Circle of Shadows

by Evelyn Skye

  But honestly, the chance of that happening was very, very slim, and Daemon and the others here were just buying a little more time for the Society to move the rest of its warriors into place to prepare for a showdown in the Imperial City. Most likely, the Dragon Prince was going to kill his sister. Why leave her alive if he could take over the kingdom in one fell swoop?

  Daemon stopped on the southern part of the plateau.

  Fairy could die. And the rest of the taigas here—maybe me too—could be brainwashed puppets. Very soon.

  The Society had sent only thirty taigas to Copper Bluff. The Council and most of the Imperial Guards remained in the capital to protect the real empress. They had sent just enough of a contingent to look believable that Fairy was Empress Aki, yet not too many that Prince Gin would find a windfall of taigas to bring to his side.

  Daemon’s stomach curled into a ball and cowered.

  We are sacrificing ourselves for the sake of the kingdom.

  Broomstick stepped up beside him, glanced over, and put his fists over his heart. No words were necessary.

  Daemon nodded and mirrored the gesture.

  They were sacrifices. But they would go down fighting.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  On the third day after the dragonfly message at the Striped Coves, a dozen Imperial Guards stood outside Empress Aki’s tent in Dassu Desert. Another dozen patrolled a bit farther out, like an orbit around the empress, and a handful more kept watch still farther out along the edges of Copper Bluff, looking for the approach of the Dragon Prince’s army.

  Sora and Hana had made themselves invisible on the climb up to the plateau, commanding the ryuu particles to sweep away their footprints in the sand along the way. Now they were at the very edge. The Imperial Guards couldn’t see them, and so they remained standing in their places, vigilant but relaxed. Hana would create a diversion and take care of the guards here and the others who would charge in from the outer parts of the plateau. Sora would take advantage of the distraction and execute the empress.

  As soon as they summited the bluff, Sora made to sprint to the tent.

  Hana grabbed her by the wrist. “Hold on, you’re being sloppy. You’re—” She dropped Sora’s wrist like it had scalded her. “You’re burning up!”

  Sora grinned as she nodded. Every cell inside of her seemed to be on fire. She could hardly think straight. Everything in her head was an accelerated, blurry swirl. It was a fever, but not the kind that would confine her to bed—this was a fever of anticipation.

  “I’m going to garrote the empress with her own gold hair. But before that, I’m going to tell her all the things we’re going to do once Prince Gin is emperor. All the ways he’s going to dismantle her kingdom and rebuild it. All the glory we’ll achieve. She tried to prevent us from making Kichona into an empire and paradise, but the joke’s on her—she’ll die and we’ll still get the Evermore.”

  Hana’s eyes were as big as Autumn Festival cakes. “Um . . . okay.”

  Sora blinked at her, confused. “You don’t want me to make the empress suffer?”

  “No, yes, I mean . . . just don’t take too long doing it. More time means more opportunity to mess up. The most important thing is that Empress Aki dies.”

  Sora grinned again, the flame growing inside as she thought about carrying out the Dragon Prince’s orders. “I can do that.”

  Hana watched her for another minute before nodding. “All right. Remember the objective. Don’t lose your head. Let’s go.”

  They sneaked closer to Empress Aki’s tent, pausing as necessary to weave between the Imperial Guards on patrol. When they were fifty yards away, a servant walked out of the tent. She held the flap open for a moment as she talked to one of the nearby guards.

  Sora glanced at Hana.

  “Good luck,” Hana whispered.

  “I don’t need luck.” Sora winked.

  The servant finished her conversation and was leaving to fetch something. Sora darted for the tent.

  She slipped inside just as the flap swung shut.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Fairy’s tent—actually, the empress’s—was expansive, as befitting royalty. Flickering candles in glass pyramids hung from the ceiling, lighting the main room with their soft glow. A plush sofa took up one of the far corners of the tent, its blue silk upholstery hemmed in gold, several fluffy pillows positioned at the armrests. There was a dining area, with a low table and comfortable cushions on the floor, and the entire tent was perfumed with the sweetness of sparkling rose-apple sidra. It was an expensive luxury from the north of Kichona, and if Fairy was going to die masquerading as the empress, she might as well enjoy these last moments as if she really were royalty.

