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Qi Yan stares into the infinite eyes of a six-winged seraphim, and she knows her death. She knows her failure. Qi Yan sees her life slip from her fingertips like the sword in her hand, and it sinks blade-first into the fine, white sand.
Without Qi Yan’s magic to sustain it, the seraphim’s light burns through the illusion, melting the silver steel and bands of leather down to its core of wood. My wand , Qi Yan thinks. She sees it at the edge of her line of sight, but she can’t tear her eyes away from the seraphim and its judgment. This is her reckoning, Qi Yan knows. She is facing the consequences of her sins.
The seraphim rears up, wings outstretched, and the light chokes more than it burns. Qi Yan can choose to swallow or drown, but she picks neither. These creatures were born before humans learned how to worship but all humans were born to die, so Qi Yan looks the seraphim in the eyes, all of them—the ones on its six wings and its shifting, amorphous body the color of gold, magic, and sunlight—and she stares.
“Don’t look!” A hand takes her by the shoulder, nails digging into her robes, and jerks her back. Qi Yan’s heels sink into the sand and she stumbles and lands on the ground next to her wand. Instinct drives her to grab it and her sword reforms: double-edged straight steel twice the length of her forearm with a one-handed grip made of worn leather.
Qi Yan pushes forward, poised like a cat ready to spring with taut muscles coiling in her thighs. Her head snaps up to follow billowing black robes and the scintillating shimmer of metal flashing in the light. Qi Yan realizes that what she saw was an afterimage of the blade’s path when two of the seraphim’s wings crumple to the sand in front of her.
For all they look in their golden, god-like glory and the legends of angels of light, seraphim die like mortal birds and just as loud. The seraphim screams and shakes, its uncountable eyes tremble and roll, and when the spellsword in the black robes drives their weapon into what might be the center of the creature, it collapses in a heap of wings and golden-white feathers.
In the silence, Qi Yan hears quiet groans behind her, the rustling of robes and sheathing of swords, and the lapping of waves on the shore as rhythmic as breathing. With the same soul-deep intuition as a rooster with the sunrise, every head on the beach turns to watch the sunset.
Dark purple swallows the sky as the orange light slithers below the curved horizon. Qi Yan can imagine the ripples of waves in the distance being the sun digging its fingers into the soft skin of the sea to stay just a moment longer, but it never lasts, and a collective exhale of relief from the battalion blows the rest of the light down west.
Qi Yan looks back and the seraphim’s body is gone. She catches a glimpse of luminescent dark metal as the spellsword sheathes their blade and turns to face Qi Yan. She recognizes the wand tucked into the spellsword’s waistband before they pull down their hood and mask, and tension seizes her tighter than the grip of the seraphim’s multitudinous gaze.
Qi Yan hastily bows before she meets her eyes. “Your Highness,” she murmurs to her feet as black-clothed legs step into view.
“Raise your head, spellsword.”
Her voice is soft and young, and Qi Yan grits her teeth because she can’t disobey. Slowly, she looks up to find black eyes peering at her with obvious curiosity. The princess’ straight, black hair curls half-tucked in the hood of her robes, and the rest of it falls flat over her shoulders to frame her small, pale face.
Red lips tug into a smile and the princess’ hand darts out to grab Qi Yan’s chin. She’s too startled to pull away, and her eyes widen, which is a mistake because the princess only leans in closer.
“Your eyes,” she murmurs. Qi Yan watches the princess’ gaze flicker between both of Qi Yan’s eyes, and sweat breaks out along her back as she understands the depth of her mistake.
Looking directly at the seraphim must have burned away the illusion that disguised her eye color. Looking directly at the seraphim can drive spellswords to insanity. Qi Yan had looked at the creature of light, and Princess Nangong Jingnu was the one who’d saved her.
Qi Yan’s stomach turns with growing nausea and her leaden tongue works to come up with an excuse. “I can . . . no longer see well in the dark.”
“Is that so?” Nangong Jingnu releases Qi Yan’s face, allowing her to rise fully, but surprises her again by coming forward to take her by the hand. “Then I’ll help you once more.”
“I- There’s no need, your Highness,” Qi Yan stammers and tries to draw away, but Nangong Jingnu’s grip tightens.
