by Evelyn Skye
Emperor Gin raised a brow, but he didn’t comment. Hana stumbled on awkwardly. “Um, they thought you were like the warrior in the legend of Dassu, and by gifting us with ryuu magic, it was like the father gifting his daughter with devilfire, and that meant we were all damned.” Hana laughed nervously. “But that’s nonsense, right? Gods, I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
The emperor’s face softened. “Come here, Virtuoso.” He beckoned with a wave of his hand. “You’re so competent as a soldier, sometimes I forget that you are still a child.”
Hana hurried to the throne and knelt at Emperor Gin’s feet.
“All I want,” he said gently, “is the best for Kichona. That means uniting all seven of the mainland kingdoms under our gods, with Zomuri as our patron, rather than continuing to let those pagan kingdoms worship their own heathen deities.
“When we have done this, we will achieve the Evermore and bring paradise to earth. You and I and all Kichonans, including our new subjects on the mainland, will live forever.
“But in order to do so, I needed a drastic change. Just being taigas wasn’t enough; you saw how we were defeated by my sister ten years ago. And so, when I had the opportunity to take the knowledge of more powerful magic from the afterlife, I did it. And I shared the new powers with all my warriors, even if it costs us, because it was the means to the Evermore. Do you understand?”
Hana’s mouth hung open. The emperor had done the opposite of what she’d expected—he’d confirmed Wolf’s reading of Kitari’s story. “B-but . . . you damned us to the hells. Why would you do that to someone? To me, when I was just a child?”
“I didn’t know,” he faltered. “I found out about the consequences later. But don’t you see that it’s still worth it?” Emperor Gin stroked her cheek like she really was still a child. “I love you and all my ryuu. I want the Evermore for you, and when we achieve that goal, it won’t matter that we were marked for the hells, because we’ll never die. We will be immortal in paradise.”
She wanted to pull away, but she was in too much shock. “What about the ryuu who died in the last battle, though? They don’t get to live in the Evermore, and they don’t get to rest in the afterlife either.”
Emperor Gin merely shrugged. “There’s always a price to pay. Weren’t you the one who told Aki that? You said that leaders who were truly great weren’t afraid of paying it. And that is what I did. I know you understand.”
Hana looked up at him and the jeweled flames above his head. They no longer seemed beautiful. They were only a promise of her future in the hells if she died while fighting these wars against the mainland.
And yet she’d always known that fighting for a cause came with sacrifices. The Evermore was worth it, right?
“Now it’s time to get back to work,” the emperor said, patting her cheek affectionately, like a proud father. “But let’s keep this Kitari story between you and me, all right? The other warriors are not as wise as you, Virtuoso, and may not take to it as well. I’d prefer not to have to hypnotize my original ryuu if possible. I like having a loyal, passionate contingent of visionary warriors who understand, of their own accord, the need for the Evermore. But I will take their minds if necessary. Understood?”
Hana, schooled to be obedient, bowed her head as if in complete agreement, even though she was rattled by what was clearly a threat to control her mind if she didn’t do what he wanted. The emperor only ever used his powers on people he considered his enemies, or on unreliable, ordinary people, like when he’d hypnotized the subjects in Paro Village during the ryuu’s initial campaign into Kichona.
But now he considers me a potential enemy? She was his second-in-command, the most loyal of the loyal. Was it that easy for him to turn on the ones who were ready to give their lives for him and his pursuit of the Evermore?
“Get a team to inspect and fix my new warships,” Emperor Gin said, his voice no longer kind but back to business now. “And take Firebrand and Menagerie to smoke out those taigas.”