  In the back of the tent, in a portion partitioned off by a heavy velvet curtain, Fairy sipped on the sidra while sitting at the empress’s vanity. Her gold hair was done in curls and braids, and her gown flowed elegantly to the carpeted ground. It was the prettiest she’d ever looked, but she didn’t preen as she might’ve before. Instead, she wore the clothes with a mixture of dread and pride. Dread, because she was all dolled up for her funeral. Pride, because she’d volunteered for this.

  Broomstick and Wolf lounged on a couple of armchairs. The Imperial Guards were outside, patrolling the bluff and protecting all sides of the tent.

  “You don’t have to stay here with me,” Fairy said, as she painted eyeliner in dramatic wings like the empress wore. “In fact, you should really get as far away as possible from this tent. The closer you are, the more likely you’ll die when the ryuu come for me.” Her hands shook, and the eyeliner went a bit jagged.

  “I’m not leaving your side,” Broomstick said. He fiddled with a new kind of fuse he’d been working on. The taiga weapons masters were always looking to improve the Society’s arsenal, and Broomstick had offered to help with developing a new smoke bomb. But his hands were shaking too. Their entire gemina bond was.

  Wolf polished his sword furiously. It was already as shiny as a mirror. “You’ve been insisting that we leave since I got here—and probably before that—but stop. We’re not going to let you die. Or if you do, we’re going to die with you.”

  Fairy’s eyes welled with tears, and she stopped trying to fix her crooked makeup. Maybe it was selfish, but if this was the end, she really did want her friends by her side. She nodded, unable to say anything.

  “Do you think they’re close?” Broomstick asked. None of them believed Prince Gin would follow instructions and send only two ryuu.

  She dabbed away her tears—the eyeliner was a mess now, but who cared—and said, “The Imperial Guards will sound the alarm once they see the ryuu approach.”

  “We still need to be on alert,” Wolf said, staring intently at the velvet curtain. “The ryuu aren’t like ordinary soldiers. Once they arrive, we might not have much notice. They could just blow in here like a sandstorm. Or an actual sandstorm.”

  They didn’t say anything for a moment. Fairy put the eyeliner away and pushed around the other makeup in the cherrywood box but didn’t apply anything else. Broomstick pretended to concentrate on his fuse. Wolf kept polishing his sword with such ferocity, it was as if he were trying to grind it into a different, smaller blade.

  Everything was quiet.

  Too quiet.

  Fairy started to hum an Autumn Festival song to fill the silence. It was about a poor farmer whose wheat had not grown, and his neighbors who brought him gifts of bread and new seeds to help.

  The velvet curtain behind her lifted. A familiar voice interrupted her song.

  “Hello, Your Majesty.”

  It was Spirit.

  Fairy’s heart leaped. In the same instant, though, horror suffocated her hope as she processed the sadistic bite in Spirit’s tone. She must be under the Dragon Prince’s spell.

  “Stop! I’m not—” But before Fairy could finish, she was yanked out of her seat and put in a headlock. A knife pressed against her throat, although there was no visib
le arm to hold it. Fairy tried to cry out, but the pressure on her neck had disabled her voice box.

  “Freeze, Sora!” Wolf shouted, as he and Broomstick jumped up from their chairs.

  The arm around Fairy’s neck materialized. If she’d been able to, she would have gasped. Spirit had been invisible.

  “Daemon? Broomstick?” Spirit said, confused.

  “What are you doing here?” Wolf asked.

  “I’m here to kill the empress.” Her voice was fire, not like the same kind of flame it usually was. This was hot in a zealous kind of way, like a forest fire on a rampage.

  Fairy tried to jab her with her elbow, but Spirit just tightened her grip.

  “Prince Gin hypnotized you,” Wolf said. “You’ll do whatever he says.”

