by Evelyn Skye
“My ship serves Sola, Luna, and Zomuri,” he said. “You insult our gods by refusing me in your port.”
“I don’t know who Zomuri is—”
Prince Gin flicked his wrist.
The harbormaster’s head snapped cleanly off his neck.
Sora gasped. The man’s body remained standing for a few seconds, as if, in its shock, it still expected its head to return. But a moment later, it collapsed onto the pier, splattering blood everywhere.
The new recruits joined Sora in her surprise, but Prince Gin turned to them and said, “We aim for peace while in our own kingdom, but sometimes, expediency requires sacrifice. Blood is a price we must be willing to pay for glory. I also wanted you to see the power we have within us. This is what we will be able to do when we invade other kingdoms. We’ll make Kichona one of the most feared and revered kingdoms in the world. We will be unstoppable.”
Yes! Sora thought, as the fire of ambition in her belly flared, hot and ready to fight. Her mother had entreated her to do more, to be more. And now she was fulfilling her promise, serving the greatest leader Kichona had ever seen and using Luna’s gifts to their greatest potential. And with her sister, no less.
Mama will be proud, Sora thought.
By now most of the ryuu had disembarked, leaving a small crew behind to guard the ship. Prince Gin divided his warriors into small groups, each in charge of attacking a sector of the city, securing it, and rounding up any taigas they found. Everyone had been assigned a unit—even the new recruits—except Sora.
“Where do I go?” she asked, but everyone was already gone, assembled with their groups farther down the dock.
“You haven’t been trained yet,” Hana said, as she appeared seemingly from nowhere. “You’re stuck with me until you’re ready. Unfortunately.”
Shrug it off, Sora thought. She reminded herself of how Hana had looked at her earlier, when Sora had managed to find her when she was invisible. She also held on to the fact that Hana could have let Prince Gin execute her, but had saved her instead. That didn’t mean nothing.
“I won’t let you down,” Sora pledged, touching her necklace. Not this time.
Sora stood inside the shrine to Emmer, god of the harvest. While Tiger’s Belly had a port, it was only a small one; this part of Kichona was mostly rice paddies and silos, growing and supplying the kingdom with grain. Fittingly, this was a modest shrine, with plain wooden beams supporting a clean but basic pagoda roof.
It did, however, have an excellent vantage point from which to observe the network of farms inland. Hana would be able to watch the ryuu’s progress while she trained Sora in their magic.
“Lie down,” Hana ordered.
“Here?”
“Where else?” She tapped her foot impatiently. It was a role reversal. It used to be Sora who complained that Hana was too slow, that she was always holding up Sora’s plans.
Sora lay down on the thin reed mat covering the shrine’s floor. Marigold wreaths on rickety bamboo stands, offerings to Emmer from the locals, surrounded the perimeter.
“You could see me when I was invisible,” Hana said. “Which means that, in theory, you might be able to disappear too.”
Sora sat up. “You’re going to show me how?” Eagerness for more ryuu magic bubbled inside her.
Hana put her foot on Sora’s chest and shoved her back on the floor. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ll start with the basics.”
Sora sighed but nodded.
“Find the ryuu particles. Once your Sight homes in on them, they will respond to your thoughts. No stupid chants and mudras to tie up your hands. Ryuu can actually cast spells and fight at the same time.”
Oh! Sora hadn’t thought of that before. Taigas always had to choose between holding weapons or using their fingers to begin a spell. But now she’d be free to use both superior magic and throwing stars simultaneously. The ryuu were the future of Kichona. Sora smiled.
But if she wanted to be part of Prince Gin’s revolution, she’d better practice. Sora refocused, shifting her vision to look for the magic. After a few seconds, the ryuu particles winked into view.
“I see them,” she said.
“Now tell them to lift you up.”
Sora made her body as stiff as a corpse.
Buoy me, she thought to the emerald dust floating around her.
They eddied for a moment, then came together like droplets of water forming a wave. They swept under Sora’s left side and scooped her up, suspending her an inch above the shrine floor.