“Once the medics clear you, I’ll be able to rest easy. Until then”—Nangong Jingnu gives Qi Yan a pointed look that she has to pretend not to see in the darkness—“bear with me.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Qi Yan’s ears redden beneath her hood, and she keeps her head down as the rest of the battalion files in to follow Nangong Jingnu to the edge of the woods where the tree line meets the sand. Several others eye Qi Yan with clear envy. She hurriedly sheathes her sword and tucks her wand into the folds of her robes in hopes that nobody can identify her.
Nangong Jingnu releases Qi Yan to press her palms together as she faces the impenetrable darkness of the woods. All Qi Yan can hear is the silken shifting of leaves blending in with the sound of the ocean behind them.
“Father,” Nangong Jingnu says into the darkness. “Will you bring us home?”
Without waiting, Nangong Jingnu takes Qi Yan’s hand once more and tugs her forward, and stepping into the shadows is like stepping into the sea. It creeps up through her clothes with the same sinking coldness, but it smells like early morning dew and carries a crisper, sharper chill than the salty seaside breeze.
This is what Nangong Jingnu always says: bring us home .
But there is no us, Qi Yan thinks as she continues to walk, her body straining to fight the sluggish shadows that drag on her black robes because they know that she is foreign, that she does not belong. Your home is not my home. Qi Yan wonders if one of these days, Nangong Jingnu’s father is going to send everybody else home while Qi Yan walks herself all the way to hell.
But if the battlefront is Qi Yan’s reality and the liminal in-between is purgatory, then Nangong Jingnu’s home is already Qi Yan’s hell. A pair of steady hands reach out next to Qi Yan, which causes her step to falter because she’d been walking in stride with Nangong Jingnu, but the princess either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
Nangong Jingnu’s small, slender fingers close on the fabric of the space around them as she gently tears it open. Flickering firelight slips into the pocket of shadow, and the fragile in-between falls apart into nothingness like a snowflake on warm skin.
Qi Yan and Nangong Jingnu’s battalion of spellswords stand in the middle of Nangong Rang’s great hall, and the emperor himself looks down at their bedraggled group from his throne of black sand and glass.
“Jingnu,” he says as he rises. Nangong Rang’s movement stirs the sand, and the fine granules that fall and touch the hem of his robes where they sweep the floor turn into translucent black glass. The firelight in the chamber seems to lean toward this glass only to be swallowed by it, and the red light follows the emperor as he strides down, his steps solid and sure despite the slippery glossiness of the jagged pieces. They melt back into sand when he passes.
“Father!” Nangong Jingnu chirps and flings herself into Nangong Rang’s arms, uncaring of the eyes of the battalion. Everyone in attendance sweeps their robes out, lowers their head, and folds themselves to the floor. The stone is ice-cold against Qi Yan’s knee.
Nangong Jingnu’s behavior with her father and his with her is unsurprising. Nangong Jingnu is the youngest and the most favored among the three princesses and more powerful than any of Nangong Rang’s children, including the nine princes. Princess of night, dark, and shadow , everyone calls her. Daughter of the sovereign moon.
Qi Yan is neither a child of sunlight nor moonlight. Her eyes are drawn to the sconces of magical flame set into the walls of dark stone, blood-red in color to cast the least amount of light possible. Firelight has always given her a headache from the constant flickering. The way it wavers and trembles between light and darkness has always annoyed her, but Qi Yan sees herself in the fire like how she saw herself in the seraphim, and it takes a concerted effort to drag her gaze away.
Jingnu continues to chatter with her father about their encounter with the seraphim and a few dozens of lesser angels on the white-sand beach while dark ideas spring and flow like hidden groundwater in Qi Yan’s mind.
...
Qi Yan was not born a spellsword, at least not one used to slipping through shadows and turning illusion into reality like the Nangongs and their ilk. Her family’s magic was warm, proud, bold, and all she remembers of it is a single spell.
Her family’s magic will die with her. To make the Nangongs’ magic die with them, one spell will do.
...
The medics can’t figure out anything wrong with her eyes, so Qi Yan is forced to find Nangong Jingnu herself to tell her that she’s fine. When Qi Yan infiltrated Nangong territory by enlisting as a mage with a stolen wand and stolen name, she hadn’t expected to land directly in the lap of her biggest target.
She was content with working under one of the lesser-known princes and maneuvering “accidents” on the battlefield, ripping out the influence of the Nangongs root by root like unruly weeds. Nangong Jingnu, however, turned out to be much harder to kill.
