by Evelyn Skye
On the last one, he convulsed and started coughing up water.
“Thank the gods.” Sora gripped his tunic for a moment, then sat back to give him space.
Broomstick coughed as he pushed himself onto his elbow.
“How did you end up in the lake? Are you hurt? What happened?” Sora knew she should give him a bit longer to recover, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know.
“Monster . . . made of icicles,” Broomstick rasped.
Sora’s eyes widened. “Is it still here?”
“I killed it . . . I think.” Broomstick sat up all the way, but he immediately grabbed his head and sank back to the ground.
“Broomstick!”
“I’m fine. Just . . . head hurts.”
“Rest,” Sora said. “You can fill me in later.”
He closed his eyes but insisted on talking, although his speech was slurred and slow, like he had to piece the sentence together word by word. “Aqueous bombs . . . explode . . . when they touch . . . water . . . but . . . they really explode . . . when they hit . . . ice.”
Oh. So that’s how he’d gotten blown into the lake. No wonder his head hurt. Sora was amazed Broomstick had gotten away with only that.
Well, other than almost drowning. She let out a long exhale, relieved she hadn’t lost him.
“Tell me . . . the vault?” Broomstick asked.
Sora reached into the hidden pocket just inside her collar, pulled out the gold soul pearl, and held it out to him. “I got Prince Gin’s soul.”
Broomstick’s face contorted, and he jerked away from the pearl as if it were a plague.
Sora frowned. “It won’t hurt you.”
“N-no,” Broomstick said, shaking his head vigorously. “Get it away from me. You can’t trust me with it. I’m a bad person.”
“What are you talking about?”
Suddenly, the words spilled out in a nearly delirious flood. “I’m going to kill a lot of people in the coming war, Spirit. The Dragon Prince is going to use me as a weapon on the mainland to slaughter city after city, country after country. I’ll pretend to be friendly and plan big parties for them, and entire towns will show up, excited to be invited. Because, you know, people trust me. I’m nice. I like talking to them and hearing about their families and their hobbies and their dreams. But once I’ve lured them in, I’ll blow them up. All their loved ones they just introduced me to. All their hopes and wishes blasted into ashes. I’m an evil person. Keep that soul pearl safe from me.”
Maybe he still has water in his lungs. Broomstick was out of the water, but the lake’s effects lingered, refusing to relinquish its hold on him.
Sora tucked the golden pearl away, not because she didn’t trust Broomstick but to calm him down. “You’re a good person,” she said. “One of the best I know. The visions you saw weren’t real—”
“But they could be!” He jumped up.
Her heart ached for him. Broomstick was the kind of person who threw surprise parties for his dormmates and sent birthday gifts to his coworkers’ children. All he wanted was to bring joy into others’ lives. The idea that his charisma could be used to cause harm was an assault on his very being.
If there’s water in his lungs, can you get it out? Sora thought to the emerald dust that now floated lazily in the air.
But the magic just eddied for a few seconds around Broomstick before returning to doing nothing.
Did that mean it couldn’t help? Or that Sora was wrong and there was no water in Broomstick’s lungs?
Gods, no. If it was the latter, that meant the lake’s enchantment had infiltrated something deeper inside him. Maybe Daemon had been able to protect Sora through their gemina bond because he was a demigod, like how he’d kept her tethered and therefore shielded from the Dragon Prince’s powers of hypnosis. But Fairy had only taiga magic for Broomstick to latch on to, plus he’d been unprepared for falling into the lake.
“We need to get out of here,” Sora said. “Maybe Liga will be able to help.”
Broomstick broke into a cold sweat. “You should leave me here. Then I can’t hurt anyone.”
“No! Don’t you see? The fact that you’re worried about hurting others proves that you’re good. The evil is only in your head. It’s not real. You have to fight it.”
“I can’t.” Broomstick let out a sob. “I saw what I’m going to do to those people. I can’t let it happen. I can’t make all those people love me, watch them get dressed up for the best night of their lives, and then murder them. I can’t. I won’t.” He sprinted for the water, determined to throw himself in.