  “Shut up,” Spirit said, jerking Fairy against her body. “I’m my own person. I do what I want, and what I want is to help Prince Gin usher Kichona into an age of glory. And then, if we succeed, Kichona will become a paradise, and we will be immortal.”

  Broomstick took a cautious step closer, at the same time giving Fairy a warning look not to struggle, because their friend was unpredictable. “That’s just a myth, Spirit,” he said gently. “It’s not real.”

  “It is real. We just haven’t achieved it yet because there hasn’t been a warrior worthy of turning Kichona into the vast empire Zomuri wanted. But now we have Prince Gin, and he’ll do it. He’s already pushed magic beyond what taigas have known for centuries. He’ll push our kingdom beyond what we know too. He’ll make the Evermore real.”

  “Sora . . .” Wolf said, taking a step closer.

  “Shall I slit the empress’s artery and kill her right away, or slice her in a hundred different, shallow places and let her bleed slowly to death before your eyes?”

  “Spirit,” Fairy said. Or, she tried to say it, but her roommate’s chokehold was tight, and she could barely get out a whisper.

  “I don’t want to hear from you,” Spirit said. The tip of her knife pierced Fairy’s skin.

  “You’re hurting her!” Broomstick said. “That’s—”

  But Wolf had unhooked his bo. He lunged at Spirit, trying to reach her around Fairy.

  Spirit dodged. She threw Fairy into the air, and somehow, Fairy remained floating there, where no one could reach her. A strip of her dress tore itself off and gagged her.

  Broomstick gawked.

  “Try to get her down!” Wolf instructed him.

  Meanwhile, Spirit drew her sword and advanced on Wolf with rapid slashes.

  He spun his bo up, down, left, and right, to block the blows. “You’re not yourself, Sora. Think hard. Remember Kaede City? Do you remember what happened to the taigas there?”

  “I remember wanting to join Prince Gin.” She faltered. “And . . . you prevented me!” In anger, she rushed at Wolf.

  He thrust the end of his bo into Spirit’s stomach. It forced the air out of her, and she doubled over.

  Spirit recovered and swung her sword at the bo. Wolf shifted its angle at the last second and caught the blade in a nick in the wood. He twirled the bo, which wrenched the sword from Spirit’s hand.

  “I don’t even know why I’m fighting you,” she said, her voice full of frigid disdain. “It’s the empress that matters.”

  She unsheathed a knife from her sleeve and aimed it up to the tent’s ceiling. She pulled back her arm to throw.

  Fairy saw her entire life in a split second. The faint memory of being a tenderfoot, waking up each morning in the nursery, where it always smelled of warm milk and tea biscuits. The night they became Level 1 apprentices, when Luna’s moonbeams lit up the grassy amphitheater, and the triplicate whorls on Fairy’s and Broomstick’s backs glowed at the same moment, bonding them as geminas. The first day of chemistry class when she was thirteen, when she discovered her love for botanicals and potions. All the nights she stayed up late with Spirit, laughing over a prank they’d pulled or rehashing Fairy’s latest boy-conquering escapades.

  It had been a good life. And it would be a noble ending.

  Fairy closed her eyes and waited for the knife.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  No!” Daemon jumped at Sora. The air around him crackled, as if charged with electricity. He tackled her, and as soon as they collided, a jolt blasted through Sora’s body.

  She lay flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her. The knife fell out of her hand. Daemon kept her pinned.

  And all his fear gushed through their gemina bond, like a dam that had burst. It swept over Sora, and for a moment, she was completely submerged in the whirlpool of his terror that she would kill the empress, that he would hurt Sora, and that Sora was irretrievably lost.

  Suddenly, Sora’s vision turned blue with bright light. The sensation was vaguely familiar, as if it had happened before. It whipped at her skull like a lash of lightning. The brightness reached inside, targeting her love of Prince Gin, trying to rip away the roots of it in her mind.

  She tried desperately to hold on. The instinct to fight was so strong.

  Daemon’s emotion didn’t relent. When Sora grabbed onto a tendril of her loyalty to the Dragon Prince, a lasso of blue sparks yanked it away. Her mind tried again, and again, holding on to each root, and yet each time, the light in their gemina bond wrenched the tendril out of her brain.

