by Evelyn Skye
At the sound of Sora’s voice, Daemon’s eyes fluttered open.
“Don’t worry, I’ve already thought of how we get in,” she was saying. “With ryuu magic, I can jump the distance from the highest stair to the top of the fortress wall.”
Oh. Right. She didn’t need his help for a mere four-story leap.
“And the rest of us?” Fairy asked.
“I’ll float you over,” Sora said. “I couldn’t risk doing something that conspicuous to get us across the Field of Illusions, but this will be quick. I’ll go first and make sure we’re clear of any ryuu guards, and then I’ll bring you up, one by one. Okay?”
Fairy and Broomstick nodded. Daemon lagged, but then he kicked himself in the proverbial ass and got himself together. So what if he’d been a magical wolf for one brief, glorious night? Sora had always been better at this stuff than he was. Things were no different now. He could handle this.
Daemon, Fairy, and Broomstick kept watch from the base of the Citadel walls while Sora ran silently up the stone steps. When she was near the top of the staircase, they triple-checked that there weren’t any ryuu in sight.
She took the last steps at a full sprint and jumped.
Sora landed on the parapet, disappearing from view behind the crenellations of the wall. Daemon’s heart stopped. There could have been ryuu hidden there, waiting to ambush her.
But a moment later, Sora popped up.
“Thank the gods,” Daemon whispered.
She pointed to Fairy.
“Here I go,” Fairy said as Sora began to float her up, just as she’d done with the piece of Rose Palace. Hopefully, though, she wouldn’t drop any of them. Like the piece of Rose Palace.
Daemon remembered then that Rose Palace was now a pile of rubble. What stood in its place was the Dragon Prince’s bloodstone castle. His stomach turned.
Sora deposited Fairy successfully beside her and began to work on Broomstick. It was a more wobbly effort, since he was twice Fairy’s size, but a minute later he, too, was safely posted on watch at the top of the Citadel’s entrance.
Daemon stepped forward. He thought he might feel something at the touch of ryuu magic, but other than levitating off the ground, nothing was different at all. Ryuu magic was even subtler than taiga magic, at least as far as he could tell. Or maybe it didn’t affect him because he was essentially a parcel being transported from one place to the next, like the citrus crate Sora had hidden in when they were on Prince Gin’s ship.
She set him down carefully on the battlement. “Everyone all right?” Sora asked.
“Yes and no,” Broomstick said.
Daemon crept up to where his friend was peering through the crenellations at the Citadel below.
“Daggers,” Daemon cursed. The ryuu weren’t up at the castle anymore, as they had been after the battle. They were swarming here at the Society’s headquarters, at least a thousand of them taking it over as though the Citadel was theirs. Sharpening swords in the armory courtyard. Training in the sparring arena. Meeting in the outdoor amphitheater. They just hadn’t been guarding the entrance because there was no one—other than Daemon, Sora, Fairy, and Broomstick—to attack.
And the ryuu seemed more organized than Sora had accounted for.
“We need to split up now,” Sora said. “Rendezvous in Jade Forest in three hours. But whoever finds Empress Aki first, don’t wait. Grab her and get out. All right?”
“All right,” Fairy said.
“And remember, if you can kill Prince Gin, do it. His death ends everything.”
They huddled for a moment, each knowing—but not saying—that this could be the last time they were together. The grimness was like a knife at Daemon’s throat.
“We’ve got this.” Sora stacked her fists over her heart. “Work hard. Mischief harder.”
Daemon took a deep breath. Then he pumped his fists to his chest, too. He was here. He was a part of this, whether he liked it or not. And hells if he was going to let his friends down.
“Good luck, League of Rogues,” Daemon said. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
Chapter Six
As Spirit and Wolf took off to make their way up the mountain to the castle, Broomstick and Fairy surveyed what had once been their home. The Citadel had always been a dark place—black was the color of the Society of Taigas, so all the buildings were black—but there was something else now that seemed like an eclipse over the headquarters, a bleakness that swallowed everything the Society stood for. All Broomstick’s nerves stood on end, and he had to steady himself against the battlement wall.