Sora threw a net of ryuu particles at him. It tangled Broomstick’s feet, tripping him. She pounced and hit him in the back of the head with a chunk of ice.
Broomstick slumped to the ground.
“I’m sorry.” Sora looked at him. “I said you wouldn’t die today, and I meant it.”
She packed up their bags, then asked the ryuu magic to find her a path out of the caverns. It took a few moments, but soon enough, an emerald trail glittered against the ice.
Her gemina bond sparked as if Daemon were reaching out, asking if she needed help.
“Yes,” she said softly.
She wrote a message to Daemon and Fairy explaining what had happened. She could get Broomstick out of here, probably as far as Paro Village, the nearest town in this southern part of the kingdom. If Daemon could fly, they could come to meet them. Sora created another miniature eagle ray and sent the letter off to Jade Forest.
Then she placed the soul pearl in a small silk pouch, tightened the drawstring, and secured it in the interior pocket of her tunic.
Levitate Broomstick, she said to the ryuu particles. It would cost Sora a great deal of energy to float him all the way to Paro Village. But she would do what she had to do to get them out of here.
She slung their bags over her shoulders and motioned for the emerald dust to carry Broomstick out of the tunnels.
“Let’s get out of these caves,” she said, “and never, ever come back.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Zomuri looked into the saucer of blood in front of him and chuckled.
The girl had managed to get past his guards and break into his vault. She had absconded with Gin’s soul and now carried her lug of a friend in tow like a giant sack of taro roots. Zomuri laughed again. He had to admit, it was quite a show; he was almost tempted to applaud.
Even better, she believed the boy had water from the lake in his lungs. But he didn’t. Humans needed only a hint of self-doubt planted in their minds before insecurity ran rampant, overtaking everything like weeds. It was the beauty of the Lake of Nightmares—one swim and most mortals were done for.
The girl, however, had escaped that fate, and so she would need to be punished for her theft.
But Zomuri could do that at any time.
He switched the vision in his dish of blood to show the young emperor.
The ryuu had fixed the holes in the warships and were now transporting them to the coast. Gin supervised their swift progress. They would be in Toredo by day’s end, and from there, they’d be able to launch an attack on their first target: the island of Thoma. Gin certainly was zealous about conquering those seven kingdoms.
No doubt the girl and her friends would try to stop the emperor. Zomuri contemplated what to do, if anything. He could crush the girl now. But she was feisty, and her antics were interesting in their unpredictability. And even though she had gotten hold of the soul pearl, the emperor would remain invincible as long as the soul remained outside his body. Gin had plenty of fight in him and didn’t need a god to intervene.
Zomuri decided he could be angry at the girl later for stealing from him, but at the moment, he wanted to be entertained. And so the god conjured a chair lined with lion’s fur and settled in. It was going to be amusing to watch how this mortal theater played out.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Fairy was a mess of tears as she paced around the che
stnut grove. “Something’s wrong. It felt like Broomstick was losing his mind—our gemina connection was all chaos and black smoke and then it suddenly went blank. Where did he go? What happened? Do you think . . . ? Oh gods.”
Wolf tried to catch her, to put his arms around her and comfort her, but she shook away from him and continued her frenetic pace around the clearing. It was as if standing still would allow all the fear to catch up to her. She had to keep moving.
“Something definitely happened,” he said. “My connection with Sora is taut, like a fishing line. She’s worried—I can feel it in the tension of the bond—but at the same time, I can tell it’s not despair.”
“Why can’t I feel Broomstick, then?”
“I don’t know,” Wolf said gently. “I do know, though, that I lost track of Sora before and she ended up all right. Broomstick lost track of you, too, remember?”
Fairy gave Daemon a flat stare. “Yes, because I was drugged to a deathlike state of unconsciousness.”
“You weren’t dead, though.”
