by Claire Luana
Kai cracked a smile, wiping her eyes.
She thought of the storms she had weathered with her friends, the scrapes they had avoided. She didn’t bear all the praise for saving their land, and perhaps she didn’t bear all the blame for its downfall either. In truth, did she not want to see Miina bloom again, to ruffle Quitsu’s soft fur, to feel her body warm under Hiro’s touch? She began to smile as the memories flashed by one by one.
But her smile faltered. “I don’t want to leave you. Won’t you be lonely?”
Her father looked over his shoulder towards the staircase, where a woman stood, silhouetted against the sky.
A sob ripped anew from Kai’s chest as she recognized Chiya, her strong arms crossed before her, her silver hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore her navy moonburner uniform and Tanu sat beside her booted feet, his striped tail swishing.
“I have your sister with me now,” Raiden continued. “We have a lot of catching up to do. We’ll be waiting for you when it’s your time. Just not yet.”
Chiya nodded from across the courtyard, a sad smile on her face.
“Okay,” Kai whispered, pulling him into another hug, trying to memorize every bit of him.
They pulled apart, and he took her hand, walking with her to the edge of the courtyard, where the creator had once pushed her off.
Kai looked back at Chiya and raised her hand in a solemn wave.
Her sister waved back.
“Ready?” Raiden asked.
“I think so,” she said.
Kai stepped up on the low ledge, not letting go of his hand.
She turned.
“I love you,” Kai said. “Tell Chiya…I love her too.”
“I love you too, my little fox,” Raiden said. “And she knows.”
Then she jumped.
CHAPTER 42
The first rays of a new day’s sun were stretching over the desert horizon.
The exhausted burners had piled the tengu bodies against the far wall and had laid their own dead in a line. Hiro examined the faces, memorizing each one. Leilu. Chiya and Tanu, side by side. Sunburners he had grown up with, sparred with, commanded in battle. The broken golden body of Kuma, General Ipan’s seishen, lay at the end of the line, his throat ripped out by the falcon-headed giant tengu. Ryu, who had returned to his original size upon Kai’s disappearance, lay quietly by his brother, mourning him.
Nanase was gravely wounded—the gash to her thigh gaped angry and wide. The general sat by her side numbly as Tsuki bent over the wound, weaving moonlight to reknit the flesh and blood vessels.
Hiro put his hand on the general’s shoulder.
The general looked up, tears streaking his face. “It should have been me. Kuma had no right to go and die on me.”
“He went out how he would have wanted,” Hiro said. “A warrior’s death.”
The general smiled. “It was an epic end to his story. He took down that other big one, you know, before the bastard got him.”
“I know,” Hiro said. “We’d all be lost without him.”
“Proud of him,” Ipan said. “It was good to see him like that. It’s not often you see a thing’s soul from the inside out, but we got to. Our seishen. They’re extraordinary beasts.”
Hiro nodded. “Kuma was one of the best.”
Hiro looked around the courtyard at the moonburners tending wounded, at the light rising in the east. At the pile of tengu carcasses, Jurou’s broken body thrown on top of them. He looked everywhere but the spot where Kai had disappeared. The spot where Quitsu now sat, still as a statue, keeping silent vigil until his friend returned.
The lump in Hiro’s throat grew.
Emi and Daarco approached, studying Quitsu’s lonely form. “He won’t move?” she asked.
Daarco placed a comforting hand on Hiro’s shoulder.
“No,” Hiro said. “He insisted that Kai will return. And that he’ll be waiting for her.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Daarco said.
Hiro let out a bitter laugh. “You never were a very good liar.”
“I think…” Emi said. “Her time came when she had the fever. And the last few weeks we had with her… It was borrowed time.”
Hiro shook his head. “There must have been something I could’ve done. A fork in the road. If we hadn’t freed Tsuki and Taiyo… If we had discovered the tengu’s plan sooner, before the fever spread. Some way we could have seen her through this.”
