Page 150 of A Forgery of Fate

“Stop.” Elang caught my hand. “Don’t you dare. I don’t want it.”

“Damn it, Elang. Don’t fight me. It’s your pearl.”

“Not at this cost. It’s not a fight, Saigas. It’s a choice, and I made mine long ago. You cannot change it.”

Everything was clear. Why Elang had never wanted tobreak his curse, why he’d gotten incensed every time I tried. Why he’d kept me at a distance and refused to show he cared.

From the beginning, he’d been trying to protect me. From the beginning, he’d known where Nazayun had hidden his pearl: inside the heart of his true love.Myheart.

Only one of us could live. That was the Dragon King’s curse. And Elang had decided that would be me.

The way my words were magic, so, too, were his. The pearl spun out of my hands, unraveling into an interminable strand of light that came rushing back into my chest, gathering there in a glittering pool.

“Stubborn dragon,” I whispered. I reached into my sleeve for my brush. “If you won’t take my heart, then I will make you a new one.”

“Tru, what are you—”

I silenced him by unbuttoning his collar, pushing aside the layers of his robes until I found the bare skin of his chest. I pressed my hand to where his pulse beat. The closer I leaned, the stronger it beat. But it was faint. Fainter than ever before.

My fingertips tingled. “Here,” I whispered, “is where your new heart will go.”

I bent to press a kiss on his skin, and Elang’s eyes went wide.

“Stop,” he whispered, clasping a halting hand over mine. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? You cannot change this.”

“I’m not giving up on you,” I said, my chin lifting from his chest. “Now, hold still.”

I dipped my brush into the pearlescent light. Miraculously it clung to my brush, like the glitter of morning dew. It was my heart, after all, and every color of every memory was available to me.

I held Elang still, my brush poised. Then I rolled back my eyes and started to paint.

It was just a story Baba used to tell, a game he made up for my sisters and me to play, of a magic paintbrush. With it, anything the artist drew would come to life.

The best games have no winners or losers,he’d said.

Obviously, Nazayun had disagreed. The curse had been a game to him, one Elang and I couldn’t win without losing each other. But we simply had to find a different way of playing.

I moved my brush in a gentle circle across Elang’s skin, over the corrugated ridges of his scales and across his softer human flesh. The light from my heart became my ink; its brilliance made my eyes water, and its heat seared my fingertips.

With his hand over mine, I outlined a dragon’s pearl on his chest. It was bright and beaming, silvery like the moon rising above us.

Just let him live,I thought.Let us be together.

A thousand possibilities flashed before me, glimpses of different futures that could come to pass, but I only needed one. Inside Elang’s pearl, I painted a girl and a boy holding a green lantern. Snow dusted their heads, and a constellation of lights floated behind them. I painted flowers in the girl’s hair and round brass spectacles on the boy’s nose, but their faces were blank, unfinished.

Every detail mattered, so I doubled my speed, the tiny muscles in my fingers burning as my brush swooped in every direction, taking no rest between strokes. In a rush of light and color, I painted my face upon the girl, Elang’s upon the boy. But before I could finish our eyes, the last of the sun vanished below the horizon—and the light in my heart wentout.

No!I panicked. The pearl I’d painted on Elang’s chest began to disappear, and I traced it desperately, as if it were an invisible ember I could spark back to life.

Then it, too, was gone.

Elang and I were left cradling each other in the corner of our boat. The tingle in my fingers fled, and my hand lay flat against his heart. His heart, which grew weaker with each beat.

He thumbed the tears from my cheeks. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Did you know, they say that when a dragon dies, he gets to choose his next life. Maybe we can get noodles together soon enough.”

I choked back a sob, wishing I could go back in time to our old life in Gangsun, when we were just Gaari and Tru. “Every time you lie, you find a way to bring up noodles,” I whispered. “I know your tells,youngman.”

Elang laughed, a soft, low laugh that I felt vibrate across his body. “Well, it was worth a try.” He gave a rueful smile. “Would you really have been a whale with me, Saigas?”

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