“I could have been!” Fairy threw her arms in the air.
“He’s . . .” Wolf shook his head. “He’s got to be alive. I’d know it if he weren’t. Sora would send me some hint of it through our bond.”
Fairy paced some more. She understood the logic of what Wolf was saying, but it didn’t make being here—away from her gemina—any easier. What was she supposed to do? Just sit around and wait until Sora sent them another messenger? Or until there was complete emptiness in her connection? Warriors who had lost their geminas described the feeling as a boulder slamming their bond shut, a heavy finality when there was no longer someone else on the other end. That’s not what she sensed now, but it was eerily silent, as if she was walking through an abandoned corridor that might lead to that boulder.
“We have to go to them.” She marched toward their meager camp.
“What?” Wolf trailed behind her. “We’re supposed to stay here and keep searching the Imperial City for Empress Aki. And we’re still waiting to get a response from my brother.” They’d been trying to reach Liga ever since they returned from the Dragon Prince’s study but to no avail.
Fairy whirled on him. “The empress isn’t here, all right? We’ve spent days crawling through the castle and the Citadel and haven’t found a trace of her. For all we know, Prince Gin already killed her. But my gemina—our friend—isn’t dead yet, and we need to help him!”
Wolf stopped short. He looked guiltily at his feet. “You’re right. We’re supposed to be there for each other.”
He closed the distance between himself and Fairy and held open his arms. This time, she let him hold her. She buried her face in his chest and allowed the fear to hit her fully, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What if Broomstick isn’t all right? What if he dies and I wasn’t there for him?” she said.
“Shh.” Wolf stroked her hair. “He’s not going to die. And we’ll fly to Naimo Ice Caves as soon as we’re packed.”
Fairy pulled away and wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “I don’t want to waste another minute. He needs me.” She hurried over to fold her sleeping mat and gather her weapons. She packed up the wild persimmons she’d found on a tree that morning during foraging, then grabbed her copy of the map from the Dragon Prince’s study and rolled it into a scroll, placing it safely inside her bag.
Beside her, Wolf also packed his bags, but instead of stashing knives and other weapons into his sleeves and hidden pockets, he unloaded all of them into a satchel.
“Aren’t you going to need those?” Fairy asked.
“Can’t use them when I’m a wolf.”
Oh, right. How else were they going to fly down to the other side of the kingdom? Worrying about Broomstick was clouding her head. But the thought of Wolf in his demigod form lifted her spirits a little.
He began to lay out a system of straps he’d been working on while they were stationed here in the forest. It was a harness to allow him to carry their supplies.
When they were ready, Wolf shifted in a glow of soft blue light. His transitions were smooth now, after all the practice Liga had put him through. “You know how the harness works?”
Fairy nodded. She threw the straps over his back, then lay on the ground, scooting to slide under him and secure the harness around his belly. Another set of straps looped around his front legs. Then she tied each of their bags onto his sides, making sure to evenly distribute the weight.
“Does it feel all right?” she asked.
Wolf walked around the chestnut grove, testing out the harness as he moved. He wiggled his shoulders, shifting where the straps dug in.
“All good. Hop on.”
Fairy jumped up and lay a strap across her hips, pulling to tighten it. That had been another of Wolf’s ideas, to create belts like makeshift saddles, so his passengers wouldn’t plummet to their deaths. She leaned forward and hugged his neck, allowing herself the comfort of nestling into his fur.
He took off at a run and leaped into the air. They sailed up easily, as if he’d been doing this his entire life.
She supposed he had, at least in his previous one. Fairy wondered if he still regretted giving up his right to live in Celestae.
As Jade Forest and the Imperial City grew smaller below them, sadness ached in Fairy’s chest. This might be the last time she saw the place that had been her home for eighteen years. Even in the best of circumstances—where they succeeded in killing Prince Gin and stopped the impending war—she wouldn’t get to come back here for a while.
Then something dive-bombed at them, and Fairy shrieked.