Hana rose slowly. She wasn’t sure how she felt or what she was going to do, but she needed time to sort through all this new information. At least if she had an excuse to go after Wolf and Fairy, she could interrogate them to see if they’d gotten in touch with this Liga person, whoever he was, and learned anything more about the damnation or a way out of it.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Hana said, saluting despite the confusing swirl of feelings in her head. “You can count on me to find them.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Pain jerked Aki awake. After Virtuoso had left, Aki had squeezed through the crooked, narrow opening into her tiny cell. She’d collapsed on the bed, a wooden pallet and lumpy sack of straw, and smeared a thick layer of seaweed salve on her burns. After that, everything was a haze as she tumbled in and out of consciousness.
It had probably been a few days since Gin had held a bucket of acid over her head and Virtuoso had beaten her. Aki’s hands flew instinctively to her tender cheek. The touch sent a searing firebrand of agony through her skin, and she cried out.
Was this how she would die? Was this the price—the years—she’d paid summoning Sola before?
Aki tried to sit up, and the room spun around her. Only her right eye would open, her left swollen shut from Virtuoso’s attack.
Of course, Virtuoso had done that on her brother’s orders, and as bad as the beating was, it had been a lot less than what he’d wanted her to do.
Gin . . . What have you become?
Where was the boy who used to go fishing with Aki in the palace moat? Who used to make sure he’d be the first to wish her happy birthday at the exact moment of her birth and then laugh when his turn came nine minutes later? How had he turned into a man who could inflict acid torture on his sister’s face?
Sobs shook Aki’s body.
She cried over the loss of her brother. Over her pain and imprisonment. Over the darkness of Kichona’s future.
When the tears ran out, she stared at the rock walls.
“What am I doing, just waiting for the League of Rogues to save me?” Aki didn’t know what had become of them. She only hoped they were still out there, putting up a fight against Gin. But even if that were true, they probably had more urgent things to deal with than rescuing her.
“Is this really how Father raised me? To be a helpless princess?”
She stood up, brushed off the dust from the taiga uniform she was still wearing—there was no change of clothing in her cell—and tugged on the fabric to pull out the wrinkles as best she could. It didn’t do much, but smoothing the uniform made her feel a little better about herself. A little more like a warrior.
Now, how to get out of this prison? Obviously not through the acid falls.
She explored every nook and cranny in her small cave, the grotto, and the crevice that connected the two. There was no way out.
But then Aki smiled for the first time since she’d regained consciousness: when she’d fallen near the water, the ground hadn’t been solid stone. It was hard-packed clay.
I could make my own way out.
She found a sharp rock, shoved her pallet aside, and began scraping at the floor. It came off in sticky globs.
It might take a long time, but time was all Aki had. She would work on digging a hole, and then a tunnel, hiding the hole beneath her bed. And if no one came to liberate her, she’d burrow her own way out, one clay scraping after another.
“I am empress of Kichona,” she said as she dragged her rock over the ground again. “And I don’t plan on quitting until the day I die.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
At first glance, Naimo Ice Caves was a wonderland of pale ice deep in the pits of the southernmost island of the Kichona archipelago. Glaciers had carved majestic caves underground, like frosty, high-ceilinged ballrooms lit through natural skylights of translucent ice. A labyrinth of sparkling tunnels connected each cave to the next, the wind singing a gentle melody through its halls, the winter berries that
grew in the icy crevices perfuming the chilly air with their honey sweetness.
But this beauty also guarded Zomuri’s most valuable possessions. Although the gods generally didn’t interact with people, Sora wasn’t sure that applied to those who stole something from under a god’s nose. Every step would have to be taken with care.
“I wish we actually knew what we were about to face,” Broomstick said.
“Me, too. But no matter what happens, we have to get that soul pearl. We have to reunite it with Prince Gin and kill him.”
Sora’s muscles seized up for a moment, a panic attack threatening to take over. But she gritted her teeth and kicked the anxiety away, shoving it into a box in her mind, where she’d also stashed the fear of what would happen if she failed today. There wasn’t time for contemplating defeat.
Instead, she and Broomstick peered into the maze of tunnels winding underground, and they gathered their supplies—compasses, flares, weapons, and explosives. Then they tied their horses and left them behind.