  And then the dedication to Prince Gin was gone, all the porridgy mush and cloudy, unquestioning bliss, cleaned out completely.

  But Sora didn’t feel empty. Daemon was here.

  On top of her.

  “Hello,” she whispered. It was all she could manage as she tried to sort out what it was she was feeling. She wanted to flip him off her, as if they were sparring. She also wanted to hug him, because all their time apart fell on her in an avalanche, and she missed him like she missed breathing. And then there was his closeness, both physically and through their gemina bond, that overwhelmed her and made her feel like she was drowning again.

  He looked her intensely in the eyes. “Is it you? Did I really break the spell again?”

  Sora nodded, still trying to breathe and recover from his tackle.

  Then it began to sink in. She had been about to kill the empress. Holy heavens. Horror washed over Sora, and she just let herself go limp on the ground. “The Dragon Prince. I . . . He . . . I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry.”

  Daemon climbed off her. “It’s okay. You’re you again. Everything is all right now.”

  It wasn’t, though. At that moment, the ryuu particles in the tent began to vibrate, as if trying to contain their excitement but unable to. And the magic closer to the tent’s entrance was actually bouncing off itself, reacting like magnetic waves near a ryuu.

  Hana was right outside. She must be nearly finished fighting the Imperial Guards. She’d be inside any minute.

  Sora felt paralyzed. What was she supposed to do? If Hana saw Daemon and Broomstick, she’d think they were getting in Sora’s way, and she would kill them. Prince Gin wasn’t here; there was no one to charm taigas to join the ryuu. So Hana had been executing the taigas outside one by one.

  But if Sora protected Daemon and Broomstick, then Hana would know that the spell had been broken. Sora would be the enemy again. And that would mean losing the inroads they’d made in their reconciliation.

  And there was another thing. Sora had promised her mother that she’d be the best person she could, because Hana hadn’t had the opportunity to. Well, now her sister did have the chance. She was one of the original ryuu, so she hadn’t needed to be enchanted to follow Prince Gin. Which meant Sora could possibly get through to her and convince her that the goals Prince Gin and the ryuu aspired to were wrong. Hana had had her future stolen from her by the Dragon Prince. She deserved to get it back.

  Sora made her decision. It was inelegant, but it was the only way to save everyone she loved.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Broomstick
. She grabbed Daemon’s bo and whacked Broomstick in the back of the head. He slumped to the carpeted floor.

  Daemon gaped, not understanding what had suddenly changed—again—in Sora. But he had daggers in both hands, poised to fight.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” Sora said. “But you have to trust me.” She commanded the ryuu particles to knock him unconscious. He sprawled out across the floor.

  Hana pushed through the tent flaps, just as Sora caught the empress’s body in her arms. She held her in a headlock again, Empress Aki’s back pressed against Sora’s chest.

  “Stay quiet,” Sora whispered so quietly, her words almost got lost in the swirls of the empress’s gold hair. “I have to pretend to kill you right now. If I don’t, my sister will do it for real in about thirty seconds.”

  She reached for the tiny, hidden pocket sewn into the inside of her collar and retrieved the pink rira disk that was meant to be Sora’s way out if things went awry. She broke off half of it and crammed it in Empress Aki’s mouth.

  “This much won’t kill you, but it’ll slow your vital systems to the point of seeming like you’re dead. You’ll wake up in about a week, maybe less. Understand?”

  The empress nodded her head but didn’t say anything. Thank the gods.

  “Good, now swallow it.”

  Empress Aki did as she was told.

  “Are you taking your time torturing her to death, or what?” Hana asked. Her voice grew nearer. From the sound of it, she was halfway across the tent, although she hesitated in the middle, as if debating whether she could actually watch the assassination she couldn’t execute herself.

  The rira would hit the empress’s bloodstream soon, but Sora still needed an explanation for why there wouldn’t be a visible garrote wound across her throat. She’d have to make a show of the empress’s death for Hana to witness.