Circle of Shadows

by Evelyn Skye

  Sora trembled under the concentration required to keep the piece of Rose Palace in the air. Sweat soaked her entire uniform. Her eyes were beginning to cross.

  But she held on.

  Fairy and Broomstick ran past her to fight the ryuu who were landing at the top of the wall.

  “Be careful!” Sora yelled after them.

  “‘Careful’ isn’t part of the League of Rogues’ motto,” Fairy shouted back.

  League of Rogues. Sora liked the sound of that.

  But she didn’t have time to respond. Beetle and his insects lunged at Fairy and Broomstick. Hana smirked at Sora.

  “You won’t be needing that anymore,” Hana said, as she commanded green particles to wrench the magnifying glass from Sora’s magic’s grip.

  It wasn’t even a fight. Sora was already exhausted, and her hold slipped as soon as Hana’s stronger one snatched at the crystal.

  The beautiful piece of Rose Palace smashed on the ground inside the Citadel, flattening six taiga apprentices who had been running toward the gates to provide reinforcements. The remnants of the etched Ora crest shattered.

  Sora stared at it in horror.

  But Bullfrog and the other councilmembers leaped into action.

  “Shoot for their eyes!”

  “Kill if you have to!”

  Stars, no. The new ryuu were just taigas beneath their enchantment. And the original ryuu . . . they were misguided in their beliefs, but they were still Luna’s soldiers. Kichonans.

  Sisters.

  Hana stalked toward Glass Lady.

  “I’m relieving you of command, old lady,” she said.

  “Over my dead body,” the commander said.

  That only made Hana smile. “Watch me.”

  She faded from view and laughed.

  Glass Lady gaped, paralyzed for a moment. She didn’t know how to fight something she couldn’t see.

  Behind them, Beetle’s insect horde dove down for attack.

  “Fairy!” Broomstick shouted. “Now!”

  She flung a vial of something into the air. Broomstick hurled a small, liquid-filled sphere at it.

  The two collided. The glass of both the vial and sphere shattered, and whatever was inside reacted to the other and hissed before it exploded.

  Beetle’s buzzing army dropped dead instantaneously.

  He screamed, then drew his sword and charged at Fairy.

  Meanwhile, Hana was running at Glass Lady.

  “She’s on your left!” Sora yelled at the commander. Sora was the only one who could see where her sister was.

  But it was too late. Hana reappeared, whipped out a stiletto blade from her sleeve, and said to Glass Lady, “I told you I’d take command over your dead body.” She slashed it across the commander’s neck and pushed her over the edge of the fortress wall.

  At the same moment, Beetle ran right into Broomstick’s sword.

  “No!” Sora shouted.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Glass Lady’s jaw dropped as her throat split open, spilling her life in crimson rivulets. Beetle held Broomstick’s blade in his hands, looking down at his impaled stomach in disbelief.

  Then Glass Lady and Beetle both fell, ten stories to the ground. Their bodies smashed into the dirt, bouncing at the impact.

  Sora screamed.

  The ryuu below were fighting back with the full force of their magic. Balls of fire, burning taigas like meat on a spit. Storms of icicles, shot straight through like spears.

  The Society was not relenting either. They had numbers on their side. They regrouped in squadrons, each one targeting a single ryuu, and charged. Blades flashed. Darts and throwing stars gleamed as they flew.

  Bodies fell.

  Hana looked down at them without emotion, her face now a cruelly placid mask. When she turned to Sora, she was equally collected. The eyes that had lit up at seeing Sora perform ryuu magic were now flat, as if she felt nothing for her sister.

  “Hana—”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.” She stalked toward Sora, spinning her sword in her palm.

  Daemon dispatched the ryuu beside him and came to Sora’s side. He growled, sounding more like a wolf than she’d ever heard before. “If you lay a finger on her,” he said, “you’ll pay for it.” Fairy and Broomstick came up behind him.

  “No,” Sora said. “Back away, Daemon. All of you. You won’t see her coming if she turns herself invisible again.”

