The basement hall was silent as Rin and Nezha climbed into the ring. The air was thick with anticipation, a voyeuristic bloodlust. Months of hateful rivalry were coming to a head, and everyone wanted to watch the fallout of their collision.
Both Jun and Irjah wore deliberately neutral expressions, giving nothing away. Jiang was absent.
Nezha and Rin bowed shortly, never taking their eyes off each other, and both immediately backed away.
Nezha kept his gaze trained intently on Rin’s, almond eyes narrowed in a tight focus. His lips were pressed in concentration. There were no jeers, no taunts. Not even a snarl.
Nezha was taking her seriously, Rin realized. He took her as an equal.
For some reason, this made her fiercely proud. They stared at each other, daring each other to break eye contact first.
“Begin,” said Sonnen.
She leaped at him immediately. Her right leg lashed out again and again, forcing him back in retreat.
Kitay had spent all of lunch helping her strategize. She knew Nezha could be blindingly fast. Once he got momentum, he wouldn’t stop until his opponent was incapacitated or dead.
Rin needed to overwhelm him from the beginning. She needed to constantly put him on the defensive, because to be on the defensive against Nezha was certain defeat.
The problem was that he was terribly strong. He didn’t possess the brute force of Kobin, or even Kureel, but he was so precise in his movements that it didn’t matter. He channeled his ki with a brilliant precision, built it up and then released it through the smallest pressure point to create the maximum impact.
Unlike Venka, Nezha could absorb losses and continue. She bruised him once or twice. He adapted and hit her back. And his blows hurt.
They were two minutes in. Rin had now lasted longer than any of Nezha’s previous opponents, and something had become clear to her: He wasn’t invincible. The techniques that had seemed impossibly difficult to her before now were transparently beatable. When Nezha kicked, his movements were wide and obvious like a boar’s. His kicks held terrifying power, but only if they landed.
Rin made sure they never landed.
There was no way she would let him maim her. But she was not here merely to survive. She was here to win.
Exploding Dragon. Crouching Tiger. Extended Crane. She cycled through the movements in Seejin’s Frolics as they were needed. The movements she’d practiced so many times before, linked together one after another in that damned form, snapped automatically into play.
But if Nezha was baffled by Rin’s fighting style, he didn’t show it. He remained calm and concentrated, attacking with methodical efficiency.
They were now four minutes in. Rin felt her lungs seizing, trying to pump oxygen into her fatigued body. But she knew that if she was tired, so was Nezha.
“He gets desperate when he’s tired,” Kitay had said. “And he’s the most dangerous when he’s desperate.”
Nezha was getting desperate.
There was no control to his ki anymore. He threw punch after punch in her direction. He didn’t care about the maiming rule. If he got her on the ground, he would kill her.
Nezha swept a low kick at the back of her knees. Rin made a frantic call and let him connect, sinking backward, pretending she’d lost her balance. He moved in immediately, looming over her. She grounded herself against the floor and kicked up.
She nailed him directly in his solar plexus with more force than she’d ever kicked with before—she could feel the air forced out of his lungs. She flipped up off the ground, and was astonished to find Nezha still reeling backward, gasping for air.
She flung herself forward and punched wildly at his head.
He dropped to the floor.
Shocked murmurs swept through the audience.
Rin circled Nezha, hoping he wouldn’t get up, but knowing he would. She wanted to end it. Slam her heel into the back of his head. But the masters cared about honor. If she hit Nezha while he was down, she’d be sent packing from Sinegard in minutes.
Never mind that if he did the same, she doubted anyone would bat an eye.
Four seconds passed. Nezha raised a shaking hand and slammed it into the ground. He dragged himself forward. His forehead was bleeding, dripping scarlet into his eyes. He blinked it away and glared up at her.
His eyes screamed murder.
“Continue,” said Sonnen.
Rin circled Nezha warily. He crouched like an animal, like a wounded wolf rising on its haunches.
The next time she threw a punch he grabbed her arm and pulled her in close. Her breath hitched. He raked his nails across her face and down to her collarbone.
She jerked her arm out of his grasp and cycled backward in rapid retreat. She felt a sharp sting under her left eye, across her neck. Nezha had drawn blood.
“Watch yourself, Yin,” Sonnen warned.
Both of them ignored him. Like a warning would make any difference, Rin thought. The next time Nezha lunged at her she pulled him to the floor with her. They rolled around in the dirt, each attempting to pin the other and failing.
He punched madly in the air, flinging blows haphazardly at her face.
She dodged the first one. He swung his fist back in reverse and caught her with a backhand that left her gasping. The lower half of her face went numb.
He’d slapped her.
He’d slapped her.
A kick she could take. A knife hand strike she could absorb. But that slap had a savage intimacy. An undertone of superiority.
Something in Rin broke.
She couldn’t breathe. Black tinged the edges of her vision—black, and then scarlet. An awful rage filled her, consumed her thoughts entirely. She needed revenge like she needed to breathe. She wanted Nezha to hurt. She wanted Nezha punished.
She lashed back, fingers curled into claws. He let go of her to jump back, but she followed him, redoubling her frenzied attacks. She wasn’t as fast as he was. He retaliated, and she was too slow to block, and he hit her on the thigh, on the arm, but her body wouldn’t register the damage. Pain was a message she was ignoring, to be felt later.
No—pain led to success.
He struck her face one, twice, thrice. He beat her like an animal and yet she kept fighting.
“What is wrong with you?” he hissed.
More important was what was wrong with him. Fear. She could see it in his eyes.
He had her backed against the wall, hands around her neck, but she grabbed his shoulders, jammed her knee up into his rib cage, and rammed an elbow into the back of his head. He collapsed forward to the ground, wheezing. She flung herself down and ground her elbow into his lower back. Nezha cried out, arched his back in agony.
Rin pinned Nezha’s left arm to the floor with her foot and held his neck down with her right elbow. When he struggled, she slammed her fist into the back of his head and ground his face against the dirt until it was clear that he wouldn’t get up.
“Break,” said Sonnen, but she barely heard him. Blood thundered in her ears to a rhythm like war drums. Her vision was filtered through a red lens that registered only enemy targets.
She grasped a handful of Nezha’s hair in her hand and yanked his head up again to slam into the floor.
“Break!”
Sonnen’s arms were around her neck, restraining her, dragging her off Nezha’s limp form.
She staggered away from Sonnen. Her body was burning up, feverish. She reeled, suddenly dizzy. She felt full to bursting with heat; she had to dispel it, force it out somewhere or she’d surely die, but the only place to put it was in the bodies of everyone else around her—
Something deep inside her rational mind screamed.
Raban reached for her as she climbed up out of the ring. “Rin, what—”
She shoved his hand away.
“Move,” she panted. “Move.”