As if for luck, Sora touched the necklace at her throat. She would unfasten the pearl pendant and leave it as a decoy when she found and stole the Dragon Prince’s soul.
But that was later. Now, she called upon the ryuu particles to show her the path to follow to get to the Lake of Nightmares.
A faint trail lit up, descending into the caverns. Broomstick couldn’t see it, though, so she went first, and he followed with his compass.
“Mark each turn in the ice,” Sora said.
“Why?” Broomstick carved Luna’s triplicate whorls into the tunnel wall at their first bend.
“In case . . .”
“In case what?”
Sora pursed her lips. “In case something happens to me and you don’t have my ryuu particles to help guide you out on the journey back.” She turned away so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction. They knew they were risking their lives. But it was still sobering to think about actually dying.
As they traveled deeper, the natural skylights vanished, leaving them in the dark. Sora commanded her magic to light the way, and the emerald dust glowed, casting an eerie luminescence around her and Broomstick’s shadows on the walls of ice.
An hour into the tunnels, Broomstick swore.
“What is it?” Sora asked.
He showed her his compass. The needle had begun to spin in lazy circles, as if unable to find north but not caring.
“We must have run into the magnetic fields mentioned in Mama’s research,” Sora said.
“Yeah, which also means that at least one of her notes is true. And maybe the others are, too.”
Sora stopped for a moment as this sank in. First, magnetic fields to confuse those who tried to find Zomuri’s vault. If the notes were correct, next would be “ghost faces,” whatever that meant. Then a snow monster. And a lake filled with water that gave you hallucinations of the worst version of yourself.
She ran through the details of her plan.
When the “ghost faces” appeared, she’d make herself and Broomstick invisible, in hopes that the ghost guards wouldn’t be able to see them.
Broomstick’s bombs were for blowing up the snow monster.
When that hurdle was cleared, they’d reach through their gemina bonds to Daemon and Fairy. The idea was they’d tether Sora and Broomstick to reality, like when Sora had been shot with genka and Daemon had coaxed her back to reason through their bond. Of course, this situation could be totally different, but it was the best analogy she had. She and Daemon, and Broomstick and Fairy, had spent over a decade bonded to each other, finely honed to every spike or nuance in their gemina connection. If there was any chance of Sora and Broomstick keeping their wits about them as they swam through the Lake of Nightmares to get to Zomuri’s vault, their gemina bond was it.
Admittedly, it was a sketchy plan. But it was what Sora could do with the very limited information she had. She just had to trust herself to adapt to the rest.
They followed the path of ryuu particles deeper into the tunnels. As the hours passed, the sweet perfume of winter berries faded, replaced instead by the strangely dead, hollow smell of cold, stale air. The hairs on Sora’s arms stood up. Everything about these barren ice caves felt like a cemetery.
Broomstick pointed at a part of the glacier wall that was recessed, with six long icicles like spears stabbing the labyrinth floor. “Is it me, or does that seem ominous?”
A sprinkle of ice fell on them from above.
Sora and Broomstick jumped. But in the same second, they had knives and throwing stars in hand.
Silence.
Was it the ghost faces? Or the snow monster? Or another threat they didn’t know about?
“Get some of your bombs out,” Sora whispered to Broomstick. He palmed a few of the smaller ones from his bag.
They waited.
No more ice falling.
No monstrous footsteps.
Nothing.
Sora exhaled.
And then they heard it. A steady pounding—no, a beating from the tunnels above them, growing louder as it approached.
“What in Luna’s name is that?” A chill as cold as the ice caves themselves ran up Sora’s back.
“It sounds like a monster,” Broomstick said, eyes wide with fear. “I say we run.”
They sprinted down the tunnel. The noise behind them grew.
“It’s gaining on us,” Sora said, putting on more speed. She took a corner too quickly and slammed into a wall of ice. Broomstick crashed into her, and they tumbled to the icy ground.