Not just because she was powerful and took out seraphim like they were lowly third-sphere angels, but mostly because she seemed to care. Nangong Jingnu was there to check in with her battalion before and after; she took meals with her spellswords; and most annoyingly, she sat people out until the medics deemed them fit for battle.
It is no surprise to Qi Yan that she finds Nangong Jingnu in the dining hall surrounded by a handful of spellswords. Qi Yan recognizes none of them by face and less than a quarter of them by voice. A mortal mage covers everything but their eyes during battle with immortal—but not invulnerable—beings of sun and light.
“Qi Yan, isn’t it? With the odd eyes?” Nangong Jingnu’s voice draws Qi Yan’s attention down to bright eyes and a friendly smile, her gaze roaming all over Qi Yan’s bared face as she takes it in for the first time. Nangong Jingnu’s black eyes remind Qi Yan of the glass around Nangong Rang’s throne: not only do they take in the firelight, but they also seem to reflect it tenfold.
“Yes, Your Highness.” Qi Yan moves to bow, but a hand on her shoulder stops her. She dimly recalls Nangong Jingnu grabbing that same shoulder to save her life.
“Would you like to sit?” Nangong Jingnu is already moving before Qi Yan can answer, pulling the loose fabric of her robes closer to herself to free the spot beside her. If Qi Yan sits, they’ll be pressed thigh to thigh.
“No, thank you, your Highness,” Qi Yan says with a quick dip of her head in wordless apology. “I’ve only come to tell you that the medics have released me from their care for the next mission.” She feels the silent stare of the rest of the table and keeps herself from glaring back by sheer willpower.
Nangong Jingnu tilts her head like a confused puppy. Red firelight dances in her sleek, black hair and catches on the silver hair clip that keeps her long bangs out of her face. “If you’re sure,” she says finally.
Qi Yan nods once and steps back, bows deeply, and turns away. She can hear the chatter erupt before she leaves earshot.
“What are your relations with her, your Highness?”
“Are you two dating, your Highness?” Qi Yan stiffens and nearly misses a step.
“Do you like her, your Highness?”
Nangong Jingnu just laughs and redirects the conversation with the same easy confidence and grace she carries on the battlefield, and for the second time in as many weeks, Qi Yan is grateful that Nangong Jingnu is as skilled as she seems.
...
Qi Yan darkens the illusion that disguises her odd-colored irises in time with the phases of the moon, aiming to return to the standard black of Nangong mages within one full cycle. The magic is a pain to maintain, and it’s only thanks to years of practice that she can hold the spell without sacrificing concentration.
Which is good because feigning panic while adrenaline licks through her veins as hot and fast as fire is greatly testing the limits of her spellcasting. Qi Yan is dressed in her underclothes, a sleeveless tunic and cotton trousers, both a solid black, as she flees among a crowd of spellswords in a similar state of undress toward the outer courtyard of the Nangong estate.
The barracks are ablaze, and fire has licked up the walls with an unnatural degree of ferocity and heat. The main castle where the royal family resides is regrettably made of stone. Still, progress , Qi Yan thinks as she watches the voracious flames swallow everything that’s made of wood.
Some spellswords mutter and groan in their thin sleeping clothes, and the numbing cold of the outdoors is the only thing keeping Qi Yan’s frozen lips from twisting into a maniacal grin. Some had left their wands, and a spellsword without a wand is simply a spellcaster, significantly weaker and unfit for battle.
The Nangong family has exited their quarters to join the battalions of spellswords, and they all stare at the fire. Water magic is old and long forgotten; all they can do is wait for it to burn out, but Qi Yan stands in their midst and continues to coax the flames with a white-knuckled grip on her wand held down at her side.
In the darkness among black robes, black eyes, and black hair and illuminated by fire, Qi Yan’s amber eyes are aglow and unblinking.
...
Qi Yan almost snapped her ill-begotten wand in half when she learned that she was to join the tenth battalion, led by Nangong Jingnu. Nangong Bao and Nangong Si were both too young to lead their own, but Qi Yan had been aiming for either of them. They made easy targets, young and overconfident boys.
A young and overconfident girl who had the power to back up her bravado was not as easy. Nangong Jingnu led her first mission, then second and third and on with zero casualties.
It’s not only power, Qi Yan comes to realize. Nangong Jingnu is brave because she cares enough to risk her life for the people following her orders. She risked her life to save Qi Yan’s without having known what Qi Yan’s face even looked like.
