by Evelyn Skye
“What do you have in mind?”
“Right now, nothing. But like Empress Aki said, she wants the taigas to start thinking differently. Maybe we can combine your knowledge of the inner workings of the Society with my talent for being in places I’m not supposed to be, and come up with something.”
Broomstick nodded slowly as he considered it. “Work hard, mischief harder, right?”
Fairy was able to muster a small smile now. “Yeah. Let’s mischief harder.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Sora was experimenting in the cargo hold again, now with a different sense. On the rooftop of the Kaede City command post, Prince Gin had described ryuu magic as emerald dust. What if, like real dust, it was something that could be touched?
Sora lifted her hand in front of her face and blew gently into the air.
Nothing happened.
She kept blowing.
Nothing.
More air.
Nothing.
More, more, more . . .
Sora was light-headed. She paused so the room would stop spinning.
Daemon hurried in. He was a little paler than usual, and his hair was mussed up. But there was also an electric sort of energy in the way he bounced around the hold, unable to stand still, kinetic and fully charged.
He stopped moving for half a moment to say, “I did it. I broke into Prince Gin’s quarters.” Daemon promptly resumed pacing again and told her what he’d discovered in the maps and notes upstairs.
When he was done, Sora sank down to the floor. “Prince Gin is building an unstoppable army. War is coming.”
“No,” Daemon said. “War’s already here. It’s just that the rest of Kichona doesn’t realize it yet.”
The nauseating image of the tenderfoot nursery on fire flashed through Sora’s memory. She could still smell the smoke and see the charred remains in her head. And then afterward, once the embers had died, she’d wrenched herself away from the arms of the teachers who tried to comfort her, to restrain her, and bolted into the middle of all the ash. It had flown up around like a snow flurry from the hells.
Beneath it, there had been bones. Tiny, blackened bones, the skeletons inseparable from one to the next. The tenderfoots had died huddled together.
Sora bent over, dry heaving.
Daemon rushed to her side.
She shoved the fiery memories aside and tried to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
Breathe.
“We can’t let this ship make it to Tiger’s Belly,” Sora said. “We can’t let him choose more Hearts or take more taigas. We have to poison everyone here, and soon.”
“We really have to kill everyone?” Daemon asked.
Sora felt his unease keenly, not only because it coursed through their gemina bond like milk gone sour, but also because she wasn’t convinced that killing everyone was necessary either. Or at least she didn’t want to do it.
She kept focusing on her breaths as she rethought her plan. She opened Fairy’s pouch and looked through the vials. Then she saw a tiny transparent packet fastened to the inside of the leather flap. Sora gasped. It was kagi powder.
“What if we use this?” she asked, showing the fine white powder to Daemon. “It’s ground kagi leaves, which cause the equivalent of very vicious food poisoning. They’ll retch to the point of passing out.”
Daemon nodded as he processed what she was suggesting. “It’ll debilitate the ryuu long enough for us to isolate and kill Prince Gin. Maybe, without a leader, the rest of the ryuu will stop their advance through Kichona.”
“Exactly.”
However, poisoning the meal wouldn’t be easy. There were people in the galley, cooking. Sora and Daemon would have to distract them, or hope that there was a moment before dinnertime when the food was left unguarded.
They climbed up a level to where the galley was located and slinked in between crates of vegetables and drums of oranges until they were close to the kitchen. From what she could see through the galley door, there were three ryuu recruits in there, likely relegated to dinner duty because they were the lowest rungs of the ladder.
“Keep watch,” Sora said to Daemon. “Remember, if one of us is captured, save yourself.”
He hesitated.
“It’s the only way,” she said.
He shook his head. “No. We won’t get caught.”
Sora sighed. “And you say I’m the stubborn one.”
He shrugged and positioned himself at the ladder in case any other ryuu decided to make an appearance.
