“Hurry!” Sora said. “He’s going to hypnotize everyone!”
Daemon growled and flew faster. Sparks flew in Sora’s face, briefly burning as they bounced off her skin.
They neared the dragon’s claw. Sora stretched her arm out again, and Broomstick held her waist to help keep her on Daemon’s back.
“Fairy! Give me your hand!”
Fairy climbed up onto the talon, trying to keep her balance as it shook her, attempting to jostle her into the cage of taiga prisoners in its palm below.
Daemon swooped down. Sora reached. Fairy jumped.
Another stone claw shot up out of nowhere. “Stars!” Daemon jerked out of the way at the last second, changing their trajectory.
Fairy was left with no one to catch her.
“Wolf!” she screamed. She began to fall toward the ground.
The blue light around him exploded, sparking and buzzing so brightly, Sora and Broomstick had to shield their eyes.
He flew at the speed of lightning, sound falling behind them, and snatched Fairy out of the air with his teeth.
It wasn’t until they were high up in the sky, out of the reach of the stone claws, that Sora realized they were all safe.
“Oh gods,” Fairy said, her breaths fast and shallow.
“Literally,” Sora said of Daemon. She reached down for her roommate, and together, she and Broomstick pulled Fairy onto Daemon’s back.
Below them, Prince Gin’s voice rumbled as he continued to address the taigas. “Bow to your new emperor.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Daemon growled. The blue around him flashed like an electric storm.
In the stone claws, though, a hush rolled through the taiga ranks, like a tumbleweed blowing through a deserted town. One by one, the soldiers inside the talon prisons fell to their knees, stretched their arms forward, and lay prostrate on the stone floor. “Long live Emperor Gin, ruler of all of Kichona!”
Sora braced herself for the warm, campfire comfort of Prince Gin’s hypnosis. She watched Fairy and Broomstick too for that familiar, contented glaze in their eyes that infected everyone under the Dragon Prince’s spell.
But it didn’t get to them. Daemon’s electricity sparked ferociously blue around them like a shield. It was similar to the orbs some of the ryuu had used, but even better—this was the magic of a demigod.
Still, it didn’t help the others. “The Society is gone,” Broomstick said sadly. “There’s only the four of us left.”
They all stared helplessly at the taigas below, whose minds had been stolen from them. From Bullfrog, the most opinionated councilmember, to the young Level 8s who had joined in the fight. Their free will had been brainwashed away. And now the Dragon Prince controlled an entire magical army.
As if on cue, Prince Gin emerged from inside the bloodstone castle, onto the large balcony of the tallest spire. “My loyal ryuu, the day I’ve dreamed of my entire life has finally come. Today, we begin our quest to make Kichona the greatest empire in history. Zomuri will give our island a paradise and immortality that, until now, has only existed in mythology. My dear ryuu, I promise that if we fight together, we will be rewarded. We will achieve the Evermore.”
Cheers broke out from the dragon claws, and from the existing ryuu lined up around the castle.
“Long live Emperor Gin!”
“Long live Kichona!”
“To the Evermore!”
Then two hundred men, women, boys, and girls filed out onto the balcony where Prince Gin stood.
Daemon snarled. “The Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts.”
Sora’s own heart plummeted as if off the highest spire of the bloodstone castle.
“If we don’t stop him,” Fairy said, “he’ll declare war on the world?”
“Yes,” Sora said. “And the world will declare war on us. Kichona as we know it will be gone.”
“What do we do?” Daemon asked.
Bullfrog and the other councilmembers had been wrong. The taigas couldn’t retreat. They had to try to stop this now.
Sora looked down at the two hundred people below. “We have to take out Prince Gin.”
Daemon flew an arc in the sky to line himself up with the tower.
Hana stepped onto the balcony.
At first, relief lifted the tension off Sora’s shoulders. Her sister was alive.
But the relief was quickly followed by a dizzying dread, as Hana turned her eyes up toward Sora and her friends. She raised her hand, as if commanding them to stop.
The fur on Daemon’s back bristled, a ridge of midnight blue. He prepared to dive at Prince Gin.