“I suppose it’s time we split up, too,” he said to Fairy, nervously tapping his fingers on the nearest crenellation. Spirit had suggested it because Broomstick knew the warrior side of the fortress better. He had worked in the administration offices in Warrior Meeting Hall, and he and Wolf spent lots of time after hours in the nearby sparring arena doing extra drills.
Fairy would search the student part of campus. She knew all the best places for hiding. Plus, she could fit in passageways that Broomstick couldn’t.
“I don’t want to split up either,” Fairy said. “But Spirit’s right that it’s smarter for us to divide and conquer.”
He pinched his lips but agreed. “Keep our gemina bond open. I suppose we should get going. Time’s ticking.”
“Yeah,” she said, although she didn’t move. Their connection vibrated with an anticipation that was half hope they would succeed in finding Empress Aki and ending this nightmare now and half fear that they’d discover something even worse than what they already knew.
Fairy went first, giving Broomstick a short nod before disappearing over the fortress wall, climbing down the handholds placed on the interior of the wall to allow taigas to defend the Citadel from invaders. He watched until she melted into the darkness like a shadow. Then he made his way down and headed to his first destination—the Society’s training arena.
Broomstick crouched in the stands and stared wide eyed at the sparring below, full of new recruits freshly hypnotized by the Dragon Prince. A short distance away, Blade, a girl who had lived down the hall from Fairy and Spirit, summoned gravel from the arena floor and formed it into giant axes and battering rams. Her hold on ryuu magic faltered every now and then, and the weapons would disintegrate into gravel again, but she kept at it, sweat dripping in rivulets down her face.
Near her, eleven-year-old Quicksand was enhancing typical taiga spells to make them better.
“Gods, no,” Broomstick whispered. He was Quicksand’s mentor in the school’s Exemplar Program, which paired young students with older ones they could look up to. Broomstick had known Quicksand when he was a tenderfoot still called Wyato, because he was too young for a taiga name.
Now Quicksand was learning to be one of Prince Gin’s foot soldiers, sprinting back and forth from one side of the arena to the other like a cheetah spell sped up by a factor of ten. Broomstick barely managed to keep himself concealed because he wanted to jump out and grab the boy, to try to shake the mind control out of his head and save him from the ryuu.
Then Broomstick saw Philosopher, his lab partner from physics class, working on digging tunnels in the ground without the use of mudras or chants. And Summer, the girl who worked at the desk next to Broomstick’s in the Society’s administrative offices, held her hands out in front of her as two small tornados appeared in her palms.
Outrage rose in Broomstick’s belly. These were their friends, students Broomstick had spent his entire life with, who had played with blocks with him when they were tenderfoots, who’d tried to ski down the Citadel rooftops in winter when they were Level 7s, and who stayed up late helping each other study every spring for final exams. They had lived and breathed the Society of Taigas’ centuries-old commitment to defend all that was good about Kichona, just like Broomstick did. Yet here they were, practicing a magic that would destroy the very kingdom they’d sworn to protect.
How dare Prince Gin ste
al their friends like this? And he was going to send them to war, to die for a cause they didn’t believe in and weren’t even aware they were a part of.
Broomstick sank against the bleachers.
The boy, Quicksand, tripped and skidded several yards in the gravel. Philosopher stopped the tunnel she was working on and ran over to help him up. “Are you all right?” she asked as she extended her hand.
Embarrassed, he nodded but didn’t look at her.
Philosopher brushed the gravel off his uniform. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Magic takes practice, and all of us have fallen face-first in this arena many, many times. Just remember that we’re training to make Kichona great, that Emperor Gin expects us to do the best we can. That means we have to make mistakes, but it’ll be worth it.”
Broomstick wrinkled his forehead as he listened to the conversation. He’d expected the hypnotized taigas to be mindless pawns. But Philosopher seemed to be the same sweet girl he knew, an actual person rather than a witless weapon. The main difference was her devotion to the Dragon Prince and his pursuit of the Evermore. It was a confusing mix of traits that Broomstick tried to wrap his head around.
In a twisted way, though, it gave him hope. The real taigas were still in those minds and bodies. They’d had part of their brains hijacked, but there was something worth saving.
