A hoarse gasp broke from me as my scorched blood coursed through my veins. Heat radiated from my pores, glazing my skin as the cords that bound me dissolved. Freedom—yet I barely sensed it, consumed by unfathomable agony. The acrid tang of smoke choked my lungs, a sizzling and crackling crowding my ears. Just the thinnest of threads held me whole, the enchantment that tethered me to Wenzhi. I grasped at it like a drowning person, clinging to my sole solace from this nightmare as my blood continued to flow into the laurel’s roots. Any moment now, it would catch fire.

As would I.

Wugang’s head was tilted up to the branches, his face creased into a frown. When my mother’s blood had scattered over the laurel before, its seeds had fallen like ripe plums shaken down. Perhaps he thought it a delay or a miscalculation on his part that the blood of the Moon Goddess had not yielded the desired harvest.

The laurel shuddered, its bark smoked and charred. Yet its glowing sap was already spreading across, healing itself. Despair raged. Why had it not been destroyed? Why was it not enough? And it struck me then—the power that shielded me from the feather’s devastation, shielded the laurel too. I would fail because I was still trying to protect myself, because I was afraid.

Yet this was not the way. If I failed, Wugang would kill me along with everyone I loved. There was no real choice, just as when my father had faced the sunbirds—though it was one that had to be made nonetheless.

I pressed my arms tighter around the laurel, squeezing my eyes shut. Not giving myself a moment to ponder as I reached inward, ripping away the barriers that guarded me, undoing the shields over the feather fragments—all that kept me whole. As the last one broke, heat erupted throughout my body—a scorching summer, a raging blaze. I was … undone. The thread tethering me to Wenzhi snapped, his enchantment unraveling as my skin stung and stretched, pain shuddering through my limbs. My blood gushed forth, spilling through the cuts on my arms, and bearing with it the last of the Sacred Flame Feather’s raw power—seeping into the roots of the laurel. Would it be enough?

The blazing heat in my body subsided, leaving nothing but a bone-deep weariness. I could not move. My skin was drenched with sweat, and yet I shivered. Smoke clung to my breath, a powdery bitterness coating my tongue as though I had chewed ash. A miracle that I breathed at all, that this wisp of life remained … frail and fleeting though it was.