“You could drive yourself mad thinking that way. You did exactly what you were supposed to do,” Emi said. “What the world needed you to do. What Kai needed.”
“How do you figure?” Hiro asked.
Emi took his hand and squeezed. “You let her go.”
Hiro nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. “I’m going to miss her,” he finally managed, barely more than a whisper.
They turned away together, unable to look at the solitary seishen any longer.
A loud thud sounded behind them, followed by a groan.
“You landed right on me!” Quitsu’s voice exclaimed.
Hiro whirled around. A figure lay on the ground, tangled up with Quitsu. It…it couldn’t be. But it was!
Hiro whooped with joy and dashed over to where Kai and Quitsu lay.
He swooped Kai up in his arms, spinning her around, crushing her to him. His heart soared with the sight of her, the feel of her in his arms, warm and real.
“I think…I’m gonna be sick,” she croaked, and he stopped his mad twirl, setting her down.
He pulled back only slightly, refusing to break contact, needing to feel her solid presence. He took her face in his hands and looked her over. Flowing silver hair, warm hazel eyes, playful freckles dotting her nose. She looked like herself.
“I thought I lost you,” he said.
“You almost did,” she said. “But I had some help remembering what I have to live for.”
“How—?”
His question was cut off as she kissed him, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace full of promises.
“Enough of the kissy stuff,” Emi said, trotting over to peer at the two of them from an uncomfortably close vantage. “Spare some for the rest of us!”
Hiro and Kai broke apart with a laugh and Emi wrapped Kai in a bear hug. And then the burners were whooping and laughing and hugging and congratulating Kai in swirls of silver and gold hair.
The excited chatter died away as Tsuki and Taiyo approached hand in hand, the seishen elder behind them.
The god and goddess glowed with life and health. Gone were their disheveled, blood-stained clothes. They wore fine silks—Tsuki a fitted dress of navy covered with stars, Taiyo a handsome tunic of emerald, embroidered with gold.
As they neared, Kai ran her fingers through her wild and tangled hair and tugged at her torn and dirty shirt.
“You look beautiful,” Hiro murmured in her ear, and she blushed, allowing her hands to fall still.
“Kai and Hiro, together with your loyal burners and seishen, you have saved us and this world from a dark future.”
“It was our pleasure,” Kai said, looking sideways at Hiro. He suppressed a grin. Just a walk in the park.
The elder walked between the two gods, and bowed low before Kai. Her eyes widened in surprise at the gesture.
“Kailani Shigetsu, I fear I owe you an apology,” the elder said, rising from its bow and sitting on its haunches. “When you came to me in the Misty Forest, I should have let you drink from the lake. Its pure essence would have given you the knowledge you needed to truly wield the creator’s life light. But I feared you were not worthy of such power, and so I kept it from you. I see now that I was wrong. I could have made your journey, your fight, much easier. I regret that I did not.”
Pain flashed across Kai’s face as her eyes flicked to the line of bodies lying on the stones, those friends lost. But Hiro found he didn’t have the energy to be angry at the seishen. How could it have known what was to come?
Ap
parently, Kai reached the same conclusion. “Someone wise told me that every wrong decision was the right one in the end. What matters is that you came when we needed you, and without you, all would have been lost. You have my thanks,” Kai said.
The elder bowed again. “I see the creator showed much wisdom in his choice. I am glad to have known you. You and my dear Quitsu are well-matched.”
“The elder is right,” Tsuki said. “We owe you a great debt of gratitude. How can we repay you? Ask anything of us, and it shall be yours.”
“Heal our land,” Kai said without a second’s thought. “And our people. The tengu wreaked havoc on us…disease, famine, earthquakes. Please set it right.”
“It is a wise ruler who thinks of her subjects before herself. It will be done,” Taiyo said. “And for you?” He turned to Hiro.
Hiro’s arms remained firmly fixed around Kai’s waist, and he was unable to tear his gaze from her profile. “I already have everything I want.”
Kai’s blush deepened.
“If there is nothing you desire other than your beloved,” Tsuki said, “perhaps a wedding present is appropriate.”