She let out an unintentional gasp. Whereas taiga magic was like warm, liquid chocolate coursing through her body, ryuu magic was a sauna—hot and intense, but in a good way. It both energized and relaxed her. There were even notes of cedar in the air. Sora smiled as she relaxed into the ryuu power.
Now take me higher, she thought at the particles.
Her body rose in the air, steadily. Then she accidentally sped up, and she smashed into the bells and banners hanging from the ceiling. She tumbled back to the ground and smacked into the reed mat. The force of her landing knocked over several of the marigold wreaths nearby.
Hana laughed. But when Sora looked at her, she smacked her hand over her mouth. All traces of amusement were wiped away in an instant, replaced by schoolteacher sternness. Or what Hana probably thought a teacher looked like when disciplining an apprentice. She’d never had a chance to be part of the taiga school.
“Make the particles lift you up again,” Hana said.
Sora obeyed, but not because she was scared into obedience. It was because the would-be-teacher look on Hana’s face reminded her how young her sister had been when she was kidnapped.
She used to be small enough to fit in Sora’s lap. Sora hadn’t been much bigger, but two years made a difference back then, and Hana would curl up against her, with a smile that could light up the Imperial City whenever Sora paid her any attention. On Friday night sleepovers, Hana would beg Sora to tell her myths from their mother’s books, stories Hana was still too young to read on her own, and Sora would recite fables about rich, greedy children who tried to steal the moon from Luna, legends of past taiga warriors who fought against monsters from the sea, and myths about girls riding on the backs of horses made of comets. Every time, Hana would murmur happily and curl tighter into Sora’s lap, and Sora would know the moment she fell asleep by the rhythm of her breath, the content slowing of the ins-and-outs as she drifted off to her own dreams full of brave warriors and mysterious storybook creatures.
Sora ached to have that again. Not exactly the same, because they were grown now, but she wanted her sister back. She wanted to bundle her up in her lap and keep her safe from the world, with the promise that when the monsters came, she and Hana would fight together, sister by sister, sword by sword.
And so she listened to Hana and commanded the ryuu particles to buoy her again.
Sora went up and down ten times, and by the last round, her control was much improved.
Satisfied that she’d mastered the spell, she released her command of the particles and landed back on the shrine floor as gracefully as if she were a flying carpet.
“You’re awfully smug for just making yourself go up and down,” Hana said. “Let’s see how smug you are after this.” She glanced at the reed mat beneath Sora. Its edges leaped to attention, flying up and lifting Sora into the air. It wrapped her inside. Then it squeezed itself, rolling more tightly, trapping her like a human spring roll.
Sora struggled with her arms clamped by her sides. The mat pressed in on her, almost crushing her ribs. She could manage only shallow breaths.
With her arms pinned, she couldn’t use a knife to slice her way out. She tried to command ryuu particles to retrieve her knife for her, but even they couldn’t do it, because her blades were stashed in various pockets and sleeves, which were also smashed tightly against her inside the mat.
“Nines,” she cursed between quick breaths.
She wiggled her feet, the only pa
rts of her that were really free, but that didn’t do any good.
Think, Sora, think.
Wait. Her eyes lit up as an idea came to her. Maybe she could untie herself.
She searched for the ryuu particles again, needing only a few seconds for her vision to shift to ryuu reality. The narrow space inside her rolled mat sparkled green.
Let me out, she commanded the particles. She envisioned the magic flowing in a stream of green at the string that wove the reeds together, unraveling through the threads, and setting her free.
But instead of following her command as she’d imagined it, the particles flew around in a chaotic swirl. Then they rushed forward, into the reeds themselves, as if the magic had been absorbed. The reeds turned from brown to a bright shade of glowing green.
“Oh no. What’s happening?”
The mat unrolled, then disappeared, and Sora again slammed to the floor.
“What in all hells?” Sora looked again, but it wasn’t as if she could miss it. The mat had been right there, all around her. And now it was gone.
The magic had done her bidding. She’d asked it to free her from the mat. It just hadn’t done it in the way she’d imagined.