Qi Yan would have given her life to take Nangong Jingnu’s, and that’s where the difference between them lies. Watching Nangong Jingnu fight the angels—it’s easy enough to pick out where she is on the battlefield because her spells radiate power —Qi Yan wonders if there are gods who have chosen ones because if these gods exist, Nangong Jingnu would be a believer worth fighting for.
The lore says that the beings of light wages war with the beings of darkness and shadow because humans are filled to the brim with sin that spills over and taints the earth around them, but Nangong Jingnu is brilliance in the messiest of ways: she’s all the wild, colorful, chaotic parts of humanity that makes Qi Yan wonder if magic exists just for her to use it.
Qi Yan lost her family due to the Nangong’s bloody rise to power. They killed mages, casters young and old, a betrayal of the closest kind because life has always been good versus evil, dark versus light, humans versus the rest of creation. The Nangong family, whose bloodline specialized in shadow magics, resolved to be the darkest good to blot out the evil light, but they’d sacrificed their humanity and blurred the lines to gray.
Qi Yan wears black robes but she’d been born in reds and oranges, and yet she, too, had blurred her lines to gray. Qiyan Agula died with Qiyan Sukhbaru, Qiyan Nomin, and the rest of her family when she’d killed a spellsword to steal his wand. He was a Nangong mage; she recognized him by the black robes.
If gods have chosen ones, then so do devils.
Nangong Jingnu makes Qi Yan feel like she could ask for absolution, and Nangong Jingnu would wrap her arms around her until her black robes swallow Qi Yan like the dark waters of the night sea to be cleansed, to be forgiven.
She would forgive her.
And that cannot happen. Fire and water can never coexist; Qi Yan has forsaken the idea of reuniting with her family in the afterlife. Heaven does not exist for those chosen by devils, and as punishment for making her resolve waver, Qi Yan will drag Nangong Jingnu to hell alongside her.
...
Qi Yan awakens to the smell of salt in the air and sits up, disoriented until she remembers that her battalion had broken their fast at midnight and traveled to be ready at first light. The mage-prophets, a group of old warlocks imbued with the power of farsight, had warned that the dawn was coming. That was all they had said, but it was ominous enough that Nangong Rang sent out his strongest child and her best spellswords to face the coming light.
The location is different this time. They stand in a grove of trees, eerily quiet but the shadows cast by the shifting leaves give the Nangong spellswords a sense of ease and familiarity.
Qi Yan does not allow herself to be lulled into comfort. Her sword is unsheathed to its full length, the once-unfamiliar weight now known as intimately as her own, and she stares into the growing light of the sky. The deep purple lightens until only a touch of pink is left, like a soft blush on pale cheeks. Qi Yan does not think of Nangong Jingnu, but her eyes dart to her anyway.
The angels never announce their arrival. There’s no shift in the air like lightning before a storm and no telling smell like the coming of rain. They come as quiet and gentle as first light, as creeping and insidious and lethal as venom pulsing through blood. Qi Yan can feel the sweat bead along her upper lip underneath her mask and along her brow where her hood is pulled low.
Everyone’s head snaps up when a flutter of bird’s wings breaks through the stillness of the forest. A white bird—a dove, Qi Yan recognizes—flies out from behind the thick boughs of a tree to land on the leafy forest floor. The pristine white of its feathers makes the hair on Qi Yan’s arms raise. It resembles a seraphim, although the angels’ feathers tend to be slightly more gold-tinted.
The dove raises its head toward Qi Yan and she frowns as she notices its red breast. Was she mistaken? Perhaps the bird is a red-breasted finch or robin.
Qi Yan takes a step forward to look, but the red on the bird’s chest continues to spread and grow until it drips onto the bright green leaf litter underfoot. Qi Yan realizes that it’s blood. The bird’s throat was slit.
Before it can collapse, screams erupt behind her, and the angels emerge all at once like a nightmare. The lower sphere angels, the ones with humanoid bodies, legs, and hands that can grasp the trunks of the tree with a too-wide wingspan, peek their heads out from behind the trees with their dozens of eyes skittering about, following the scattering of spellswords across the forest floor.
The upper sphere angels are bolder, and Qi Yan can count them where they hover: three seraphim. Her throat goes dry. One of them follows the crowd of lower sphere angels and dives into the fray, but the other two head straight for Nangong Jingnu.
Qi Yan has a moment of clarity as if years compounded into milliseconds to allow her life to flash before her eyes, but she witnesses an epiphany instead: first, the angels have some form of higher intelligence to know to target Nangong Jingnu. Second, Qi Yan could turn away and allow the seraphim to kill her, removing the biggest obstacle in her path toward destroying the Nangong bloodline.
