"Huh." Gu Xiang considers a little longer. She isn't sure why, but she cares about Magnus and wants to protect him. She knows he can take care of himself in a fight--probably better than her, even!--but there's something about him that's vulnerable in a way she recognizes. It's the kind of vulnerability that makes you want to pluck a child or a dog from the riverbank, because even if you don't have anything to give, your nothing and their nothing are not the same.

"When I was little, Wen Kexing found me on a riverbank," she says. "He was just a kid, and he didn't have a real home or anything, but he picked me up anyway. He saved my life. In Ghost Valley, people don't save other people--but he saved me." She smiles a little, upside down, swaying. "And now I want to get my teeth into everything, because I lived, and he taught me how to bite."