by Claire Luana
The rider almost lost his seat but held on, grabbing onto the saddle with one hand.
Azura sprinted behind the horse and grabbed a handful of the rider’s cloak in her fists, pulling towards her. The motion took the rider by surprise and he tumbled end-over-end onto the ground. As he tried to extricate himself from the tangle of his cloak, Azura shoved him back to the ground.
She grabbed the reins and heaved herself onto the tall horse’s back, barely making it over the saddle with the weight of her heavy pack destabilizing her. After a precarious moment, she righted herself and found the stirrups. Lyra leaped onto the saddle in front of her and Azura rammed her heels into the horse’s flanks. They were off.
“Sorry!” she cried back at the rider on the ground.
Azura approached the large farmstead a few hours after dawn, slowing the winded horse to a walk and sliding off its back.
Azura knocked on the stout door three times before the inhabitant finally cracked it open. He peered into the dark recess of her hood, squinting into the morning sunshine. He nodded and closed the door again. She practically danced with impatience.
A minute or so later, he emerged from the cabin. He motioned for her to follow him to a long thin barn set away from the house. As she followed, Lyra sneaking stealthily behind her, Azura realized how grateful she was for his silence. Her nerves were frayed to the breaking point. She didn’t think she could handle any questions.
As they walked into the barn, Azura gawked at the scene within. The barn had a tall ceiling crisscrossed with rafters and beams. Vertical walls separated the barn into partitions forming rough stalls. Black koumori hung in the partitions, sleeping peacefully. There had to be at least twenty of them, almost as many as those living in the citadel’s rookery.
“Got a new crop that are almost ready to head to the citadel,” he said, finally breaking the silence. His voice was low and twanged with a provincial accent.
“They’re beautiful,” she said, from within the dark hood of her cloak. “And we’re in a bit of a hurry.”
He walked to a stall about halfway down the barn. “Master Vita paid me real good to help you, and he paid me a little more to ask no questions. So that’s what I’m doing. This is Tamae, she’s yours.”
“Thank you,” Azura said. “We need to leave as soon as possible.”
The man tacked up the koumori and led her out into the open space of the yard. “You know how to ride?” he asked.
Azura nodded and mounted the koumori, settling into the saddle, tightening the pack on her back.
Lyra jumped into the saddle in front of her, nestling back against Azura’s stomach. If the man was surprised to see a silver seishen streak across the dusty ground of his ranch, he didn’t show it.
“Best of luck to you ma’am,” he said. “Seems like Master Vita is mighty fond of you. Best take care of yourself.”
She smiled and nodded. “Appu!” she said, gripping Lyra tightly against her. Tamae launched off the ground, and they were airborne, winging towards the Tottori Desert.
CHAPTER 24
Takeo
The next day passed in a feverish blaze. Azura didn’t come.
As the sun set again, the weight of his predicament settled upon him. Azura wasn’t coming.
“Do you feel her and Lyra?” he asked Bako. “Is she approaching?”
“No,” Bako said after a long pause. “I cannot feel them. But…I am weak.”
Takeo sighed heavily. “We have to find water,” he said. “I can’t wait for her.”
Sunburned skin and weakened muscles protesting, he grabbed hold of a crag in the rocks piled behind him, and pulled himself to his feet. Or tried to. He took one shaky step and collapsed, taking in a mouthful of sand. His lungs burned and his legs felt like limp rice noodles.
“I can’t,” he admitted, rolling over and spitting out the sand as best he could.
Takeo pulled himself by his elbows back against the rocks which had become his shelter, panting from his exertion. Grim certainty settled over him. Azura wouldn’t make it in time. These rocks would mark his grave.
Bako scooted closer to him, his musky scent comforting and familiar. At least he and Bako would be together in the end. He wished that he could have seen her one last time. To say goodbye.
Takeo’s mind grew fuzzy and stars clouded his vision. He tried to blink them away, but they grew and merged until his sight was filled with white. And then all he saw was blackness.
CHAPTER 25
Azura
The rich yellow of the Tottori sand dunes whipped by beneath them, casting shadows in the setting sun. It wasn’t fast enough for Azura.
“How is Takeo?” she shouted to Lyra, the wind stealing the sound away.
“I don’t know,” Lyra replied. “I haven’t been able to contact Bako in a few hours.”
Azura’s heart twisted in her chest with pain so great it caused her to gasp for air. “Is he…” she couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
“I do not know,” Lyra said.
She squeezed her eyes shut, urging Tamae with her heels. She knew it was useless. The koumori was already flying as fast as she could. It was in the hands of the gods now.
The hours crept by as Azura’s mind played in an endless loop. Takeo will be fine. He’s strong. And smart. He’ll be fine. He was fine. Unless he wasn’t. Maybe he was already dead. She was too late. She failed him. What was the point of it all? Their meeting, their love? Surely Tsuki and Taiyo weren’t so cruel. They were fated to be together. Takeo would be fine.
In the middle of one of the endless iterations, Lyra stirred before her. Her head, which had been burrowed into Azura’s body as a shelter from the wind, popped up, the white tufts of her ears pricking.
