by Evelyn Skye
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.
And like all gods, who do not stay among humans for long, Zomuri disappeared.
Prince Gin rose slowly to his feet. He turned to the ryuu and the captured taigas in the stone claws. “Tonight, we celebrate. And tomorrow, we set forth on our quest for the Evermore.”
His soldiers whooped and shouted.
The prince turned to the sky. “I see you up there, Spirit. You and your flying pet may be out of my reach for now, but you’ve seen a glimpse of Kichona’s future. This is the end for you. The next time we cross paths, I’ll see to it that your sister kills you.”
No. Sora leaned over, searching for her sister, and nearly toppled off Daemon. Fairy latched onto her.
“Don’t die on us,” Fairy said. “We need you. Kichona needs you.”
“It’s over,” Sora said. “Hana’s taken Empress Aki. The entire Society has been hypnotized. And the quest for the Evermore has officially begun.”
She slouched. “Kichona is lost. We’re the only ones with our wits about us, because we’re protected by Daemon’s shield.”
“The kingdom’s not lost,” Daemon said. “We didn’t fight this hard just to give up now. But first, we need to get out of here.”
If it
weren’t for his decisiveness, Sora wouldn’t have been able to do it.
He soared past the clouds. He flew so high, the sky changed color, darker here where the sun had not yet reached. He turned westward, but kept flying up, up, and up still.
“You’ll fix this,” he said.
Sora shook her head and buried it into his neck. “I can’t.”
Fairy scooted up and hugged her. “Then we’ll fix this. Together.”
“The League of Rogues.” Broomstick’s hand rested on Sora’s shoulders.
She sat up slowly and remembered her mother’s entreaty—Be more. Do more.
No one said Sora had to do it alone.
Her friends were right. They couldn’t lie down and give up. Their kingdom was at stake—not just the island, but the people. People like her mother and father up on Samara Mountain. People like Empress Aki. People like the taigas who’d been taken.
But there were no more taigas left to fight.
Except for us.
“We’re going to need something bigger than ourselves,” Sora said.
“Tell us what to do, and we’re in,” Daemon said.
“Even if it’s something crazy?”
Fairy shrugged. “I’ve already impersonated the empress and died once. I’m not sure there’s anything crazier than that.”
“I might be a demigod wolf,” Daemon offered. “That’s possibly crazier.”
“What they mean is ‘yes,’” Broomstick said. “Let’s save Kichona.”
What had happened with Prince Gin today was terrifying. But what could happen if he was allowed to keep going . . .
A magical army that would drown the mainland in blood. A war that would come to Kichona’s shores.
And an empire of millions of mindless puppets, all under Prince Gin’s control.
Sora shuddered. They had to stop him. It was their duty. Their calling.
Daemon flew farther and farther away. Stars sprinkled Sora’s vision. They had flown away from day, into the night.
The darkness gave her hope.
“All right, then,” Sora said. “Let’s do this.”
“Really?” Fairy said.
Sora nodded. “Work hard.”
“Mischief harder,” they said.
They held on tightly to his fur, shadows on a constellation, and they shot higher, into midnight sky. And then Sora glared back at the earth in defiant challenge.
“You’re wrong, Dragon Prince,” she whispered. “This is definitely not the end.”
Acknowledgments
Having written another series before this one, I thought Circle of Shadows would be easy to write. It turned out, though, that I had to wrangle with this book a bit, and I’m very grateful to my editor, Kristin Rens, for understanding what I wanted this story to be and patiently guiding me to get it there.
Thank you to Kelsey Murphy, Jon Howard, Audrey Diestelkamp, Michelle Taormina, Alison Donalty, Epic Reads, and everyone else at HarperCollins who has worked on Circle of Shadows. And thank you to Ronan Le Fur for the gorgeous cover art. I’m blessed to have such an exceptional team bringing my books to life. Your love for what you do is truly dazzling.
As always, I’d like to thank my agent, Brianne Johnson, as well as the rest of the Writers House crew, including Alexandra Levick, Cecilia de la Campa, and James Munro. You are the unsung heroes behind the scenes, and I see you and all that you do.
This journey wouldn’t be as fun without my readers, and a special shout-out to the ever-enthusiastic Skye Guard! Thank you to every single one of you loyal soldiers for spreading the love of my stories. I adore you forever and ever.
I’d be remiss not to mention Sara Raasch, Jennifer Nielsen, Amie Kaufman, Kerri Maniscalco, and Karen Grunberg, my critique partners and early readers; Brittany Press, the Major General of the Skye Guard; Julia Jin, who did the beautiful art of Sora, Daemon, Fairy, and Broomstick for the trading cards; Hafsah Faisal, my design wizard; Angela Mann and all the booksellers at Kepler’s Books; YA Lunch Break, my beloved book club; and all my incredible author friends, whose names would fill an entire book if I listed everyone, because the author community is really that awesome and generous and wonderful.
And last, but never least, thank you to my family, who are always my biggest fans. Thank you to my parents, Andrew and Margaret Hsu, for being so proud of me that your hearts might burst. Thank you to Tom, for throwing my life wide open in the very best of ways; I could not write a better love story than the one I’m living with you. And thank you to Reese, for your curiosity and joy and endless little kisses and hugs. I love all of you with my entire soul.
About the Author
Photo credit Joyce Goldschmid Photography
EVELYN SKYE was once offered a job by the CIA, she not-so-secretly wishes she was on So You Think You Can Dance, and if you challenge her to a pizza-eating contest, she guarantees she will win. When she isn’t writing, Evelyn can be found chasing her daughter on the playground or sitting on the couch, immersed in a good book and eating way too many cookies. She is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Crown’s Game and The Crown’s Fate. Evelyn can be found online at www.evelynskye.com and on Twitter @EvelynSkyeYA.
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Books by Evelyn Skye
The Crown’s Game
The Crown’s Fate
Circle of Shadows
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
CIRCLE OF SHADOWS. Copyright © 2019 by Evelyn Skye. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2019 by Ronan Le Fur
Cover title typography design by Vasava
Cover design by Michelle Taormina
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954183
Digital Edition JANUARY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-264374-2
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-264372-8 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-291618-1 (int.)
* * *
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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