She stood back from Taiyo and closed her eyes, opening her hands to the heavens. The ground beneath them rumbled and water gushed out of the empty fountain in the courtyard below them, the sound of rushing water and tinkling droplets rising like a symphony throughout the city. Plants exploded out of the dry ground to the left and right of the courtyard, vines crawling along window frames, palm trees springing up tall outside of doorways, fruit trees blossoming to shade tidy courtyards. Tsuki’s power swept over the city and life sprang up wherever it touched. The music of chirping birds and buzzing honeybees joined the city’s vibrant timbre.
When Tsuki opened her eyes and let her hands down, the city was transformed, full of life and color. Over the city walls, the verdant green stretched as far as the eye could see—all the way to the distant sea. The Tottori Desert was no more.
Taiyo put his arm around Tsuki. “Yoshai is a city fit for gods. But it needs a king and queen to rule it.”
“Thank you,” Hiro said. “I’ve never seen such a fine city.” He turned to Kai with a smile. “I guess we won’t need to fight over where we’re going to live anymore.”
Kai grinned. “Or where to get married.”
EPILOGUE
Flurries of activity bustled around her, but Kai was at peace. Quitsu sat on her lap, though Hanae tried to shoo him off.
“He’s the same color as the dress, mother,” Kai said, rolling her eyes. “Let him be.”
Though her aides had insisted that a dress for a royal wedding had to be outlandish, Kai had won that fight. The dress she wore was simple. A fine white fabric, high at the neck with a keyhole back. Crystal buttons ran down the dress’s front from her neck to the floor.
She wore the lunar crown woven into her hair in such an elaborate fashion that she didn’t think it would ever come out. So maybe she hadn’t won every fight.
In the months since the tengu attack, Miina had flourished, and so had she. She still had moments where she felt fragile and full of self-doubt, especially when she went to visit the graves of the burners who had lost their lives in the past year. But she had saved lives too. She would learn from her mistakes and be a good queen, even if it took her a lifetime to learn how. She thought she was headed down the right road.
As Kai walked into the great hall at the palace in Yoshai, her heart swelled at the sight. The room was filled with shining faces with hair of gold and silver. Former enemies, now friends, bonds of friendship and love forged strong in the fire of the tengu attacks. Emi and Daarco, hands clasped and happy smiles on their faces. Daarco had a nice smile. She had never noticed. Nanase sitting with General Ipan, looking gruff and mirthful, respectively. Nanase was still recovering from near death at the hands of the tengu and was being grudgingly nursed back to health by Ipan, who seemed to appreciate the distraction from the sorrow of his seishen’s loss.
There were faces missing. Leilu and Chiya. Sweet Maaya, whose absence still haunted her. Colum, who had left days after the battle in search of Geisa, his long-lost love. He was sure that he could bring her back to herself if he could find her. Kai’s father—though somehow, she felt he was watching over her with a smile on his face.
And there was Hiro. Looking so handsome it made Kai want to weep, standing at the end of the hall in a suit of white trimmed with gold. Ryu stood witness for Hiro, Quitsu for Kai. When she reached the end of the aisle and put her hands in Hiro’s, her world clicked into place.
They said the vows that would bind them together for a lifetime, and Kai’s heart took flight. This day, there was no dire prophecy, no lurking enemy to defeat. Just the ordinary adventure of living each day as the woman she was meant to be.
A hidden legacy. A shared destiny.
All Princess Rika wants is to be a moonburner like her mother, but her powers are nowhere to be found. When a fleet of dark ships appears on the horizon, Rika is convinced this is the perfect opportunity to force her magic to manifest. But the ships bring more than Rika bargained for—an invasion of soul-eating monsters intent on consuming all she holds dear.
Overwhelmed and outmatched, Rika finds an unlikely ally in Vikal—a dangerous man enslaved to the monsters that killed his family and ravaged his homeland. Thrown together in a desperate attempt to evade the soul-eaters, they begin to realize they have more in common than they ever thought possible. Alone, their lands and people are doomed to fall to the encroaching darkness. But together, they have a prayer of a chance to save their worlds. And to find something more in the process.