“Dead end,” she said, scrambling to her feet. They had to backtrack.
She ran the way they’d come. There had been a fork in the tunnels not too far up—
As soon as they reached the intersection, over fifty owls with pale, white faces met them. The owls shrieked in unison, wielding talons like blades on their feet.
Oh stars, it wasn’t a single enemy. Ghost faces, plural.
The synchronized beating of their wings echoed through Naimo Ice Caves like the rhythm of a death march.
Holy heavens, what have I signed up for?
“Show me where to go!” Sora shouted.
“What? I don’t know!” Broomstick said.
But she wasn’t talking to him. She was yelling at the ryuu magic around her. Sora focused her thoughts on an icy lake, hoping that would be enough for the ryuu particles to go on.
The owls shrieked again and dove. Several reached Sora, stabbing with their razor-sharp beaks and slicing with their claws.
Broomstick swung his sword, and they swooped off.
The emerald dust coalesced into a glittering path down the ice tunnel to Sora’s right.
“This way!” She made the sharp turn and began to run. Broomstick was on her heels, but so were the owls.
“We need to get rid of them,” he said as he tried to keep up. Because Broomstick couldn’t see the green trail the ryuu particles were showing her, he was a fraction of a second behind on each sudden turn as they sprinted deeper into the tunnels. Sora tried to shout the turns to him ahead of time, but sometimes the path zagged so suddenly, she hardly had enough notice to adjust herself. The small lag helped the owls stay on their trail.
“I don’t want to hurt them,” Sora yelled over their shrieks, which had reached a bloodcurdling pitch.
“Yeah, but they don’t feel the same way about us. I think they’re trying to murder us.”
But what if the owls were just regular animals, albeit ones enlisted by Zomuri to discourage anyone from going farther into the caves? That would explain why the tunnels were so confusing; they were built to look natural but also to make people lose their way. After encountering the labyrinth and the owls, most people wouldn’t venture deeper.
Most regular people. Not taigas or ryuu.
Sora remembered then that she’d had a plan for these ghost faces.
The emerald path veered to the left up ahead. She purposefully ran the wrong way, to the righ
t.
A hundred yards later, she skidded to a halt. “Broomstick, stay close. I’m making us invisible.”
She dropped to the ground and curled into a ball. Broomstick ducked right next to her. Sora commanded the ryuu particles to infuse them both.
The rush of magic flooded their cells at the same instant the owls swooped into that part of the tunnel. She checked on Broomstick. He stared at her intently, as if afraid that losing sight of Sora would loosen her magic on him.
The owls flew past them.
Sora exhaled.
Broomstick stood, looking a bit intoxicated from the feel of ryuu magic on his skin.
“You need to blow up this tunnel to block it,” Sora said. “Then we’ll go the way we came and take the other turn.”
He looked at her but with a goofy smile on his face, as if he wasn’t quite seeing her.
She slapped him on the cheek. Nicely. Or as nicely as possible in this situation.
“I know ryuu magic is a bit of a shock the first time you feel it, but I need you to get ahold of yourself and set off your bombs.”
“Oof, sorry.” Broomstick rubbed his cheek but held out his hand. There were three small explosives shaped like eggs.
The owls’ screeches and beating wings were getting louder again.
“They’re coming back this way!” Sora said. “Throw them now!”
He flicked a match on the bottom of his boot and lit the fuses.
As the first ghostly faces reappeared in the tunnel, Broomstick hurled his bombs one after the other at the ice above them. The bombs burst on impact, and the tunnel ceiling crashed down in a fury of icicles and smoke, trapping the owls on the other side. The ground quaked, and Sora fell.
Broomstick grabbed her hand, pulled her up, and they sprinted.
After a minute, though, the rumble of the cave-in stopped, and Sora and Broomstick did, too. She leaned against the wall. Her throat was raw, and her side ached from running.
“Let go of the invisibility spell on me,” Broomstick said. “You need to conserve your energy.”