  “We’re not going to—”

  “Back away!” Sora shouted. “If I die, the League of Rogues has to continue the fight. Kichona needs you.”

  Daemon, Fairy, and Broomstick stood still. Hana watched them, amused.

  “Aren’t you going to listen to her?” she taunted. “You’re like a litter of puppies, still following my sister around like when we were kids. Nothing about you taigas has changed.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Sora said. “But I’d rather not change than become a tool for Prince Gin to use.”

  “He’s not using me.”

  “He is, Hana.”

  “Stop calling me that! And the emperor isn’t using me. He trusts me and respects me! Which is more than I can say about you. It was a shame I even gave you a second chance.”

  No, Sora thought. I refuse for this to be the end of me and Hana.

  It was only a postponement. It had to be. Sora needed to save Kichona first, but then she’d make a third chance for her and Hana. Somehow.

  No matter what happened next, as long as Sora was alive, she’d come back for her sister. Hells, even if Sora died, her ghost would devote itself to Hana. It would be a fitting afterlife for a taiga named Spirit.

  “Now that Prince Gin is the emperor—” Hana was saying.

  Fairy stepped forward. “I hate to break it to you, but he’s not. His sister is still very much alive.”

  Hana smirked. Which was much more dangerous than a glare.

  Sora froze.

  “Did you think that would surprise me?” Hana said. “When Spirit revealed that she wasn’t under Prince Gin’s spell anymore and the ‘empress’s’ body disappeared from camp, I put two and two together. My sister has always been a schemer. I figured she must have been up to something, and you weren’t a corpse; otherwise, you wouldn’t be worth stealing. So yes, I already know the empress is still alive. Why do you think only half the ryuu are here? The rest are already inside Rose Palace. And they’ve got the Hearts with them.”

  Holy heavens . . . Sora’s chest clenched. She’d thought the ryuu would have to get past the Citadel first. But Prince Gin had been raised in the imperial family, too. He would know about the trapdoor in the Field of Illusions and the secret network of tunnels underground . . .

  Empress Aki wouldn’t know he was coming.

  Emerald dust eddied around Hana, then dove into her, saturating her with magic. She vanished.

  Sora summoned her own whirlwind of ryuu particles. She absorbed them and went invisible too.

  No one else would be able to see them fight. Or die.

  Hana called on more magic, which rushed to her and formed itself into a hundred tiny daggers and flew at Sora.

  She conjured a shield of her own emerald dust and deflected the knives, each one pinging against her shield.

  “Not bad,” Hana said. “But basic.” She formed a sack with the magic and brought it down over Sora’s head, tightening the bottom like a noose around her neck.

  Sora panicked and sucked in too much air, and suddenly there wasn’t enough oxygen. She clawed at the balloon surrounding her. The noose around her throat kept tightening.

  Can’t breathe. Can’t fight. Can’t . . .

  As her brain fogged, the one thing she could think was how, when Hana was a tenderfoot, she always wanted to do whatever Sora was doing. If Sora was juggling apples, Hana wanted to juggle apples. If Sora was sparring against three others at the same time, Hana wanted to spar against three others.

  If Sora was being suffo
cated by an invisible balloon . . .

  On the brink of passing out, Sora issued one last desperate command to the ryuu magic.

  Throw a bag over Hana’s head too.

  A mirror-image balloon appeared and tightened itself around Hana’s neck. Her eyes bugged.

  But Hana had a stronger killer instinct than Sora did. Instead of standing there and losing consciousness, she ran for Sora and butted her head straight into Sora’s stomach.

  They both lost control of ryuu magic, the emerald particles bursting out of their bodies like a shower of glitter.

  They both became visible, and the suffocating balloons around their heads exploded away.

  They both flew off the top of the fortress wall.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Sora!” Daemon yelled. He dove off the fortress wall after them.

