by Evelyn Skye
Daemon looked at her, unconscious but still attached to the wall by her gecko spell. What did Prince Gin do to you?
It had all been so swift. One moment, Sora had been alert and focused. Then the next, the emotion emanating through their gemina bond had muddled, like a carafe of milk ruining a clear pot of tea. Prince Gin had put Sora under some kind of hypnotic spell, and the girl Daemon had known better than anyone else suddenly wasn’t herself anymore. He could hardly breathe.
He had knocked Sora unconscious so he’d have time to think. He also didn’t know how he’d managed to stay free of the spell. But until he could figure that out and teach it to Sora, he couldn’t let her scuttle up onto the roof to offer herself to the ryuu.
Daemon pressed himself against the wall and forced his lungs to work. He couldn’t pass out too.
He looked at Sora again while he breathed. Her hair swung like a fringe curtain as her head bobbed limply. But she was safe, for now.
His heart calmed enough that he could think straight, and he remembered why he was here. To collect as much information as he could about what Prince Gin was up to. And to stop him if at all possible. Daemon climbed up the wall a little and listened to what was happening above.
“I’m so happy you’re all eager to begin our work together,” Prince Gin was saying. “Now I’ll gift you with the ability to see ryuu magic, and you’ll join us.”
Daemon inched closer to the roof, in danger of being spotted. What did it mean to “see” ryuu magic?
“Taiga power stems from the exact same magic as ryuu power,” Prince Gin said, “but taigas don’t know how to use it to its fullest potential. They don’t understand that magic is tangible, visible.”
Daemon’s jaw hung open. Magic was visible? Did that mean that any taiga could perform ryuu-level magic, if they could see the source? Maybe not someone as clumsy with spells as Daemon, but someone like Sora . . .
Prince Gin continued talking to the captured taigas. “You see, mudras and chants are crutches the taigas need to focus their attention, in order to even find magic. But we ryuu already know where it is. It is all around us, like emerald dust. Once I give you Sight, your vision will be more attuned to the magic, and you’ll be able to see the ryuu particles for yourselves. Then all you’ll need is a thought, and the magic will do your bidding.
“I’ll touch each of your eyes,” Prince Gin said. “When you open them again, look for the green particles that float all around you. That is magic.”
Oh. Daemon’s hope sank. There wasn’t a simple solution. A taiga couldn’t simply start using ryuu magic by virtue of knowing it existed. There was still some special Sight that Prince Gin had to give them.
A solemn silence swept across the rooftop as he approached the first taiga to touch her eyes.
Then there was a loud, long gasp, like the sound a branding iron makes on sizzling skin. It tapered off to a quiet chill, like the steam that rises off the surface of snow.
The same sound repeated itself, starting hot and ending cold, over and over until the Dragon Prince had touched all fifty-four taiga warriors.
Daemon shivered and held tight to the wall.
“Now,” Prince Gin said, “step to the front edge of the roof, and we’ll finish your initiation.”
Daemon frowned. What else could be involved in transforming a taiga to a ryuu?
He glanced over at Sora. Her body sagged away from the wall, but her hands and feet still held on. Assured that she was all right, Daemon climbed his way toward the front of the building until he was at the corner.
“I think the quickest way to help you see the emerald dust,” Prince Gin said to the recruits, “is to make it a life-or-death situation.”
“What do you mean, Your Highness?” one of them said.
“My ryuu will show you,” the prince said. “Now.”
With that, they shoved the taiga warriors off the rooftop.
No!
There was a chorus of surprised cries. The closest taiga hurtled far enough away from the building for Daemon to see.
He almost lunged to try to save her, stopping himself at the last moment.
What was the Dragon Prince doing? Did he toy with them, bringing them to his side just for fun, before he killed them?
“Look for the magic!” Prince Gin shouted.
There was a split second of flailing taiga arms and legs, the same fear Daemon was feeling.
But then stoicism graced the recruits’ faces as they pulled themselves together and focused.
