The girl really did sound like Sora, if she were drunk. But again, impossible. Sora didn’t ever drink enough to lose control. Two small cups of sake, and she would cut herself off.
The girl sighed. I don’t know who I am. Am I a taiga or a ryuu? Or both? A taigryuu? She giggled. But then she grew pensive again. What kind of soldier am I, though, if I have no weapons? Or maybe I do, I don’t know. They were on me when I came to the gate. . . . I think Bullfrog injected me with genka after he knocked me unconscious?
Oh gods, it was Sora. Or at least a version of Sora. She’d come back to the Citadel, only to be confronted by the councilmember most vehement in his belief that she’d succumbed to Prince Gin’s charm. So Bullfrog had subdued her by shooting her with genka, a botanical drug used to pacify violent prisoners.
This is a dream, right? Sora asked. I’m dreaming that you’re in my head, Daemon. . . . Ooh, look, a green serpent! Isn’t it pretty?
Daemon smiled drowsily, at Sora missing him and her being back, and at the green stars shaped like a serpent. But the constellation’s tongue—a green comet of some sort—flicked as it floated by, licking Daemon’s cheek with a stinging twitch. The sharpness roused him.
He batted the serpent constellation away. How was this happening? Sora was hallucinating because of the genka, but she’d somehow pulled Daemon into her dream.
Maybe this was another facet of ryuu power. The Society had thought they understood magic, but they hadn’t even scraped the surface. And here was something even more, an extra dimension to gemina bonds. Maybe, in her drugged state, Sora’s new powers had expanded the connection she and Daemon shared.
Sora, I know you’re, uh, slightly giddy, but I need you to listen to me closely. Where are you?
In the stars?
Daemon looked up. It seemed they were indeed flying among the stars. He wondered if they were seeing the same thing.
I mean, where is your actual body? he asked. A shooting star whooshed by him, so close it nicked his arm. He massaged the burn, but it vanished quickly, as dream burns do.
In a room . . .
Sora, I need you to focus. This is important.
He could feel her try to pull herself together.
Lemme try . . . to see . . . the wakeful world, she said.
Her thoughts struggled to make progress, like she was slogging through a swamp. But eventually, she said, I see it. It’s a fancy room. A big one. Sora’s voice cartwheeled groggily, and he could see the physical manifestation of it, jeweled green spirals spinning in slow motion in the air.
He had to find her in real life, outside of this dream.
Big, fancy room. Hmm.
The councilmembers had large suites, lavishly furnished. Perhaps she was being kept prisoner in Bullfrog’s quarters?
Daemon needed to alert the other taigas. And he needed to get to Sora before the rest of the ryuu arrived. He tried to shake himself out of the dream. But the stars reached out with tendrils of light that held him fast, like vines wrapped around his arms.
Sora, let go of the connection. You have to let me out of your delirium.
Huh? Her dizziness spun through him. But I don’t want to be separated from you again.
Daemon’s breath caught in his throat. Sora had always been self-sufficient, an island in a sea of taigas. But now she needed him.
You won’t lose me, Sora. You found me. And I’m coming for you right now. But you need to stop projecting. You need to let me out of the hallucination.
Silence.
Sora . . .
All right.
He felt her hold on for another moment, and then the starlight released him and he fell through the darkness,
down
down
down
until he hit the earth with a jolt. His eyes sprang open to reality, and he bolted up from where he lay on the boathouse ground. Early morning traces of light greeted him.
It was real, Daemon told himself, even though a part of him still wasn’t sure whether it had just been a realistic dream.
No. It was real. I know Sora; it felt like her. Despite the fact that his gemina was drugged, being reconnected in that hallucination was the most whole Daemon had felt since they’d been separated on Prince Gin’s ship. He actually felt more than whole.
He strapped his bo onto his back and shook Broomstick awake.
Broomstick was up in less than a second, knives in hand. “Ryuu?” he asked.
“Sort of,” Daemon said. “Sora.”
“Here?” He looked around the boathouse.
