Chapter 20: What Release Costs

Meiyin sat up in the tangled quilt with her wrists still pink.

"Say that again."

"There is a way I may leave this house."

Bai Ling held the white pin in her palm and looked at it, not at her.

"I never spoke of it, because I did not believe it would be needed.

I thought the one I waited for would come, and I would go with her, and that would be the end."

"Tell me."

"The oath was sworn at the lake.

It can be undone only at the lake."

She turned the pin so the carved cloud caught the lamp.

"The person who comes down from Wanyin's line must stand at the water at midnight, with this pin in her hand, and speak the words of release.

Nobody else can say them.

Not a priest, not a sword master, not I."

"Her line," Meiyin said slowly.

"Her child."

"Her daughter."

"That's me."

"That is you."

The room was very quiet.

Out on the lake a night bird called once and stopped.

"What happens when I say them?" Meiyin asked.

"The mirror lets me go.

The gate opens.

I may walk out through the stone lions, for the first time in six centuries, and go where I wish."

"And?"

"And nothing else.

I do not turn to dust.

I do not age six hundred years in an hour.

I am not taken from you."

Bai Ling's voice was gentle.

"I looked for a price all night, in the old books I remember.

There is none.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The CEO Bought the Villa With the Ghost Cultivator Inside from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.