The taiga closest to Daemon grabbed at the air. Her hands closed around something. Like a rope, it jerked her to a stop in midair, then swung her back to safety along the front of the Society building.
Sight, Daemon realized. She somehow must have seen the ryuu magic.
At the same time, the other taigas snatched at the invisible ropes in the air. Once their feet touched the wall, they climbed back up to the roof.
They all cheered.
Daemon clung to his side of the building, paralyzed. He’d watched that taiga near him plunge to certain death. But then she hadn’t. How? What, exactly, was this ryuu magic that seemed to manifest itself in so many different ways? Something consistent had saved all the recruits, but outside that, he had already witnessed Prince Gin conduct mass hypnosis, a boy command all manner of insects, and a serpent made of mist biting through the sky.
He had a sinking feeling that this was only the beginning. The ryuu hadn’t even begun to show off what they could do.
Prince Gin clapped from the rooftop and said, “Welcome to the ryuu. Now, let’s get ourselves a new ship and be on our way. We have more taigas to recruit.”
They leaped off the roof fearlessly and ran to the harbor.
Daemon’s stomach swan dived even more deeply as clarity hit him.
The Dragon Prince was going to rebuild his army by ransacking the Society. He could lure taigas at other outposts like he just did here. That was probably what he did at Paro Village, why there were no warriors left there.
If taking the throne from Empress Aki was the extent of it, that would be bad enough. But Prince Gin wanted the Evermore. The stakes were much, much higher.
First, innocents like the woman in Paro Village would be slaughtered in the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts. Then the taigas and the rest of Kichona would become mindless pawns under the Dragon Prince’s hypnosis, carrying out his will. Prince Gin would declare war on all of the kingdoms on the mainland, murdering people abroad and bringing bloodshed to Kichona’s shores when their enemies stormed the island in retaliation.
So many lives lost. Taigas and ordinary Kichonans, conscripted as infantry. Helpless children, both here and overseas, with an ocean of blood between them. All in pursuit of the Evermore, a promise that might not be more than fable.
Daemon shuddered.
He had to learn more about Prince Gin. Not just how to free oneself from the Dragon Prince’s charm but also how ryuu magic worked in general. Whether it could be used by taigas without becoming ryuu. Whether it had any weaknesses the taigas could exploit.
Whether Kichona, as Daemon knew it, had a chance at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sora woke to the world jostling. Or was it her body? She couldn’t quite tell, because all the blood was in her head, and when she opened her eyes, the ground was up and the sky was down.
“Whass happenig?” she slurred.
“I’m saving you from yourself,” Daemon said.
She blinked several times before she understood that he was carrying her over his shoulder, balanced like a precarious sack of taro root, while he climbed down the side of the taiga command post’s wall.
Sora jolted upright.
“Holy heavens!” Daemon cried out as he slammed himself and Sora’s lower half into the wall. “What are you doing? You almost hurled both of us to the ground!”
But what he was saying only partly registered. Now that Sora was awake again, she resumed baski
ng in the sunshine-like warmth of Prince Gin’s promises.
“Are we going to the Dragon Prince?” Sora asked. “Did he make us ryuu?”
“I swear on Luna’s name, I’m going to knock you unconscious again if you don’t shut up about the traitor,” Daemon said. He secured Sora over his shoulder and began his descent again. He couldn’t go as quickly as usual with her as cargo, but she was starting to get the feeling that he wouldn’t want to let her climb down on her own.
“Daemon . . .” she said slowly, “do you not want to become a ryuu?”
“No, Sora, I do not.”
She frowned. “But why wouldn’t you want to join in Prince Gin’s cause? He wants what’s best for the kingdom. Plus, he’s going to teach us incredible magic. You would love being good at magic, wouldn’t you?”
She felt him flinch. Perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to say to someone who was sensitive about his abilities.