She gasped and looked at Hana. There really was something about sharing the same blood.
Sora rose and began to walk toward her sister, but not two steps later, she tripped on something and fell. She swore, as she stumbled and tumbled to the shrine floor for the third time.
Yet she was an inch off the actual floor, even though she wasn’t asking the ryuu particles to help her levitate. What was going on?
She ran her fingers over the air beneath her. It wasn’t air. It was a reed mat. Invisible, but there.
“Gods,” Sora said, as she ran her fingers over it again.
Like how Hana hadn’t truly vanished, she realized. During the scrimmage, the visible part of her sister had just been camouflaged, but her physical body still existed in the ordinary world. The same had happened with the reed mat—it was both here and not.
Hana had told her to focus on basic firsts. But Sora never had been one to follow the rules.
“I’m going to make myself invisible too,” she declared.
Her sister’s veil of disdain lifted, as if Hana had forgotten she wanted to dislike Sora. It was replaced by a cautious curiosity. “Try,” Hana said, her mouth parting into a small O as she watched.
Sora located the emerald dust. Make me invisible, she willed it.
Her hand trembled, but nothing happened.
Try again. Make me invisible.
Again, nothing.
She thought about what had happened with the reed mat. The magic had swirled around and then the reeds had soaked them in.
Sora smiled. She rose to her feet. Instead of asking the ryuu particles to come to her, she would go to them.
The emerald particles flurried before her. She hurled herself into them, as if diving into a pool.
Stars! They absorbed her, or she absorbed them, and they were cool and hot at the same time, on her skin, in every blood cell, penetrating all the way to her core. She inhaled sharply. This wasn’t just the sauna-like feel of the magic before. Sora lit up from within. The ability to make herself invisible was a thousand Autumn Festival sparklers inside of her, and she laughed, spinning in a circle with arms out, intoxicated by the power.
Hana made herself invisible too, but she appeared to Sora as if shimmering, like the form of her sister but composed entirely of green jewels. Sora looked down at her hand. It was delightfully the same.
“We’re made of emeralds,” she said.
“I can’t believe you figured out how to do this so quickly.” There was nothing but wonder in Hana’s voice.
“I’m learning as fast as I can for you,” Sora said, her belly filling with warmth, as if she’d just eaten the most delicious, hearty stew. Being a part of Prince Gin’s ryuu made her feel as if nothing could go wrong. Fate had put her here, in this time and place, to be a ryuu. With Hana. “I want us to be able to do things together. I want to share your ambitions. I want to be your sister again.”
Hana frowned, her defenses going back up a little. “You’re doing this for Prince Gin. It’s because of his vision for Kichona that we’re all here.”
Sora shrugged. “Yes, for Prince Gin. But also for us. We’d get to fight together, Hana. We can forge a new path for Kichona, make history and be part of building a kingdom together. I know it’s hard to have me here all of a sudden, but you have to believe when I say I love you and always have, and I would have come after you a decade ago if I could. But I was eight.”
Hana tensed.
That was the wrong thing for me to say, Sora realized. Because no excuse was good enough, not when you were as scared and lost and hurt as tenderfoot Hana must have been. All she’d wanted was her sister, and Sora hadn’t been there.
“For what it’s worth,” Sora said, “if anything happened to you now, I would fight to the ends of the earth to save you.”
Hana blinked as if surprised. She opened her mouth to say something.
But then a horn sounded. The ryuu had rounded up all the taigas from the vast countryside in Tiger’s Belly. It was time to assemble them in the Society outpost building so that Prince Gin could speak with them.
Giddiness burst inside Sora like a geyser in Rae Springs, and the conversation with Hana was immediately forgotten. Sora jumped up. “Come on! Let’s go see the new recruits get initiated.” Prince Gin’s charisma was addicting, and she craved being in his presence some more.
She hurried toward the stairs that led down from the shrine’s tower. “I can’t wait to see His Highness honoring some of the citizens as Hearts too!”
