Was I nervous?
Yes. I'd faced an Elder of the vampires with less sweat on my back than I had now. But nerves were just information, and the information I had mattered more.
I knew how this mountain ended. In the novel, Mo Zenith never came out of his seclusion in time. The space he left behind was filled by Sun Zenith, his brilliant, rotten adopted son, who gathered the Masters and Elders one quiet visit at a time. And when Sun finally moved, the first thing he sold was Seraphina. Lucifer and his father had to march up this mountain and burn the rot out of it, and Mount Hua never stood straight again.
That wasn't going to happen. Not to her.
Mo's presence pressed down on me as I stepped out of the mist—Radiant-rank pressure, the kind that put people below the Wall on their knees without anyone laying a hand on them. I hadn't scaled the Wall yet. But I had never fought at my rank, and I didn't intend to start bowing at it either.