“We passed them,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Lyra said with excitement. “Just now. Turn around.”
Azura didn’t need additional prodding. She turned Tamae around so fast the koumori nearly stopped in mid-air.
“How do you know?” Azura asked as they descended.
“I felt Bako through our seishen connection,” Lyra said. “We were to the east of them, and then all of a sudden they were to the east of us. I think we need to head north, as well.”
“We’re pretty far into the desert here,” Azura said, trying to gauge how long they had been flying by the angle of the moon rising in the sky. “We are probably closer to Kita.”
“So find them and head to Kita?” Lyra asked.
“Yes,” Azura said. “I think its safer for us there. And I’m less likely to be recognized.”
They soared over the undulating waves of sand, searching for two dark forms against the dark sand dunes. She ground her teeth in frustration.
“Where is he?” she half hissed, half moaned.
And then Azura spotted something below, dully reflecting the light of the stars. She had found them. Almost before she registered her excitement, she was shouting “Da” at Tamae, instructing her to descend.
As soon as Tamae touched down on the cool sand, Lyra sprung off her lap and Azura was half jumping, half tumbling down Tamae’s flank. She struggled down the slope and fell to the ground next to Takeo, who lay still in the shadow of a grouping of boulders. She shook him. He didn’t open his eyes. Bako lay next to him, unmoving.
Takeo’s skin was sunburned and his lips were flaking. He lay pale and cold. She pulled moonlight into herself, desperately delving into his body for signs of life. His spirit was still and quiet, but the spark of life was there.
“He’s alive,” she said, relief flooding through her.
She pulled her pack off her back and ripped it open, pulling one of the flasks of water out. She dribbled some of the sweet liquid on his lips, trying to tilt his head back.
He didn’t respond. Her medical training took over, shoving her fear aside with its calm competence. She pulled a shirt from her pack and doused it in water, laying the cool fabric over hi
s forehead. She felt his pulse, weak and erratic.
She put the water flask back to his mouth, letting a few more drops fall into his mouth.
“Come on, Takeo,” she said. Don’t let me get this close only to lose him, she prayed.
But then he coughed and stirred, parting his lips. She dribbled more water into his mouth with giddy excitement.
He didn’t speak for a long time. Then finally, he opened his eyes and gazed into hers.
“What…a good dream,” he said, with a crooked smile.
“It’s not a dream,” she said, a grin splitting her face. It wasn’t a dream. She had made it. He was alive. And they were together.
It was as if the whole world lay open before her for the first time, a vibrant canvas of possibility.
He lifted a hand and stroked his rough dirty fingers down the side of her face. She relished his touch, drinking it in. “My moon,” he said.
“My sun,” she said, the silly grin still on her face. “We did it.”
These enemies are not flesh and bone. How can they fight them?
Kai, the newly-crowned queen of Miina, finds her reign threatened by a plague of natural disasters that leave death and destruction in their wake. Are the gods truly angry at the peace between the moon and sunburners, or is something more sinister to blame? Kai's throne and her very life may be forfeit unless she can appease the gods' anger and her peoples' superstitions.
Determined to find a solution, Kai and the Sunburner Prince Hiro embark on an extraordinary and dangerous journey to discover the true cause of the plagues. What they find is an ancient enemy determined to plunge their world into eternal darkness — and one desperate chance to save it.
PROLOGUE
The days and nights blended together in this place of darkness. Her captors slid food through the slot at the base of the door from time to time. The prisoner suspected from the deep gnawing hunger in her belly that it was not every day. Her body was wasting away, eating itself from the inside out.
At least they didn’t hurt her. She supposed she should be grateful for that. Overall, this captivity was far more pleasant than her last. This time, they seemed content to let her slowly waste away, forgotten and alone.
But she hadn’t resigned herself to death. And so yet again, she prepared to perform the ritual that should summon the goddess. She didn’t have light and she didn’t have a sacrifice. She only had the words, her will, and her own blood. She didn’t have a weapon; they weren’t foolish enough to leave her in here with a means to end her life. So she scratched ragged marks across her inner arm with her fingernail, bringing warm blood welling to the surface. She couldn’t see in the darkness, but she could smell the metallic tang of the blood as it mingled with the smells of her filth, feel its slick wetness against her skin. And she could feel the scabs up and down her arms bearing witness to her previous failed attempts to summon the goddess.
This time, though, this time she had something different. A bone, picked from the measly scrap of oily meat that had been her latest meal. Maybe the blood and the bone together would come close enough to the little creatures she used to sacrifice to summon her.
The prisoner dipped the bone in the blood coating her forearm and chanted the words she had said so many times. Please, she thought. She willed it to work. Please.
For the first time in many weeks, something happened. A breeze tickled her skin, and static crackled in the air, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.
The goddess appeared, radiant in gray light.
The prisoner closed her eyes and cowered from the being, the sudden brightness burning her retinas. As she opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the light, the goddess’s figure became clear, its black gown billowing as if in a storm. It filled the space of the small filthy cell, towering over the cringing prisoner.
“Why have you summoned me to this place?” The goddess’s voice was low but harsh, the strange sound grating to the prisoner’s ears.