  Everything around him went blue and bright, like lightning. Everything rumbled like thunder. Daemon felt sparks on his skin, electrical charges in his bones. It was terrifying and thrilling. Adrenaline vibrated through his veins.

  For a moment, time slowed, as if the universe were stretching. Daemon flew off the wall like an arrow shot through water, straight and true but not as fast as reality ought to be.

  He aimed himself at Sora to intercept her fall. Hana held on to her. But as Daemon reached Sora, he drew power from the buzzing light around him. He snatched Sora out of her sister’s weakening grip.

  As soon as he touched her, the sparks on his skin enveloped Sora too. She gasped as the world went blue.

  Daemon hugged her close to his chest, and they flew forward together, defying gravity.

  He landed in a cypress tree, as softly as if his feet were made of air. He set Sora down on a branch.

  Then all of a sudden, time sped up again.

  Daemon looked back at the fortress walls. Ryuu and taiga bodies alike littered the dirt, the ground a deep red, as if paint had spilled down from the heavens. But the taigas had overwhelmed them. They began securing the ryuu who were still alive, blindfolding them to prevent them from using Sight when they woke from the genka, and shackling their hands behind them with iron gloves and cuffs so they couldn’t form mudras for taiga spells. And the remaining ryuu were fleeing, running back into Jade Forest.

  Hana wasn’t there.

  “Where is she?” Sora whispered.

  “I don’t know.” He’d seen her fall toward the ground when he took Sora from her grip.

  “But she isn’t . . . dead, right?”

  Daemon searched for her again. “Maybe she’s invisible.”

  Sora shook her head. “I’d be able to see her.” She collapsed against Daemon and exhaled. “She’s not there. She’s not dead on the ground.”

  But an instant later, Sora snapped away from Daemon. “What in all hells!” Her eyes were wide, and she stepped backward on the branch, putting distance between them. “What are you?”

  Daemon shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m me.”

  Sora stared at him, mouth agape.

  Their gemina bond was electric, like the times when he’d zapped Sora out of Prince Gin’s spell. But the energy now was even louder, so unruly it hurt his ears, and he didn’t know what was happening.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” He began to panic. Had Hana done something to him?

  Sora reached out tentatively, almost as if scared. But then she touched his face. And stroked his hair.

  A couple weeks ago, he would have wanted this. But he had just kissed Fairy, and everything was confusing, made worse by the crackling electricity in his bond.

  And there was something about the way Sora’s fingers felt in his hair that wasn’t right.

  He stiffened.

  The caution in her touch, however, began to fade.

  “It really is you,” she whispered incredulously.

  “I . . . of course it’s me. Please, Sora, what are you talking about?”

  She took his hand in hers and lifted it for him to see.

  It wasn’t a hand. It was a paw, engulfed in brilliant blue light.

  He gasped. “What did they do to me?”

  She touched his face again. Stroked his hair. “The ryuu didn’t do this. I think you did.”

  Daemon whimpered. He didn’t know what she meant.

  A tear trickled down Sora’s cheek, but she was smiling. “You just flew across the sky,” she said, shaking her head in awe. “You’ve spent your life not knowing where you came from and worried that you weren’t good at magic. But that’s because you don’t need to use magic, like the rest of us do.”

  “I don’t understand.” He couldn’t tear his eyes away from his paw. His paw.

  “You don’t need magic because you are magic.” She waved her hand up and down the length of his body.

  Daemon looked. He was a wolf. An actual wolf with paws and midnight-blue fur that lit up with a buzzing, bright light, as if he were surrounded by stars. But inside, he was still himself. He felt the same. He had the same memories. Even his voice was still his own. “What . . . ? How?”

  “There’s so much more magic in this world than we knew,” Sora said, and he knew she wasn’t only talking about the ryuu. “Remember the Kichonan myths? The god of night brings all his children to Celestae with him, but they’re allowed to shine like constellations at night so their mothers on earth can still see them. Sometimes, though, the god of night’s children decide they belong down here, among people like their mothers, rather than in the heavens. And when they descend, they take human form and their constellations disappear from the sky.”