Third, Qi Yan was moving toward Nangong Jingnu, and she seemed to be the only one. Maybe everyone else is preoccupied with saving their own life. Or maybe nobody else pays as much attention to Nangong Jingnu as Qi Yan does.
The magic leaves her like a bolt of lightning, very much not like a Nangong mage, and Qi Yan feels the wand-core of the sword in her hand crack in rejection. She hisses under her mask and tightens her grip, willing it to hold together until the end of this fight. Until she kills these seraphim. Until Nangong Jingnu is safe , Qi Yan thinks but won’t admit it.
Nangong Jingnu’s eyes widen slightly as the foreign magic hits one of the seraphim’s wings, blacking the gold-white feathers to char. It hangs limply, and she takes the opportunity to dart in underneath and hack off another wing while dodging the furious swipe of the other angel.
Qi Yan’s stolen sword is the standard silver of an enlisted spellsword, but Nangong Jingnu’s made of some kind of black alloy that Qi Yan had never gotten close enough to figure out if it was a coating or the true color of the metal. She’s close enough now but still can’t tell as the blade whips and arcs through the air too fast to follow.
For all the Nangongs do to reinforce their reputation of darkness and shadow, they also do a damn good job at reflecting light, what with Nangong Jingnu’s bright eyes and the way her black sword glows off the deadly light of two seraphim. And the black glass of the throne room , Qi Yan thinks, and her breath catches so fast she almost chokes.
“Jingnu!” Qi Yan shouts as Nangong Jingnu narrowly misses two passes of five pairs of seraphim wings. Angel feathers are lethal upon contact, and the seraphim are deadliest of all with their entire bodies being wings. Lower sphere angels are easier to manage with the single pair located on their backs.
Nangong Jingnu darts about, parrying and attacking in a flurry of black robes and flickering sword, maneuvering somehow to end up next to Qi Yan. She’s panting, Qi Yan can see the rapid rise and fall of her chest, but her dark eyes are alight as they meet Qi Yan’s.
The two seraphim turn to face the pair of spellswords, and Qi Yan has one final resort. Nangong Jingnu’s fatigue is only growing, and two seraphim at once would be a slow, painful death. Qi Yan notices the frayed edges of Nangong Jingnu’s black robes, the parts that brushed against the angel feathers and disintegrated, and shudders.
Qi Yan has enough time to thrust her hand into her pocket where she keeps a handful of black sand she’d swiped from the throne room and tosses it all at the seraphim before wrapping her arm around Nangong Jingnu’s waist. She’s much smaller and more slender than she looks; Qi Yan almost startles at the give of Nangong Jingnu’s robes.
The black specks embedded in the seraphim’s feathers don’t bother them, but the grains of sand that land in their eyes unmistakably pisses them off. Both seraphim rear up and spread to their full wingspan, tips overlapping, and Nangong Jingnu frantically grabs at Qi Yan’s arm with a gasp when Qi Yan raises her silver sword to cast the one spell she knows from home.
Magic travels from her heart through her arm past the trembling resistance of the sword, and the burst of fire melts the sand into shards of black-gold glass that pierce the seraphim’s wings. One of them flails as it shrieks in agony, and Qi Yan sees it coming while Nangong Jingnu is frozen in shock.
The wing travels with a whoosh of wind as Qi Yan shoves Nangong Jingnu behind her and takes the impact square in the chest, sending them both flying back.
Landing knocks the rest of Qi Yan’s breath out of her, but she takes deep, ragged gasps as she starts tearing at her outer robes before they melt into her skin. Qi Yan is badly burned, she knows, but she’s alive.
Nangong Jingnu shifts beneath her with a grunt and crawls out, gasping in a similar wheezing fashion. She crawls to a kneeling position on her hands and knees and stares out at the two seraphim before turning her gaze onto Qi Yan.
Qi Yan looks up at the fragments of cloudless blue sky visible between the canopy of leaves and struggles to catch her breath. She tugs her mask down and Nangong Jingnu copies the motion, her eyes narrowing as she leans in closer.
“Your eyes have changed back to amber,” Nangong Jingnu finally says after staring for several heartbeats.
“They always were.” Qi Yan is too exhausted, her nerves too frayed to concentrate on the simple illusion spell. Illusory magic never came easy to her anyway.