Sora crept a little farther through the food stocks, as close as possible to the galley door without being exposed. She reached into the pouch in her sleeve and confirmed that the small square of paper, folded like an envelope, was there. The kagi powder would blend into whatever it was that was bubbling on the stove.
She also checked that her pink disk of rira was easily accessible. It was the poison that Fairy had given her in case she was captured. Daemon had one on him too.
Sora stalled. Both she and Daemon were 100 percent nerves, and their gemina bond was as taut as a tightrope.
We were blessed by Luna to do this, she reminded herself. And we have trained our entire lives to protect Kichona. It didn’t make her any less nervous, but it was enough to push her forward with her plan.
One of the ryuu was tasting what was in the pot. Another was pulling trays of roasted mackerel out of the oven. The third put a vat of pickled radish on the small counter.
“I think this is done,” the one at the pot said. “Let’s ring the meal bell.”
Oh no, Sora thought. If they rang the bell, the deck would be swarming with ryuu before she could get to the pot.
She had to disable the bell. But it hung right outside the galley door, which meant she risked exposure even running to it, let alone trying to tinker with it while the ryuu were a foot away.
It was a risk she had to take.
Sora glanced at Daemon on the other side of the deck to signal what she was going to do. He shook his head and raised his arms up in confusion. Her pantomiming hadn’t made any sense.
Never mind that. She had only seconds to get this done. Sora darted to the bell.
She pressed herself flat against the wall of the galley and wrapped her fingers around the cold brass clapper dangling inside the bell. But how would she dampen it? She couldn’t yank the thing out; it was connected by a metal ring.
I might’ve acted a little hastily.
She let go of the bell for a moment and retrieved a knife from her sleeve. Then she sliced off the cuff of that sleeve and began to wrap the fabric around the brass clapper.
A spike of panic, like the prick of a cold stiletto blade, pierced her gemina bond.
At the same time, someone cleared her throat behind Sora. “What, exactly, do you think you’re doing?”
Sora jumped.
She recognized that acid-tinged voice. It was Virtuoso, the girl who’d been training the recruits.
“I’m, um, fixing the bell,” Sora said, her back still to Virtuoso.
“How interesting. I didn’t realize bells could be fixed with cotton. Or kagi powder.”
Sora whirled around and saw with horror that the little paper packet of poison had fallen out of her sleeve, probably when she grabbed her knife to cut the fabric. And now the envelope was in the hands of Virtuoso, the top flap open where white powder spilled out.
She looked up from Virtuoso’s hands. The ryuu’s face was shrouded by the heavy hood of her cloak.
She didn’t dare spare a glance past Virtuoso, to where Daemon was, for fear of revealing him.
Run! she wished she could say. She tried her best to convey the feeling of it through their gemina bond.
Resistance pushed through the connection.
Sora pushed back. Go, go, go! She sent the urgency to him. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t get caught too.
His sadness harpooned through their bond. But he’d made her a promise, an
d his intention reverberated through their connection. He would get off the ship. He would make it to shore, somehow, because he knew that otherwise, Sora’s sacrifice wouldn’t be worth it.
She saw out of the corner of her eye when he fled.
Please get away safely.
She focused on Virtuoso again. Sora dared to reach for her sword.
Virtuoso took a step back, as if momentarily caught off guard. But then she laughed. Green mist coalesced out of thin air. It was shaped like a snake’s head, a smaller version of the one that had menaced over Kaede City.
“I’m ordering you to stop.” Sora pointed her sword to strike at the snake.
But it snapped its misty jaws around the tip of the blade, then sucked it down. Sora’s sword disappeared, eaten in a single gulp.
She jerked back in shock.
The mist snake coiled around Sora, locking her arms against her body. She struggled to get free, but the snake might as well have been made of iron, not fog.
“You’ll never pull this off,” Sora said, hands balled into fists. “The Society will fight you. You’ll never get what you want.”
Virtuoso sighed. “Trust me, I’m used to not getting what I want.” A resigned kind of sadness tinted her tone. It was almost as if the ferocity and arrogance from before was a facade.