Hana rolled her eyes. It was a typical little sister thing to do, though, and Sora shrugged it off. Also, Hana had probably seen enough of the Dragon Prince’s speeches that she wasn’t awed by them anymore. But that wouldn’t stop Sora from enjoying this. Or dragging her sister along.
“Please, Hana? I don’t want to miss any of it.”
Her sister rolled her eyes again—it was a wonder they were still inside her head—but then she said, “All right, all right.”
Sora grinned, and they ran down the stairs together.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The ryuu were gone by the time Daemon and the fishermen rowed into Tiger’s Belly. Daemon had known this would likely be the case. And yet the emptiness on the pier—the quiet berths and complete lack of sailors and merchants and the other men who usually populated the harbor—nearly brought Daemon to his knees. Prince Gin had come and gone through another outpost, stealing its taigas for his army, hypnotizing all the citizens, and likely selecting more Hearts for sacrifice. He was one step closer to the Ceremony, and Daemon was one step farther from stopping him.
And then there was the deafening silence in Daemon’s head. Nothing was coming through his gemina bond, and what he tried to send to Sora just bounced back. Was she safe? Had Prince Gin brainwashed her? Would Daemon ever get her back?
He hadn’t realized how much she completed him, until she was gone.
But Daemon couldn’t feel sorry for himself. Because if Sora was alive, she needed him. They were in this situation because she’d decided she wanted to do all that she could for Kichona, to be the best that she could be.
He had to follow suit.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Daemon said to the fishermen. “I’ll see to it that the Society knows of your good deeds.”
“It was our honor to help,” the eldest man said. They all bowed, then pushed off to return to their atoll.
Daemon hurried down the silent pier to the harbormaster’s office and pushed his way through the door.
“Agh!” a man shrieked from beneath the desk. “Please don’t kill me.”
Daemon jumped. He already had blades in his hands before he realized that the man had screamed in defense, not attack. He put away his knives. “Why do you think I want to kill
you?”
The man wouldn’t come out from his hiding place. Daemon walked around the desk instead. “I promise you, sir, I don’t want to hurt you.”
A bespectacled fellow was sitting in a puddle of his own piss, and from the smell of it, it was likely he’d soiled himself in another way too. As soon as he saw Daemon, he started sobbing. “Please! I’m just the assistant to the harbormaster! I had nothing against your ship docking on the pier! Please don’t decapitate me.”
Apparently, the ryuu had cut off the harbormaster’s head. Daemon shuddered.
He looked down at himself and realized he was wearing a ryuu uniform. Not that a taiga uniform would have calmed the assistant down any. The man saw black clothing and weapons on Daemon’s back, and that’s all he needed to know to cry for his life.
“I know you’ve been frightened,” Daemon said as he kneeled by the man, “but I swear I’m not with the people who attacked Tiger’s Belly. I’m here to help, but I need to know where the Society’s command post is.”
The assistant peered up, his puffy eyes magnified through his glasses. He didn’t say anything.
“Can you tell me where the Society of Taigas’ command post is located?” Daemon asked again, making his voice as soft and patient as possible. It was quite an accomplishment, given that his blood rushed through him, urging him to run too. But he needed to know where to go.
The man nodded, his head seeming to bobble all over the place. “Th-the taiga post is on the outskirts of town, where the grain silos are.”
“Is the fastest way to cut through the city itself, or is there a better path?”
The harbormaster’s assistant just stared at Daemon. He pulled his knees up to his chest and started rocking back and forth in his puddle.
That was all Daemon would get out of him. He wished he had a spare pair of trousers to leave the fellow, but all he had were the wet clothes he wore and the weapons stashed within them. “The Citadel will send more help soon,” Daemon said. He didn’t know if it was true, but the man needed hope, so that’s what Daemon gave.
He left the office and sprinted into Tiger’s Belly. Like Paro Village, the citizens wandered around with blissful, if slightly blank, looks on their faces. The stone streets were littered with the detritus of the ryuu’s hasty and violent search for taigas—overturned carts, shopwindows blasted into shards, a trampled stuffed toy lying muddy in the gutter—but the townspeople didn’t seem to care.