Nangong Jingnu purses her lips but says nothing, and Qi Yan takes advantage of the silence to say, “Does the name Qiyan or Chengli mean anything to you?”
“No,” Nangong Jingnu says, brow furrowing. “Sorry.” Her head turns again to follow the path they’d flown back when Qi Yan was hit by the seraphim’s death throes. “It’s a miracle we didn’t hit any trees,” Nangong Jingnu says with a hint of marvel in her voice.
Qi Yan’s chest hurts with every breath and her eyes threaten to shut and stay shut, but she still whispers, “You’re the miracle.”
When Nangong Jingnu says nothing, Qi Yan forces her eyes open to find Nangong Jingnu staring at her. Her face is flushed from exertion, but she’s pulled down her hood and the sunrise pink has spread to her ears.
“What does it feel like to be chosen?” Qi Yan asks. She knows she’s babbling, she knows she’s dying, and she doesn’t care.
“By whom?” Nangong Jingnu tilts her head. She always does this. Qi Yan knows because she watches her, and Nangong Jingnu tilts her head when she’s confused, always to the right with a downturn at the corner of her lips.
“I dunno.” Qi Yan’s words are slurring. “God, if they’re real.”
Nangong Jingnu reaches down to take Qi Yan’s hand, and she settles it into her lap as she sits cross-legged to watch the rest of the battalion take out the lower sphere angels. “I don’t know about that,” she says, squeezing her warm hands around Qi Yan’s, who realizes that Nangong Jingnu is slowly channeling bits of her magic into her battered, burnt body.
It’s almost romantic. Qi Yan would blush if she had the blood to spare.
“Hey,” Nangong Jingnu says after a moment like a new thought has just occurred to her. Her gaze turns scrutinizing when she looks down at Qi Yan, and Qi Yan sees her focused on the burnt scraps of black cloth on her chest. “How is it that you’re still alive?”
Call it providence or call it luck. “Magic,” Qi Yan manages to say, and the word sends heat sparking through her. The thrum of her heartbeat grows stronger for a moment like her body remembers how that one spell feels and wants to relive it.
“Chengli magic.” Nangong Jingnu is as intelligent as she is beautiful. She has pieced together Qi Yan’s existence in their first real conversation, and Qi Yan feels skinned to the bone. Her black eyes are piercing, but instead of pulling her apart, Nangong Jingnu is stitching her back together.
“Mm.”
“Fire magic?”
Qi Yan knows what Nangong Jingnu is asking without her needing to say it. They know each other like soul-bound lovers; near-death experiences are as raw as rebirth. There’s no better reminder of one’s mortality than to feel it firsthand, and Nangong Jingnu has touched Qi Yan’s death twice.
Qi Yan doesn’t answer because she knows that Nangong Jingnu knows.
“Nangong Jingnu,” Qi Yan whispers, her fingers twitching as she fights the urge to hold Nangong Jingnu’s hand back, “I came here to kill you.”
Nangong Jingnu sits in silence for a moment as she digests the information. Qi Yan watches her face as she observes the waning battle, her black eyes darting to and fro as she follows the movement of combat. Qi Yan’s blinks get slower; the interval between the opening and closing of her heavy lids grows as she struggles to stay conscious.
The grass is cool on her back, and the morning sun is warm on her face. Qi Yan never thought she’d be one to enjoy the warmth of sunlight or the warmth of Nangong Jingnu, but both feel nice. They feel right.
The wand had snapped with the fire spell, and the illusion of the sword dissolved to leave the two halves of wood in Qi Yan’s right hand. Dawn broke, and she’d shattered alongside it.
“Qi Yan, you came here to die.” Nangong Jingnu’s soft voice and a rustling that could be cloth, leaves, or water are the last things Qi Yan hears before her eyes close.
Nangong Jingnu releases Qi Yan’s hand to slide one arm under her shoulders and the other beneath her legs, and with the strength of a well-trained spellsword, she easily lifts Qi Yan into her lap as she rises to one knee. The telltale sound of screaming angels growing in chilling harmony is the signal that the day’s battle is nearly over.
She stands with Qi Yan in her arms and pushes a bit more magic through her hands to ensure that Qi Yan’s still breathing, but Nangong Jingnu cuts off the flow of magic when she feels herself start to stumble. Her grip tightens, and she takes a steadying breath as she starts to walk.
“Qi Yan, I’ll bring you home.”