“It’s hard to explain. She came back to help us, but Bullfrog didn’t believe her and drugged her with genka. Somehow, though, in her delirious state, she connected with me through a dream.”
Broomstick tensed. “Wait. Where’s Fairy?”
Stars. Daemon hadn’t thought to ask about her. I’m a terrible friend.
But he’d been asleep, under the dream influence of Sora’s hallucination. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was an explanation.
“I don’t know,” Daemon said. “We have to find Sora and wake her up. She’ll tell us where Fairy is.”
They ran toward the councilmembers’ residence.
When they arrived, Daemon slowed his pace. Broomstick tilted his chin up toward a window on the back of the building’s second floor.
Daemon nodded and curled his fingers in a series of simple mudras. “I am a spider, I am a spider, I am a spider,” he chanted under his breath. The spell took, and he leaped onto the wall and scurried up to the second floor. He paused outside the window to listen through the rice paper screen . . . nothing.
And then, a giggle, like a little girl telling herself a joke. Only that girl was Sora. It was the same delirious giggle from his dream.
He peeled the paper off the window frame without a sound. From the corner of the window, he peeked inside.
She was there, toppled over on the reed mats, her hands and feet bound. Relief and anger flooded through Daemon like a river through a broken dam. Anger at himself for letting this happen, and anger at Bullfrog for not trusting her.
Daemon shot a quick nod to Broomstick below. He began to scale the wall too. Daemon abandoned peeling away the rice paper and just burst through the window. He swung himself into the room.
Sora didn’t register his arrival. He rushed to her side and tried to shake her awake.
“Hmm?” she said. Her eyes remained stubbornly shut.
“It’s me, Daemon,” he said. “You have to wake up.”
“All right . . . after one more ride on this shooting star.” She giggled.
Broomstick slipped in through the window.
“Sora.” Daemon shook her again.
“We need to counteract the genka,” Broomstick said as he began opening and shutting drawers. “Look for an antidote.”
Daemon searched through the closet and lifted the reed mats to check beneath them. “There’s nothing here,” he said.
Broomstick sighed. “Now what?”
“I have an idea.” Daemon crouched next to Sora.
“Sora, do you remember when you spoke to me through the connection and we saw the serpent constellation? And we flew through the stars?”
She opened her eyes and smiled drowsily. “When everything was ryuu emeralds?”
“Um, yeah. That.” Daemon had no idea what she was talking about, but he pressed on. “You and I were seeing the same thing. We didn’t just share feelings; other senses are potentially involved. So I was wondering . . . can you transfer the genka to me through the bond? I mean, not the actual genka, but its effects—the fogginess, the hallucinations, the intoxication?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“It’s all right. Just, uh, close your eyes again and try to reach out to me through our bond.” He hoped allowing her to shut her eyes wouldn’t send her careening back into the dream world and away from the real world.
The room around Daemon began to distort and swirl. He could almost feel the genka dribbling into his veins, if not in actuality, then in essence. Before he slipped away into the hallucination completely, he grabbed onto Broomstick’s arm. Daemon needed something to tether himself to reality so he could communicate coherently with Sora before the drug submerged him.
Daemon?
Hi, Sora.
It worked. He exhaled, both relieved and a bit disbelieving. They could literally communicate through their gemina bond.
You really did come for me, Sora said.
I said I would, and I did. Listen, I’m going to try to draw the delirium from you, all right? And then you need to help Broomstick. You need to promise you’ll leave me and go stop the ryuu.
What will happen to you?
Don’t worry about me. But the Society—and Kichona—needs you. Do you promise?
I promise.
All right.
Broomstick put his hand on Daemon’s. It grounded him. The room around Daemon had already vanished, replaced instead by Sora’s feverish green hallucination, which involved throwing stars flinging themselves every which way at moving targets. They always hit the bull’s-eye.
Daemon smiled.
Then he concentrated on the muddy edges of his vision and on the feeling of being adrift. He collected the random clouds that floated among the throwing stars. He pulled away the giggles that floated in the air.