Wolf dodged, but barely. “What in all hells was that?”
Fairy scanned the air. A massive buzzard flapped its wings, pivoting to come back at her and Wolf again. She cursed under her breath.
Wolf let loose a shock of electricity, throwing bolts of lightning toward the buzzard. It dove out of the way.
Something moved in the periphery of Fairy’s vision, below on the forest floor. She whipped her head around to look at it.
“Wolf, watch out! Someone’s down there!”
The ryuu shot flames at them. Wolf tried to dodge, but they grazed his fur. He howled in pain.
“Stars!” Fairy smothered the fire out with her cloak and poured some water from a canteen to cool the singed skin. Wolf sucked in air through his teeth.
More flames barreled toward them. But Wolf flew higher, and the fire arced back down to the ground.
“We’re out of range,” Fairy said in relief.
She spoke too soon. A figure materialized out of nothing and stood next to the fire ryuu. Fairy didn’t need to be close to know who it was.
“Spirit’s sister . . .”
Wolf growled. “I just saw Hana, too. How did she find us?”
“I don’t know,” Fairy said as they flew farther. “But it looks like we got out of there just in time. They were laying an ambush.”
“And they’ll send reinforcements soon,” Wolf said.
“Or now.” Fairy pointed at a flurry of black flying at them from Jade Forest.
Wolf put on speed. Unfortunately, the burst of power also set off brilliant sparks, and he streaked light through the sky like a comet.
“You’re too bright,” Fairy said, clinging to his fur as the frigid wind gusted in her face. “Douse your sparks, or we’ll never be able to lose them if they can see you like this.”
Them were hundreds of bats, flying in formation like a single enormous creature with sword-long fangs. Menagerie, the ryuu who controlled animals, must be commanding them.
Wolf quelled his sparks. But it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. The bats would use their sonar to track him, as long as they stayed close enough.
He accelerated to the right.
They followed.
He careened down, back into a different part of Jade Forest.
They didn’t lose his trail, even weaving in and out of the trees.
Wolf pul
led back up into open air, breathing hard. “What do I do?”
“Speed of light,” Fairy said. “Get us out of here.”
“It’ll make you sick if I fly any faster than this.”
“Just do it!”
Too late. The buzzard swooped near them. Menagerie crouched on its back, a smug smile on his face.
“Watch out!” Fairy cried.
Menagerie pounced onto Wolf’s back. “Impressive magic you’ve got here,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to join the ryuu?”
Wolf snarled. “Never.”
Fairy twisted to fight Menagerie, but she was partially trapped by the harness that was ironically meant to keep her alive. She pulled out a stiletto blade with one hand and fumbled to undo the belt across her lap with the other.
“Do not unbuckle,” Wolf said. He jerked sideways midair to dump Menagerie off his back.
The ryuu let out a yell as he tumbled off. But he fell only about ten feet.
“How?” Fairy gawked at him, dangling beneath them but trailing everywhere they went.
“I’m holding on to a rope of ryuu magic that you can’t see,” Menagerie taunted. “It’s also a noose around your pack mule’s neck.” He yanked on it, and Wolf gasped.
“He can’t strangle you from there,” Fairy said. “He doesn’t have enough force to pull the rope tight enough.”
Wolf growled. Fairy knew it wasn’t much in the way of reassurance. It hardly comforted herself.
She looked down again. Menagerie wouldn’t stay there for long. He was already climbing up the invisible rope. And where were Firebrand and Hana in all this?
Meanwhile, the bats attacked again. Fairy ducked as they came in screeching. Their talons and fangs grazed her neck and arms and Wolf’s back. “You’d better not have rabies!” she shouted as they retreated, regrouping for their next assault.
“They don’t have tails,” Wolf said.
“That’s a Liga-like non sequitur that makes no sense. Do tailless bats not have rabies?” Fairy held tightly to Wolf’s fur as they swerved again. Menagerie was making progress climbing up his rope of ryuu particles.