Chapter 11 · free to read
One crossing in forty li, one boat, one man who owned it. The Iron Lotus had understood that arithmetic long before they did.
Four months ago she had frozen solid on a stone bridge and a blade had gone over her head. She did not freeze this time.
They had fought back to back in a rocking boat and neither of them had once been in the other's way. Nineteen years, and her body had remembered the rhythm before her pride could stop it. That was the part she could not cut out.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.