Heart of the Sun Warrior (CELESTIAL KINGDOM #2) by Sue Lynn Tan EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Sue Lynn Tan
- Language: English
- Genre: Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Night cloaked the sky in darkness, draping shadows across the earth.
While this was the time of rest for the mortals, on the moon, our toils were
just beginning. Winter white flames curled from the splint of wood in my
hand. Crouching down, I brushed away a stray leaf from the lantern,
wrought of translucent stone and twisted strands of silver. As I lowered the
splint to the wick, it caught fire with a hiss. I rose, shaking the soil from my
robe. Rows of unlit orbs stretched before me as pale as the osmanthus
which flowered above—moon lanterns, one thousand in all, that would cast
their glow upon the realm below. Through wind and rain, their light would
not falter, until they were extinguished at the first breath of dawn.
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Each time I lit the lanterns, my mother urged me to be diligent, to
perform the task by hand. But I had not her patience. I had grown unused to
such quiet work, to peace and calm. Reaching inward, I grasped my energy,
the shining magic that flowed from my lifeforce. Flames rippled from my
palm, streaking across the lanterns, leaving half ablaze in their wake. My
Talent lay in Air, but Fire was useful at times as these. The ground now
glittered like stardust, and in the world below, the mortals would be lifting
their heads to the curved wedge of light in the sky, its face partially hidden.
Few wrote poems about the half-moon or immortalized it in paintings—
devoid of the elegant arch of a crescent or the perfect wholeness of the orb.
Clinging to both light and dark, and lost somewhere in between. It
resonated with me, a child of mortal and immortal heritage, in the shade of
my luminous parents.
Sometimes I would find myself slipping into the past, threaded with a
sliver of regret—wondering what if I had remained in the Celestial
Kingdom, reaping glory across the years, each accomplishment strung to
my name until it shone like a strand of pearls. A legend in my own right,
revered as the heroes like my father, Houyi, or beloved and worshipped like
my mother, the Moon Goddess.
The mortals honored her during the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, a
celebration of reunion, though this was the day my mother had ascended to
the skies. Some prayed to her for good fortune, others for love. Little did
they know my mother’s powers were limited, perhaps untrained or a
remnant of her humanity—shed when she had consumed the Elixir of
Immortality, the one gifted to my father for slaying the sunbirds.
When she
had flown to the heavens, my parents were parted as irrevocably as though
death’s blade had severed them, and indeed it had, for my father’s body
now lay entombed in a grave. A sharpness pierced my chest. I had never
known my father, cherishing him as an abstract figure in my mind while my
mother had mourned him every day of her immortal existence. Perhaps this
was why the tedium of her task did not trouble her; relief to a mind
splintered with regret, easing a heart clenched with grief.
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