The Burning God

Pipaji—overwhelmed by the power of her god—begs Rin to kill her. Rin snaps her neck. Because the Dragon destroyed Arlong and Rin banished the Dragon, her troops technically win the battle, but the victory feels hollow to her. Nezha’s soldiers retreat.

Rin takes Pipaji’s ashes to a child graveyard. She couldn’t find Dulin. She and Kitay then go to stand vigil over the dead at the battlefield. Nezha arrives, alone. The three drink wine, light incense, and hold hands. Rin contemplates her fierce and desperate love for them both. They don’t speak of truce but sit in each other’s company until morning.

Kitay and Rin go through the palace. Nezha’s mother Saikhara died by suicide as their army marched in, and his sister died when Arlong was destroyed. The Hesperians fled without them. Rin and Kitay look at the artefacts displayed and labelled in the palace. Among them, Kitay sees Rin’s sword, which she had melted down from Altan’s trident displayed.

A soldier tells Rin that Sister Petra—the Hesperian scientist who experimented on Rin and Nezha, among others—is locked in her laboratory. Petra says she sent her shaman-nullifying technology back to Hesperia to be perfected, and when it is, they’ll return to destroy Rin. Rin ties Petra to the table the same way she restrained Rin and Nezha when experimenting on them. Rin gives Petra poppy seeds and asks the Phoenix to take them to the Pantheon. Petra is panicked and in shock. When Rin returns to the mortal plane, she brings Petra’s body with her but leaves Petra’s mind behind in the Pantheon.

Rin is relieved and in disbelief that she’s in charge of the country. She’s annoyed that Nezha and his troops fled to Speer. She believes Hesperia will return as soon as they are able. Rin is overwhelmed by the technicalities of civil reconstruction but is aided by Nezha’s meticulous leftover ideas and records, which Kitay thinks he left on purpose to help her. As the weeks pass, Rin, Kitay, and Venka’s control of the city grows slightly. To cope with the stress, they spend every evening drinking and fantasizing about what they want for the country. Rin feels like a god.

The country is in shambles, with famine, riots, and epidemic. The letters from Nezha persist, appearing in strange places that indicate he has spies in her ranks. When Venka repeats a phrase in a letter, Rin grows suspicious of her. She lists a series of events that seem to implicate Venka as Nezha’s spy, though both Venka and Kitay protest. Venka sees an assassin outside and tries to shield Rin. Rin thinks she’s attacking and burns her. Venka is hit in the neck by the assassin’s crossbow and dies.

Rin’s army moves to Tikany after she decides she can’t rule from Dragon Province. Her aspirations are no longer national but global, and her new goal is to “bring down the west” (580). Seeing the famine and starvation in the South, Rin has to reckon with the fact that neither Hesperia nor the Federation did this, but her own civil war.

Tikany has the Federation’s stores and is doing better than other places. They planted poppy in the hope that Rin could sell it for Hesperian grain. She tries to rally the city for the war against Hesperia, but the people think they’ve already won the war and are frustrated. A riot starts, and she and Kitay escape. Kitay tries to get her to relate to the people’s frustration, but Rin refuses to understand, agreeing with Hesperia that Nikara civilians are “sheep” (589).

Someone sets the poppy fields on fire. When Kitay suggests they make an alliance with the remnants of the Republic, Rin turns on him, accusing him of being Nezha’s spy. He tells her she must throw away her pride or she’ll doom the country. Rin wants to be the sole ruler. She’s convinced that victory is right around the corner and that Kitay is her enemy. Rin feigns vulnerability, but her heart is set against him.

Rin and Kitay arrange to meet Nezha on Speer. Nezha says that Hesperia will grant enough food for all of Nikan for a year in exchange for amnesty for their allies, missionary privileges, and established treaty ports. Rin will wear the same conductors Nezha wears, never call the Phoenix again, and hunt down anyone who knows about the Pantheon. Rather than accede to these demands, Rin makes a demand of her own: that Nezha bring out the fleet she thinks he’s hiding. When he refuses to do so, she unleashes the fire.

Rin knocks out Nezha and destroys the fleet, believing that doing so will rewrite history. Kitay uses his anchor ability to cut off her power. They fight. Kitay gets the upper hand and tries to die by suicide. Rin begs the Phoenix to break his mind. They enter the spirit plane, where she has the upper hand. She realizes he’s looking at her like she looked at Altan, or Daji looked at Riga. She realizes that if she harms Kitay, she’ll never be able to stop her quest for power until the entire world is ash.

The Hesperian lightning takes Rin’s divine power away, leaving clarity. She realizes that she is repeating historical cycles that came before, where allies broke and exploited each other for power, as Riga broke Jiang. She thinks she can break that cycle by ending her life. She takes Nezha’s knife and tells him to tell the Hesperians that he killed her, and to do whatever he needs to get their trust.

Kitay nods, knowing Rin’s death will result in his own. She holds Nezha’s hands in hers around the knife and stabs herself.

Nezha thinks about how small Rin is as she and Kitay die. He understands why she did it, but he mourns for them and for his own uncertain future. He realizes that in destroying the country, Rin also gave it a chance to live. He’ll have to cooperate with the Hesperian occupation, but hopes he can help the country survive it. He thinks he owes it to his friends to try. He lays Rin’s body down and faces the oncoming Hesperian fleet.