“No,” Sora said. “We can’t.”
“What? I thought we were going after him?”
But Sora could see something none of the others could. “My sister . . . She has Empress Aki.”
“How? Prince Gin announced that she was dead.”
Sora shook her head. Hana had infused the empress with ryuu particles and made her invisible. Empress Aki was bound and unconscious, and Hana held her by the back of her taiga uniform collar.
Satisfied that Sora had seen her, Hana unsheathed a sword and pressed it to the empress’s throat.
“Hana, please!” Sora shouted. “Don’t do it!”
“Come any closer, and her death is on you,” Hana said.
“We have to stop,” Sora told Daemon.
He growled, but they hovered in the sky, neither approaching nor retreating. Sora squeezed her eyes shut and pressed herself against Daemon’s neck. How had it come to this?
When she looked up again, Prince Gin was nodding his approval at Hana. Then he began to pace in front of his assembled Hearts.
“I’ve chosen each of you to make history for our kingdom. You give your lives today, but great honor will be bestowed upon your families, and your names will live on for eternity.”
A murmur of happiness rippled through the Hearts.
“My lord Zomuri,” Prince Gin shouted, his voice echoing like a funeral gong, “I sacrifice these two hundred Hearts for you, as a symbol of my dedication to your glory.”
He waved his arm at the people assembled before him. In unison, they pulled out short, stout daggers and positioned them over the center of their chests.
“No.” Sora gasped.
“I can’t watch,” Broomstick said. He and Fairy buried their faces in Daemon’s fur.
But Sora couldn’t tear her eyes away from the horror, and Daemon, ever her gemina, forced himself to look too. He sent waves of calm to her through their bond, like the sensation of lying in a meadow under the summer sun, even as he tremored beneath Sora, trying to stay strong.
She loved him a little more for it.
The Hearts began to shout.
“Long live Emperor Gin!”
“Long live Kichona!”
“To the Evermore!”
All at once, the two hundred sacrifices stabbed themselves with their knives. And then, possessed by Gin’s magic, they resisted going into shock, and they sawed through their own flesh, plunged their hands in, and wrenched out their own, still-beating hearts, holding them up to the sky.
The hardest to watch were the small children, their chests a mangled mess because they were too uncoordinated to slice out their hearts cleanly. And the worst part was, they didn’t cry. Possessed, they just kept stabbing at themselves as blood and chunks of flesh smacked onto their tiny feet, until finally, they’d gashed themselves open entirely, and their little hearts spilled out onto the tower floor.
Then suddenly, the sacrifices dropped their knives and toppled over, one on top of another. Finally dead.
Tears streamed down Sora’s cheeks, and matching ones matted the fur on Daemon’s face. A violent sob racked Sora’s body. Horror and grief weighed down their gemina bond, as if it had been filled with sand.
“Is it over?” Fairy whispered from where her face was still buried.
“Yes,” Sora choked. “But don’t look. Whatever you do, don’t look.”
For a long moment, everything was eerily quiet.
Then a deep, low rumble began to emanate from the ground, distant at first, as if it came from the center of the earth. It grew louder as it came closer, like thunder surfacing. Suddenly, a giant burst out of the ground. His otherworldly laugh shook the entire Imperial City.
Sora could only stare, jaw open.
Zomuri swooped down and began tossing hearts in a sack, as if they were potatoes.
“How can he do that?” Fairy whispered. She’d abandoned not looking and, like Sora, now couldn’t stop.
“I think he eats them,” Sora said weakly. Like potatoes.
“Emperor Gin Ora,” Zomuri boomed. “You have proven your dedication through the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts.”
On the bloodstone tower, Prince Gin fell prostrate on the ground, right in the midst of the corpses. He bowed to Zomuri, his body sticky with blood.
The god finished collecting his hearts and licked all twenty of his fingers. “I hereby anoint you Savior of Kichona, Warrior of Glory, Seeker of the Evermore. Go forth and make an empire in my name. And when I am satisfied, I shall grant you and your kingdom the paradise you deserve.”
Everything shook—the ground, the air, Sora’s resolve.