by Evelyn Skye
“I could eat twigs right now, I’m so hungry,” Daemon said, as he sat down in the dirt.
“Luckily, we don’t have to.” Stingray, one of the younger apprentices, handed him a bowl of sliced apples.
Stingray glared at Wirecutter, another Level 7. “You’re stirring the pot the wrong way. It’s supposed to go clockwise, not counterclockwise.”
“It’s oat porridge,” Wirecutter snapped back. “Right or left won’t make a difference.”
Stingray grumbled.
Everyone was on edge.
The porridge bubbled over. Instead of waiting for the bickering kids to handle it, Daemon grabbed a pair of potholders and took it off the fire.
Despite the bubbling and being stirred the “wrong” way, the porridge had cooked just fine. Daemon ladled steaming portions into bowls and topped them with dried, salted fish and scallions. They ate in silence except for the clacking of utensils and the slurping of porridge.
When they were done, Stingray yawned, and Wirecutter yawned a second after him. They sometimes snapped at each other like brothers, but they were also geminas, and it was as if the fatigue were contagious through their connection.
“It’s been a long watch,” Daemon said, finding some comfort in being the older-brother figure, “and the Dragon Prince is going to arrive any day now. We should all turn in and get some rest while we can.”
“Agreed,” Broomstick said.
Stingray and Wirecutter yawned again and trudged into the boathouse without protest.
“Should we clean up?” Daemon asked.
“Nah,” Broomstick said. “The warriors will be back soon. Just put a lid on the porridge.”
Daemon left the bowls of dried fish and scallions out for the warriors and covered the pot. Then he and Broomstick headed into the boathouse.
He thought it would be hard to get any rest, knowing that Prince Gin and Sora were coming. But the weight of fatigue pressed in on him, and after being on his feet for twelve hours, the sleeping mat felt like a plush down mattress. Daemon crawled under his blanket, and sleep hit him over the head.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Sora and Fairy emerged from the Field of Illusions and faced the grand fortress walls of the Citadel. Sora made herself visible. The particles lowered Fairy onto the ground before her, and her body also reappeared.
They were home. They were safe. Sora finally let herself breathe.
“Who goes there?” the guards shouted as soon as the moon cast its light upon them.
She bowed to the ground and splayed her fingers flat before her. “It is Spirit. I’ve returned with urgent news for the Council on the Dragon Prince’s imminent return. And I’ve brought Fairy, who’s in a rira-induced coma.”
There was no response for a few moments. All Sora could hear was her pulse pounding in her ears.
A long minute later, the iron gates began to open on their silent hinges. Bullfrog, one of the councilmembers, strode out.
“Your Honor,” Sora said, hurrying forward, “I’m so glad to see you. I came to tell you—”
“Save your breath,” Bullfrog said, drawing his sword.
Sora’s heart leaped into her throat. “I don’t understand.”
Except she could. Everything she’d done with the ryuu could be explained, but the truth was less believable than what it looked like from the outside—that she’d been brainwashed by Prince Gin and sent to deceive the taigas.
Bullfrog advanced.
Sora took several steps backward. But she couldn’t pull a weapon on a councilmember. What was she supposed to do?
“Spirit,” Bullfrog said, “you are under arrest.”
She continued to back away. “No, please. Let me explain. I know how to defeat Prince Gin and his army. I came to report to you.”
“Your allegiance cannot be trusted,” Bullfrog said. “You made an attempt on Empress Aki’s life. You murdered Imperial Guards. You are possibly still under the Dragon Prince’s charm, sent here on his orders to mislead us.”
“It’s not true!” Sora turned, looking for another way out.
But several other taigas had descended from the fortress walls. They came at her from all sides, even behind her. She was surrounded.
“I’m sorry to do this,” Bullfrog said as he stepped so close to her, she could smell the remnants of rice and pickled plum on his breath. “But until we defeat Prince Gin and find a way to undo his spell on our taigas, you must be considered a threat. And neutralized.”