She stepped toward Sora. Then she pulled the hood of her cloak off her head.
She really was just a girl. One with pale blond locks, almost platinum, the same color as Sora’s beneath her taiga-black dye.
And a similar sprinkle of freckles across her cheekbones.
And the same button nose.
The ship seemed to lurch all around Sora, and she grabbed onto a citrus drum for stability.
I must be seeing things.
But she wasn’t.
Virtuoso wasn’t just any girl.
Sora’s sister was alive.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sora gasped. “Hana.”
Her world spun. The deep pit she’d felt in her heart for the past ten years, everything she thought she’d known about the Blood Rift, no longer made sense. How was her sister standing before her? Alive?
The girl nodded curtly. “You recognize me.”
“Th-the hair. The freckles, like mine. And you have Mama’s nose and Papa’s sharp jawline.” Sora’s voice was barely louder than a whisper.
Hana bit her lip. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember them.” Her voice was a little sad, but also bitter. The years apart had left their mark.
“We still remember you,” Sora said. “Stars . . . Mama and Papa will be beside themselves when they find out you’re alive.”
Sora could see Hana’s return home now—Mama tripping over the hem of her long skirt as she ran down the pebbled path in front of their house to greet her, her face already splotched from crying, and Papa standing back to let his girls reunite, quiet tears streaming down his face as he looked on. They would spend the first evening at home, just the four of them. Mama would cook a feast of all of Hana’s favorite foods. Papa would begin sketching a new piece of pottery to commemorate her homecoming. Sora would read from Mama’s newest stories as they curled together in front of the fire. And in the morning, they would walk down the mountain path together and dismantle the shrine, perhaps offering one last slice of cake to the gods to thank them for Hana’s safe return. They would be an unbroken family again, no more ghosts whispering guilty things in their ears, no more sad, burnt skeletons in memories anymore.
Several ryuu recruits emerged from the galley, and Hana’s tough outer shell snapped back into place. “What are you staring at?” she said. “Sound the alarm. Alert Prince Gin and the others that we have a stowaway, and search the ship to see if there are more. I suspect that, at the very least, this taiga’s gemina is on board.”
The steely prick of panic pierced Sora again, although this time, it was her own. But Daemon would feel it and know they were after him now.
Please, please, get off the ship.
The ryuu rushed off to carry out orders. Hana turned back to Sora.
“You say you remembered me,” Hana said, the harshness of giving orders still lingering, “and yet no one tried to come after me. If you and the Society cared as much as you claim, someone would have pursued us. We were tenderfoots, for gods’ sake. I waited for you that Friday night for our sleepover, and you didn’t come. You just left me in the nursery for them to take us.”
Sora staggered at the anger in her sister’s eyes, as savage as a tempest. This was not the Hana she’d known.
“What do you mean, let them take you? Who is ‘they’? I thought you died. The nursery burned down that night. I . . .” Sora could hardly choke out the words. “I saw all the little bodies.”
Her sister scowled. “Some tenderfoots died, but Prince Gin’s warriors took others.”
“Why?” The question came out as a whisper.
“Because we were small and they could hoist us over their shoulders as they retreated. Why would Prince Gin leave an entire generation of talent for the Society, when he could have them for the day when he returned to Kichona?”
If not for the mist snake holding her up, Sora would have collapsed onto the ship floor.
“I’m so sorry, Hana. I didn’t know.” The memory of that night came rushing back, as well as all the heavyhearted nights thereafter when Sora would relive the decision to go with her friends on the dirigible instead of getting Hana for their sleepover. Sora would wake with tears soaking her pillowcase, only able to calm down after Daemon soothed her through their bond.
“But I’m here now,” Sora said. “And so are you—”
“Just because I wanted you to be with me ten years ago doesn’t mean I want you now,” Hana said flatly. Her features were pinched, as if saying this cost her something. “Prince Gin raised me. The ryuu are my family. And stop calling me Hana. I go by ‘Virtuoso’ now.”