“I mean, also, I want to be the best taiga ever,” she said, attempting to cover up her flub. “With ryuu magic, we could be better than anything we could do with just taiga magic. I mean, you saw what the ryuu could do with fire and wind and . . .” She trailed off because she couldn’t remember what else they’d done.
But I’m sure it was incredible.
Daemon reached the ground and smashed Sora against the wall. He had a hand around her throat and a knife pressed under her rib cage. “He did something to you.”
“What are you—? Who did something to me?” Sora’s pulse quickened, but at the same time, she analyzed their position for ways she could escape.
“Prince Gin. He magically brainwashed everyone to convince them to switch allegiances. It must be the new magic he learned while he was exiled, because he certainly wasn’t able to persuade taigas that easily during the Blood Rift.”
Sora frowned and shook her head. The sunny awe the Dragon Prince made her feel couldn’t possibly be a lie. It ran too deep, as though it was woven into the fiber of her being.
Oh . . . Maybe Prince Gin had rejected Daemon. Maybe he was angry because he was upset. Sad or embarrassed or jealous to be left behind again. . . .
“If the prince said you couldn’t join him, I’ll talk to him,” Sora said. “I’ll tell him you’re great, and I’m sure—”
“I don’t want to join him!” Daemon said, pushing Sora into the wall again. “Listen to me. The Dragon Prince does not want what’s best for Kichona. He wants to raise an army of taigas—or ryuu, whatever—to go out like mindless pawns and conquer other countries to expand our kingdom. But if he does that, do you think our people will get to continue leading their peaceful lives with Autumn Festival celebrations and apple harvests and quiet, lazy mornings of fishing?
“No,” he continued. “If the prince gets what he wants and starts attacking other countries, they won’t sit back and let him take them. They will attack Kichona. They will storm our coastal cities. Torch the crops and the countryside. Pillage towns, rape women, kill children. Empress Aki has preserved Kichona’s stability, prosperity, and peace. But Prince Gin will bleed other kingdoms to conquer them, chasing that stupid Evermore legend, and in turn other armies will come to Kichona and burn our country to the ground.
“So just . . . please,” Daemon said, the anger in his voice suddenly giving way to desperation. “Please snap out of it. I can’t do this without you. I can’t save the whole gods-damn kingdom on my own.”
A sharp electric shock zapped through their gemina bond, and Sora jumped. It fried the pride and sense of purpose Prince Gin had inspired, and the literal jolt Daemon had sent through their connection jostled her brain awake. For a minute, all she could see was bright blue light, bursting like sparklers and engulfing everything in its brilliant determination to set her free. Even her nerves vibrated.
When the blue light faded, the remnants of the spell were gone, and horror set in. “Stars, Daemon, I’m sorry,” she said. “He got into my head. If it weren’t for you, I’d be . . .” She couldn’t bear to finish the sentence.
Daemon narrowed his eyes. “Is this a trick? How do I know you’ve really come back to your senses?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
But then she did. She let the shame she felt flood through their gemina bond. It was like waking up in sewer water.
“Oh, Sora. There was nothing you could have done.” He released his hold on her throat, lowered his knife, and embraced her.
That sent a surge of a different kind of spark through their bond, this one gentler. Soft, like a lullaby.
She relaxed into it.
When she released him, though, she asked the obvious question. “If there was nothing I could have done to resist Prince Gin’s magic, how did you escape it? And how did you break me free?”
“I-I don’t know.” He worried his lower lip. “All around me, you and the taigas toppled like dominoes to the Dragon Prince’s words. But I didn’t feel any different. I don’t know how he charmed all of you and why it didn’t affect me.”
“Maybe that’s the superpower you’ve been waiting for,” she said.
He let out a short laugh. “Right. I’m terrible at magic, except I can resist one random thing.”
“It’s a pretty good thing to be able to resist.”
“I suppose so.” He grew solemn. “You know what this means, right? Prince Gin can force everyone to love him.”