PROLOGUE
THE FOREST WAS ablaze, a raging inferno of heat and smoke that reached towards the castle with grasping fingers. Vikal watched helplessly as birds and insects took to the air, as animals large and small rushed careening out of the flaming forest towards the aquamarine sea.
The creatures hadn’t needed to set the blaze—these monsters—these soul-eaters. They had done it for spite. Or perhaps for sport. When the first plumes of smoke danced skyward, he and most of his men had been already pinned hopelessly behind the walls of his castle, trapped with only the knowledge that the thick stone was a flimsy barrier to keep these enemies at bay. At least a few had escaped—Bahti and Kemala, whom he had sent to warn as many people as possible to flee. He prayed they were safe, that they had flown from the city of Surasaya and not looked back.
It had been six days. Six days since a flash of green light across the sea had heralded the arrival of a fleet of strange ships borne by jet-black sails. Six days to transform his kingdom, his very life, from one of joy and prosperity, to this hellish inferno. To a last stand that was sure to fail. It had been remarkably efficient.
Vikal watched mutely as a wall of ten soul-eaters emerged from the forest, seemingly impervious to flame in their black armor. They looked like insects beneath their shiny black plate; they stood straight like men, but each creature’s four long arms and sharp claws screamed the truth. They weren’t human. He didn’t know what they were. He had seen nothing but shadow and green-glowing eyes in the dark of their helmets when he and Sarya had gone to greet them, armed with little more than foolish pride. He held one of his twin blades loosely in his hands as the soul-eaters reached the castle gates and began banging on them with blows as powerful as a battering ram. He held his staff, his totem, in the other. Sarya. She had wanted to see them, to welcome these newcomers to their land. He could refuse her nothing, not when she jutted out her plump pink lip in mock affront, wearing down his resolve with honeyed kisses. She was the queen, after all, and he wasn’t the type of king who would forbid his wife anything. So Sarya, a wreath of jasmine crowning her ebony hair, had been the first to welcome their new visitors, to offer them peace and prosperity and friendship. She had been the first to be sucked dry—to turn to ash within the silk of her magenta sarong.
Vikal had played the memory over in his mind so many times tha
t he now saw it when he closed his eyes. Burned in his vision—his wife’s face twisted in agony as the bulk of black armor bent over her, wrapped her in its four arms as if a lover. The sound of bursting wood broke him from the vision, and he opened eyes wet with refracted tears. He coughed as the smoke billowed across the castle wall, bearing ash and death on its wings.
“Your Majesty.”
He turned to find Cayono standing at the top of the stairs. His friend had a gash over his left eye from one of the many skirmishes they’d had with the soul-eaters, but the blood had long since congealed and crusted. Their attacks against the soul-eaters after the initial disastrous attempt at peace had all been utter failures. They had found no weapon that could touch the creatures, and each skirmish had only lost Vikal more men. Their short-lived guerrilla warfare had turned into a full-on-retreat to Castle Nuanita, the seat of his rule. He saw no path to victory this day.
“They have broken through the gates,” Cayono said.
Vikal sheathed his sword in one of the scabbards strapped to his back and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. Cayono had given Vikal his first bloody nose when they’d been playfighting at the age of six. It seemed fitting that they would go out together. “It has been an honor, bak. My brother.”
“For me as well.” Cayono’s deep voice was thick with emotion. “Let us show them that we Nuans are not without honor. We fight to the end.”
Vikal gave a curt nod. Ready or not, it seemed the end was here. But in truth, he found himself ready—bone-weary to his soul. Sarya had been his light, his reason for living. He didn’t want to go on without her.
The two men hurried down the stairs from the castle wall, jogging towards the sound of men fighting and dying. Three of his soldiers, clad in the green and gold livery of Nua, stumbled into them, fleeing from the horrors that strode towards them, filling the space under the castle wall.