If it were possible for Sora’s heart to sink, it was happening now. Straight out of her chest, through the bottom of the ship, to the ocean floor.
She slumped against the mist snake’s coils, looking at her sister and trying to reconcile the strong-willed sixteen-year-old before her with the eager-to-please, clingy little girl she’d been a decade ago.
“Enough talk,” Hana said. “I can’t deal with this right now. And Prince Gin will want to see you. He can be very . . . charming.”
But Sora already knew that. She wriggled in the snake’s grasp, to no avail.
She was about to lose her mind to the Dragon Prince. Again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Daemon dove into the sea just as the alarm was sounded on the ship. He wanted to stay on the surface, to look back at where he’d left Sora, but he couldn’t. The future of the kingdom was at stake, and he’d promised Sora he would do his part, even if it meant leaving her alone.
But if anyone can take care of herself, he told himself, it’s Sora. Daemon tried to take comfort in the fact that Prince Gin probably wouldn’t kill her. He wanted to recruit more taigas, and he would bewitch Sora to join him.
Maybe I can do whatever it was that I did last time to jerk her out of his spell, Daemon thought. Even though he wasn’t quite sure what it was he’d done.
Daemon kicked his legs and swam as hard as he could in the frigid water. For once, his pathetic magical ability had cooperated, and he’d successfully cast a sailfish spell on himself, which would allow him to hold his breath longer. He pushed and pulled with his arms, diving deeper, putting more space between him and the ship.
Suddenly, a shock wave rattled his gemina bond and colored it black, like ink injected into water.
Sora! Daemon gasped and swallowed seawater. He choked and his lungs burned. His legs instinctively kicked upward.
When he broke through the surface, he coughed and gulped for air.
Ryuu swarmed the ship’s deck. Some were up in the rigging. One was in the crow’s nest with a spyglass pointed at the ocean.
All were searching for him.
At the same time, his gemina bond prickled with pins and needles, as if Sora had been emotionally stung by a jellyfish. What had just happened?
Daemon’s limbs went heavy with dread.
But he couldn’t stay here for long. If he didn’t move, he’d either drown or be caught by the ryuu.
Either way, he’d be no good to Sora.
His mission was to get to the Society outpost at Tiger’s Belly to send a dragonfly and let the Citadel know what was happening. But after that, he had another mission—he would come back to save Sora, no matter what it cost.
Daemon took one last look at Prince Gin’s ship. Then he took a breath, dove deep, and swam.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sora knelt on the main deck. Hana stood behind her, flanked by a half dozen ryuu. There was no need for the mist snake anymore, for she was more than adequately guarded.
Prince Gin approached. The ryuu bowed.
Sora cringed. But it wasn’t just his immense presence. It was every little detail—the way he walked with his arms folded behind his back, as if he had nothing to fear and therefore didn’t need his hands at the ready. His smile, surprisingly warm and disarming, despite the fact that it tugged awkwardly at the scarred ridges on his face. And the adoration radiating off his warriors, which wasn’t servile but, rather, seemed of mutual respect.
Before the prince reached Sora, another ryuu ran up to him. “We found no evidence of any other stowaways on board, Your Highness.”
For a moment, Sora forgot the fear of being in the Dragon Prince’s presence, and she heaved a sigh of relief. She’d been pretty sure Daemon was safe—she felt his adrenaline through their gemina bond, and it was a determined kind of drive, not a panicked one—but hearing the ryuu verify he’d escaped was even better confirmation.
Prince Gin nodded at the warrior to acknowledge the report. Then he strode to the center of the deck and scowled at Sora. “I hear you were attempting to poison me and my warriors. Do you know who I am?”
Sora swallowed and nodded, keenly aware again that she kneeled before the man at the helm of the Blood Rift slaughter.