Sora’s insides clenched violently, like she’d eaten spoiled fish. “Crow’s eye. The woman in Paro Village who told us she had been chosen as a Heart . . . He’s not only hypnotizing an army of taigas but also ordinary people. He’ll turn Kichona into a kingdom of bewitched puppets.”
Daemon nodded. “They’ll march overseas with him and give up their lives, just because he asked them to. And he could do it to anyone. Our friends. The people in your hometown. Your parents.”
Sora had to lean against the wall to support herself. The Dragon Prince had already hurt her family once by murdering her sister. She wouldn’t let him do it again, not to her family or any other.
Her fingers went to the small leather pouch on her belt. Fairy’s satchel of deadly powders.
“We can’t let them leave the harbor without us,” Sora said. “We need to get on the Dragon Prince’s ship.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Most of the ryuu had gone either into town with Prince Gin to help him herd together the citizens and charm them or to raid the captain’s quarters of the other boats in the harbor in search of wine and other spirits. The new recruits, however, gathered in the front of the caravan of wagons that carried their supplies to begin loading the ship Prince Gin had decided to help himself to.
The rest of the caravan, though, was unattended. Still, Sora’s nerves jostled with every step as she and Daemon sneaked among the wagon wheels to find places to hide.
The last cart was full of tents. Too risky. The ryuu probably wouldn’t load the entire cart but, rather, just the tents themselves. There was no way for a person to hide in the canvas without falling out as soon as the tents were separated from the pile.
They slinked up to the next wagon. Sora opened the doors. This one was packed with large rattan trunks. She hopped silently into the flatbed and opened the lid on one of them.
“Uniforms,” she whispered to Daemon as she looked down at stacks of neatly folded black tunics.
Daemon climbed into the wagon, and together they riffled through the trunks to find tunics and trousers the right sizes. They should disguise themselves as ryuu if they were going to stow away on board. Just in case they were seen.
The ryuu uniforms were similar to taiga ones, except there was a green belt, and Luna’s triplicate whorls on the cuffs were embroidered in green, rather than the Society’s silver.
They turned away from each other and changed quickly into their new clothes. When they were finished, Daemon looked at the trunk again. “If we got rid of some of those uniforms, we could fit in there.”
Sora looked it ove
r. “You’re right. Let’s empty it out a bit and then I’ll stack some clothes on top of you for cover. I’ll dispose of the extra uniforms before I find a different place to hide.”
“Wait.” His eyes went wide. “You’re going to hide somewhere else?”
“I wasn’t planning to climb into the same trunk as you.” As soon as Sora said it, Daemon’s face went red.
“Gods,” Sora said, “I didn’t mean to suggest anything untoward. Obviously I don’t think about you like that. We’re geminas.”
He nodded quickly. “Obviously. And, um, good.”
“Anyway,” Sora said, “I don’t think it’s smart to hide in the same place. But once we’re on board and it’s safe, let’s meet in the cargo hold at the bottom of the ship.”
“And if it’s never safe?” Daemon asked. He couldn’t look at her.
Sora knew how he felt. Not just because she could feel his anxiety through their gemina bond but because . . . well, yes. Because of their gemina bond, but in a different way. She wouldn’t know what to do if Daemon weren’t on the other side of it.
“What if something happens to one of us?” he asked.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that.
“Then the one remaining does everything he can to get off this ship alive.” Sora looked him square in the eyes, because they both knew they were really talking about what would happen if Sora was caught and he wasn’t. He might look like a brawny killing machine, but inside, he was all loyalty, a wolf dedicated to his pack until the very end. If she didn’t make it explicit, he would stay. “You save yourself, Daemon. You get to shore and back to the Society with everything you know.”
Daemon pursed his lips. Sora could feel the tension of his worry, like a rubber band pulled so taut, it could snap at any moment.
“It’ll be fine,” Sora said, even though she couldn’t promise a thing. “Now get in the trunk.” She shoved him gently.
He laughed despite the circumstances and reluctantly climbed in. “See you in the cargo hold.”