Before Sora could protest more, Bullfrog sheathed his sword, choked off her windpipe, and jabbed a needle into her throat.
For an instant, Sora saw stars. And then the stars burst in a blinding explosion, and her knees gave way, dropping her to the ground and flinging her into unconsciousness.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
At first, Daemon dreamed of clouds and clear blue sky.
Soon, though, the clouds began to melt and come back together again, swirling and sliding and changing from white to silver to green. One morphed from a blotch into a green cat. It was like being in the middle of a hallucination. The sky shifted suddenly to green—in fact, everything looked as if he were dreaming through an emerald-tinted lens—and the clouds billowed and started to funnel into Daemon’s head, tickling his temple as the wisps drifted in through his ear and wafted inside his skull.
What is this? Daemon thought.
Somewhere in the back of his head, a girl giggled. It sounded almost like Sora, if Sora giggled. Which she did not. She laughed, but she didn’t giggle.
Daemon, you’re here! the girl said.
What in all hells—? Daemon blinked and shook himself awake.
Even with his eyes open, though, he didn’t see reality. The green-tinged dream pushed on.
Aren’t the stars pretty? the girl said.
Who are you? What’s happening?
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.
Give them to me, Sora.
His burden grew heavier, yet it was strangely light, like an ever-growing bundle of cotton on his shoulders and inside his head. Soon his skull cavity would be stuffed full with clouds and nonsensical laughter.
He couldn’t feel Broomstick’s hand anymore, even though it was probably still there. The throwing stars disappeared, replaced instead by a wolf cub, a bunny, and a kangaroo, all made of blue stars. They frolicked among lightning bolts, running to dodge them. Daemon giggled. What a foreign but glorious feeling; it was like being six years old again.
Thank you, Daemon, a girl’s voice said from somewhere that seemed very far away. I won’t let you down. I promise.
Daemon shrugged. He
didn’t even know what the girl was promising. Was it something they’d discussed?
The constellation wolf cub bounded toward him. Daemon tossed a meteor out into the dark sky, and the little wolf chased it, leaving a streak of bright blue behind him.
He’s a good pet, Daemon thought as he giggled again. Even if he is a myth.
Chapter Sixty
With ryuu magic, Sora broke the cuffs around her wrists as easily as if they were made of paper. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened with Daemon. In fact, she didn’t remember most of what had happened after Bullfrog injected her with genka, but she had a lingering feeling that something unexpectedly intimate had just taken place. She also knew that Daemon lay on the floor with a childlike grin on his face, and that Broomstick was standing several feet away. Too far for a friend, too close for an enemy.
“Broomstick—”
“Wolf risked everything for you just now,” he said cautiously. “Not only by taking the delirium from you—though I still don’t understand how—but also by rescuing you. You’re under arrest by a councilmember. Freeing you could be grounds for treason.”
Sora stumbled as she closed the distance between them. It seemed that everyone wanted to try her for treason. But that was all the more reason to make sure at least her friends were on her side.
“I know.” Sora steadied herself. She put her hand on Broomstick’s shoulder. “I also know that you’re liable to be tried for treason too by accompanying Wolf. Thank you.”
Broomstick jerked backward. He still had a crazed look in his eyes. “Please tell me we were right to do it, Spirit. Tell me Fairy’s alive. I want to trust you, but my gemina bond feels like a gods-damn cemetery, and if you didn’t keep her safe, I swear I will break you in half.”
Sora nodded carefully. She was a good fighter and she had ryuu magic, but Broomstick was two hundred pounds of muscle, and she didn’t doubt the lengths he’d go to to avenge his gemina, especially if Sora proved to be the enemy. “You can trust me,” she said softly. “I gave Fairy rira to fake her death. I brought her back with me. . . . I don’t know where Bullfrog took her. To the infirmary, I’m guessing.”