“I have been jailed,” the prisoner said, trying to still her quaking body. “They mean to let me die in this cell. Please free me so I can continue your work.”
“Why should I?” the goddess hissed. “You failed. The moon and sunburners are at peace. The centuries of hatred and war that we have worked for threaten to be for nothing. Without the discord and death, we are wasting away.”
The irony of that statement was not lost on the prisoner as she looked down at her own emaciated form, dimly lit by the goddess’s glow, for the first time in months. She fought down the urge to laugh. It came out as a deranged hiccup.
“There must be some way I can be of use to you,” the prisoner pleaded, her mind racing. “The burners believe me a traitor. Think of what pain it will cause them if I escape and assist in their downfall. They will fight amongst themselves, blaming each other.”
The goddess seemed to consider her, though it was hard to tell through the blurry nothingness where its face should have been. “Perhaps you may be of use to me yet,” the goddess said at last.
“How?” the woman asked eagerly, latching on to the goddess’s statement like a lifeline. “Let me help you. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything? You do not even know the task I might ask of you.”
The question was a test. She had no true choice here. She had made her choice two decades before in the dark dank of another cell. “The task doesn’t matter. I will serve,” the prisoner said, bowing her head once again.
The goddess seemed satisfied. “The era of the burners is coming to an end. They have stood in our way long enough. We will destroy their power so they are left with nothing but the bitter memory of their former glory. We will remake this world so it serves us.”
“I don’t understand,” the prisoner admitted, afraid to voice the words, but more afraid to misunderstand her mission. “Burning needs the sun and the moon. How could you destroy that power?”
“That is not your concern,” the goddess said sternly. “Your only concern should be whether you will do your part to bring about the end of this world and usher in a new one. A world of darkness.”
The prisoner already lived in a world of darkness. The darkness of her cell was only a shadow of the blackness that lived in her soul, what she had been twisted into. She had left the light a long time ago. “Tell me what to do,” she said.
CHAPTER 1
The stag was nothing but skin and bones. It moved warily through the sparse pine trees, its hooves crunching the dusty leaves and needles that coated the forest floor.
Kai notched an arrow to the string of her bow, her sweaty fingers struggling to find purchase. She squinted at her quarry, hesitating.
A horse jangled its halter some ways behind her, startling the stag. It darted away, disappearing into the brown camouflage of the trees.
She lowered her bow, relieved. At least she could help one creature today. She turned her horse to the noise and spotted Quitsu, her silver fox seishen companion, perched on a tree behind her.
“Not a word out of you,” she said.
“You always were too soft-hearted,” he said.
Kai made her way to join the other riders who had come into the clearing. The hunt had been one of her mother’s lunatic ideas. Strengthen her ties with the noble families by taking them out into the royal game preserve for a hunt. Nothing brought people together like killing.
But despite Kai’s protests, her mother had gotten her way, as she most often did. So Kai found herself in the middle of the dry forest underneath the sweltering heat of the sun looking for game to kill. At least her companions were not entirely unpleasant. Though the men and their wives came from Miina’s royal houses, they did not seem as vapid as some of the nobles she had encountered. They were flanked by two master moonburner bodyguards, wearing navy blue uniforms and vigilant expressions.
Her friend Emi sat on a leggy gray mare a stone’s throw from them, her fine-featured profile illuminated by the sun. From this angle, Kai couldn’t see t
he extensive burns that covered one half of Emi’s face, a permanent reminder of last year’s sunburner attack on the citadel. She could see Emi’s set jaw and hunched shoulders, her haunted dark eyes. Emi hadn’t been herself since their friend Maaya had died in what had become known as the Battle at the Gate.
Kai turned in her saddle and watched as Hiro approached, stopping his horse next to hers. She reached a hand out and he grasped it, closing her hand in his warm calloused fingers.
“She’ll come back to herself eventually,” Hiro said, following Kai’s line of sight to where it had rested on Emi. “She needs time.”
“It’s been over a year,” Kai said. “I miss Maaya too, but I…I’ve moved on.”
“You’ve had a kingdom to run. You’ve hardly had time to wallow in grief.”
That was true. But as she looked at Hiro, the golden sun shadowing his rugged jaw and highlighting his hair like a halo, she knew that her duties as queen were not all that had helped her cope with losing her friend.
“Maybe she needs a romance,” Kai mused.
Hiro raised an eyebrow. “Do you have someone in mind?”
“No,” she said. “Not like there are a lot of eligible men around the citadel.”
“Maybe one of those fancy nobles.” Hiro nodded towards the nobles riding ahead of them, clothed in colorful linens and silks. They were like preening peacocks in a field of brown—colorful, decorative, and useless.
Kai rolled her eyes. “I meant eligible and worthy.”
“You’re right. Emi’d eat those fellows for breakfast.”
“Maybe I should bring Leilu and Stela back from Kistana,” Kai suggested. “They might be able to lift her spirits.”
Their friends Leilu and Stela were serving as ambassadors to King Ozora in the Kitan capital city, which was an important post. But she missed them. She’d be happy to have them back as well.