  Suddenly, a brief scene—a memory?—flashed before him. Daemon was running in the dark, surrounded by stars. The sky rumbled, and the planets shook. His fur stood on end.

  Sora’s mouth dropped open again, as if she’d just realized something. “It’s your birthday today, Daemon.”

  He’d forgotten. There had been too much going on. “What does my birthday have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know if it does,” Sora said. “But there used to be a wolf constellation in the sky, and it disappeared eighteen years ago. I think you’re one of the god of night’s sons. You’re a demigod.”

  Daemon frowned and shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

  “Sometimes crazy is true.”

  It would explain why he’d been immune to Prince Gin’s spell. Daemon wasn’t an ordinary taiga.

  He shook out his fur. There was power in these lupine muscles, the kind he’d envied in his cub brothers and sisters when he was young. But now that he was an actual wolf, all he wanted was to be human again.

  But maybe that was the point. Maybe he’d craved being human, and that’s why he came back to earth. But it also made sense why he loved being up in the trees and on rooftops, close to the sky. If it was true that he was one of the god of night’s children, there’d always be a part of him that missed his first home.

  And yet none of that mattered right now. Daemon was a taiga—even if he wasn’t a typical one—and that meant putting the kingdom before himself. Whether he was a demigod or something else, figuring it out would have to wait.

  To be honest, it was a little overwhelming, and Daemon was relieved to have an excuse to deal with it later.

  “Come on,” he said to Sora. “We need to go after Virtuoso and Prince Gin.”

  “We might be too late,” she said.

  “Maybe. But remember? I can fly now.” He grinned and felt electric, both inside and out. “Get on.”

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  The light shining through the crystal in Sola’s temple was even deeper crimson than the last time Aki was here. She kneeled at the shrine, her torn handkerchief before her with a new bloodstain on it now, knees aching from waiting for the goddess’s attention.

  But Sola hadn’t come. Was she irritated at being summoned again so soon? Perhaps she would not heed Aki’s call.

  Outside, the temple fountain bubbled as it always d
id. There were several Imperial Guards posted on the spiraling gold stairs. Aki should have been perfectly alone.

  Nevertheless, she knew the instant he was there. The air stilled and, at the same time, grew colder, like the icy chill before a winter storm.

  “Hello, sister,” Gin said, as he entered.

  She turned around slowly. “You were supposed to think I was dead.”

  Gin shrugged. “And you were supposed to think that of me. Funny how even after a decade apart, we’re still twins in our thoughts.”

  He was taunting her. Reminding her of how differently they’d felt ten years ago. How those differences had split not only them but the entire kingdom, for a bloody night.

  “I wouldn’t let you bring war to Kichona’s shores a decade ago, and I won’t let you do it now.”

  He stalked closer to her. “Ah, but you don’t have to give me permission. I’m stronger now than I was then.”

  Aki took a step backward. “You’re distorting the magic Luna gave you as a taiga. You’re brainwashing our own people. You must know that isn’t right!”

  Her brother pursed his lips, and for a moment, he looked remorseful. But then he shook his head. “It’s for the greater good. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made. In the long run, Kichona will be better for it.”

  Gin was still obsessed with the Evermore. He’d been that way since they were younger, and Aki wouldn’t be able to dissuade him now.

  But he could persuade her of anything, if he wanted to. If she gave him more time, he could hypnotize her too. He could command her to abdicate, and the throne would be his.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  Aki dove for his knees. Gin yelped as she took him down. He was the fighter, not her, and she’d caught him by surprise.

  She took advantage of it and scrambled onto his back, locking her arms and legs around him. She jerked him into a headlock and tightened her grip, choking him to cut off both the air and blood to his brain.

  Just a few seconds, and he would be unconscious. After that, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Killing him would be the surest way to stop him.

  But she couldn’t kill her own brother, even if he’d sent his ryuu to make an attempt on her life. Aki would have to hope the taigas arrived soon.