“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 visible 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.