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I need to see. I think we are nearly there.

I glanced up at the snow-covered peak looming above us. It was still very, very far away. "But—"

"We seek the reflecting lake, not the mountaintop itself," Snow Tiger reminded me, sounding hopeful for the first time in many days. "No human has ever scaled the heights of White Jade Mountain. Ah, gods!" An edge of dismay crept into her voice. "The reflecting lake."

"At the very end, he would have seen his absence and gone mad," I murmured. "That's why I had to come."

She put her hand on my shoulder. "Do you have the strength to summon your magic?"

"I will find it."

I sat cross-legged on the mountainside and breathed the Five Styles. I called upon memories that lent me strength. My enigmatic mother who loved me with all her fierce, taciturn pride. My kin among the Maghuin Dhonn. My gentle D'Angeline priest of a father, who trailed grace in his wake. Others I had loved. My lost Cillian, still my first and best friend. My lady Jehanne, her star-bright eyes sparkling at me with unstinting affection. Master Lo Feng in all his kind, generous wisdom. My peasant-boy Bao, whose infuriating rudeness could no longer hide the vastness of his impossibly romantic heart.

The dragon.

The princess, too.

And stone and sea and sky, and all that they encompassed.

I loved them. I loved them all. I drew strength from it, finding a place within myself where I could spin it into magic. I breathed the twilight deep into my lungs, exhaled it gently around us.

Snow Tiger sighed with relief, and lowered her blindfold. "This way."

Weary beyond weariness, yet strangely exalted, I followed her darting figure through the forest of spruce pines that dotted the mountainside. Now that they were awake, they sang fine songs to themselves, those vibrant spruces. The three long-neglected Camaeline snowdrop bulbs at the bottom of my satchel roused to answer with a thin, feeble chorus.

HERE! the dragon roared. HOME!

Ahead of me, I saw the princess check herself violently, recoiling as the spruce forest opened onto a new vista.

I hurried to join her.

We had gained the lake. True to the dragon's vision, it reflected the snow-capped peak of White Jade Mountain in its depths. The water was very pure and clear and still. In the unaltered daylight, it would have been a translucent shade of green. The reflected mountain barely wavered on the surface of the waters, suggesting a placid, enduring eternity. Even in the twilight, it was a beautiful sight, a sight I could have gazed at for a thousand years.

And it lay in a valley far, far below us. There was no path to descend, only a sharp overhang, the sheer drop from which the princess had recoiled.

Snow Tiger glanced at me, the dragon reflected in her eyes. "I will have to jump," she said calmly. "Tell my father—"

I interrupted her. "You can't swim, can you?"

She didn't answer.

"I can." I held out my hand to her, trying to ignore the vertiginous drop before us. "I grew up in a cave alongside a river. I can swim. My lady, I have not come so far to help you die. Are we not friends? If you must jump, then I must jump with you."

She took my hand.

We jumped.

And fell, and fell.

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

How long does it take to die? As long as it took us to fall—or at least, that was what it felt like. I lived and died an entire life in that fall.

Until we hit the water.

The impact and the utter shock of the cold mountain water was so vast, so unimaginable, that for the span of a few heartbeats, I didn't know if I were alive or dead, didn't know if I were broken or whole.

Cold, so cold.

I felt the breath burning in my lungs and opened my eyes. I was underwater in a glimmering green world. The princess was sinking slowly opposite me, trails of bubbles rising from the air trapped in her robes. Her wide, terrified gaze met mine.

I had lost the twilight, and there was no dragon reflected in her pupils.

She opened her mouth, and nothing emerged.

Only in the lake where the snow-capped peak