The Burning God

Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you.

Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.

Take what you want. I’ll hate you for it. But I’ll love you forever. I can’t help but love you.

You can’t do this for me,” he said. “I won’t let you.” “It’s not for you. It’s not a favor. It’s the cruelest thing I could do.

She was a goddess. She was a monster. She‘d nearly destroyed this country. And then she‘d given it one last, gasping chance to live.

I am the force of creation, I am the end and the beginning. The world is a painting and I hold the brush. I am a god.

The point of revenge wasn’t to heal. The point was that the exhilaration, however temporary, drowned out the hurt.

Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.

You don't fix hurts by pretending they never happened. You treat them like infected wounds. You dig deep with a burning knife and gouge out the rotten flesh and then, maybe, you have a chance to heal.

She recognized the way he was looking at her. It was how she’d once looked at Altan. It was the way she’d seen Daji look at Riga—that look of wretched, desperate, and reproachful loyalty. It said, Do it. Take what you want, it said. I’ll hate you for it. But I’ll love you forever. I can’t help but love you. Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you.

She saw it in a flash of utter clarity. She knew what she had to do. The only path, the only way forward. And what a familiar path it was. It was so obvious now. The world was a dream of the gods, and the gods dreamed in sequences, in symmetry, in patterns. History repeated itself, and she was only the latest iteration of the same scene in a tapestry that had been spun long before her birth.

It doesn’t go away. It never will. But when it hurts, lean into it. It’s so much harder to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live. It means you’re brave.

Come back down,” he said, his expression suddenly grim. His fingers clenched tight around hers. “Listen, Rin. I don’t care what else happens up there. But you come back to me.

She remembered the first time she'd ever laid eyes on Nezha, and then all the times thereafter. It hurt to see him. It hurt so much.

You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” She leaned down close until her lips brushed his skin, until her breath scorched the side of his face. “I’m not Sinegardian elite. I’m that savage mud-skinned Speerly bitch that wiped a country off the map. And sometimes when I get a little too angry, I snap.

I‘m exactly what they deserve,” she said. “They don‘t want peace, they want revenge. I‘m it.

Let them think of us as dirt, Rin thought. She was dirt. Her army was dirt. But dirt was common, ubiquitous, and patient, and necessary. The soil gave life to the country. And the earth always reclaimed what it was owed.

She's the only divine thing he's ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does.

He loves her. Of this he's certain. He loves her laugh; that sharp, sudden sound; the cynical laugh that always comes too quick, like it's ripped out of her. He loves her quick, confident grin. He loves her resilience, her bravery, even her impulsiveness. She's everything he's not: unbound, reckless, free. He's never known anyone like her. She terrifies him, and he loves her so much it hurts. In all of his worst nightmares, she's dying. She's fading away in his arms, helpless and whimpering, while hot, dark blood spills over his fingers. This he tells her. He doesn't tell her that his hand holds the blade.

He knew exactly what choice she'd made and what she intended. And that made everything- hating her, loving her, surviving her, so much harder.

When she turned, she only saw one silhouette against the dark. Nezha had come alone. Unarmed. He always looked different in the moonlight. His skin shone paler, his features looked softer, resembling less the harsh visage of his father and more the lovely fragility of his mother. He looked younger. He looked like the boy she'd known at school

Theirs was a bond forged from necessity, hurt, and a shared, intimate understanding of hell.

Sring Venka was a prim, spoiled Sinegardian princess turned lethal soldier turned brittle survivor; of course she’d walk into a war zone with red paint on her lips simply because she felt like it.

Hate was its own kind of fire and if you had nothing else, it kept you warm.

Her voice, thin and reedy, faded without echo into the frigid air. But she screamed it again, and then again, and then again. It felt so good to say that she'd survived, that she'd fucking finally come out on top, that she didn't even care that she was screaming to corpses.

She'd been so stupid to once think that if she ended the Federation then she'd ended the hurting. War didn't end, not so cleanly - it just kept building up in little hurts that piled on one another until they exploded afresh into raw new wounds.

I received both these scars from men I thought I loved,” Rin said. “One is dead now. One will be.

Do it. Take what you want, it said, I'll hate you for it. But I'll love you forever. I can't help but love you. Ruin me, ruin us, and I'll let you.

But ideological purity is a battle cry, it’s not the stable foundation for a unified country. A nation means nothing if it can’t provide for the people in it. You have to act for their sake.