction, forcing the solid core out of the mud.
Xiao Jin shattered it with one slash.
After rescuing the herb gatherers, they had missed the safe wind window for crossing the marsh. They had to spend the night on high ground.
Xiao Jin built a fire. Shuang Ya sat far away.
“I thought you didn't want to save them,” he said.
“I said think first. Not leave them.”
After a silence, Shuang Ya watched the fire. “I used to rush toward every cry too.”
Her older brother, Shuang He, had been a scout for the Frost Kingdom. During a retreat, Shuang Ya had seen people trapped in a village behind enemy lines and left her unit to save them. Shuang He stayed behind to cover her. He had been missing ever since.
“Everyone says he might still be alive. Those words hurt more than death,” Shuang Ya said. “Since then, I've told myself I must never let feelings cloud my judgment.”
Xiao Jin added a dry branch to the fire.
“I used to think being calm meant not caring.”
“And now?”
“Now I think you're just terrified of losing someone else.”
Shuang Ya looked up to glare at him, but her eyes reddened first. “You really are annoying sometimes.”
“I hear that a lot.”
The next day, they reached the entrance to the Valley of Wind. Gales stood like a transparent wall across its mouth, tearing apart any flame that came close.
Xiao Jin raised his hand. For the first time, the Ember Blade went out completely.
Shuang Ya held the piece of ice her brother had left her. Xiao Jin asked no more questions. From then on, whenever he saw her coldness, the first thing he saw was that fragment of ice, poised on the edge of breaking.