There was nothing more to see here, though. Before watching his friends, Broomstick had searched the sparring arena’s storage spaces and back rooms, and there was no sign of Empress Aki. However, this new understanding of how the taigas operated could come in handy. Maybe he’d be able to get some information out of them just like he had in the past, by chatting up his coworkers in Warrior Meeting Hall. He’d have to pretend he was a ryuu, though.
I hope they were too caught up in the battle to notice that I escaped the Dragon Prince’s claws and I’m part of Spirit’s rebellion. Broomstick crossed his fingers and hurried to Warrior Meeting Hall.
The nearest room was a large conference space. He glanced inside, but it was just a bunch of ryuu—not new recruits but Prince Gin’s original warriors from the Blood Rift—sharing several bottles of something and singing drunkenly. It was as if this once sacrosanct building where the Society governed was nothing more than a tavern, the long conference table converted into a sloshy bar.
Broomstick couldn’t bear to listen. He headed farther down the corridor.
Most of the meeting rooms were empty, but the lights in the administrative office were on. Broomstick took a deep breath, put on his most gregarious expression, and strode in as if he belonged there.
“Hey-o,” he said to the half dozen taigas—no, ryuu recruits—who were busy going through stacks of files. “What’d I miss?”
Crossbow, a taiga in his thirties, looked up through his glasses. “Broomstick, where’ve you been? Your shift was supposed to start two hours ago. We’ve been buried in paper here.”
But Moss, a Level 11 apprentice who worked part-time in Warrior Meeting Hall like Broomstick did, set down the files in his hand. “It’s not just two hours. I haven’t seen you at all in the dormitory. Suspicious, don’t you think? That you’ve been missing ever since Spirit and Wolf disappeared?”
Broomstick’s heart seized for a second. But then he let loose an easy smile and shrugged. “You caught me. I ran off with my traitor ex-friends but then decided the smartest thing to do was walk right back into the Citadel and return to my job helping you losers sort through paperwork.”
Crossbow and the others laughed.
Moss kept his eye on Broomstick a moment longer. But a reluctant laugh escaped his lips. “Sorry. It sounded better in my head, but once I said it out loud . . . I guess it’s pretty ridiculous.”
Broomstick’s heart resumed beating. “I really do apologize for being late. The Council has been questioning me since the battle to see if I knew anything of Spirit’s plans.” He scowled for good measure, as if he was disgusted that he’d once considered her a friend. “Between that and practicing this new magic, I haven’t even been back to my room. So if I don’t totally make sense, it’s because I’m severely sleep deprived.”
“This ryuu magic is incredible,” Crossbow said. “I’m dying to finish sorting through all these reports so I can get back to the sparring arena again.”
Everyone nodded. Thank the gods they’d swallowed Broomstick’s excuses. It was something Fairy had taught him—if you’re caught in an untruth (for her it was usually gossip), either get angry while you defend it as truth or confess to it as if the deception was the most obvious mistake in the world. Either way, people ended up believing your initial lie. Psychology was a strange beast but a helpful one.
Broomstick picked up a pile of loose papers. “So what are these, and what are we doing with them?”
“Initial responses to the emperor’s decrees,” Moss said. “We have to organize them by subject and geographical location for Virtuoso to review.”
Holy heavens. Virtuoso was Spirit’s sister, who Broomstick knew as Hana. She was also the Dragon Prince’s right-hand ryuu. Sadness for Spirit prickled at Broomstick, along with a sharp stab of fear—Hana wasn’t someone to trifle with.
“The red folders are for tax reports,” Moss said, continuing on from before. “Orange for confiscation of tiger pearls, yellow for updates on weapons manufacturing, and green for the collection of all fish, meat, fruit, vegetables, and grains for the army.”
Dread mounted inside Broomstick. Kichona was being transformed into a war machine, and at a horrifying pace. Spirit had been very wrong that the ryuu would still be picking up the pieces from their battle. Instead, the Dragon Prince had already issued decrees seizing everything that defined the kingdom—the tiger pearls; the happy, colorful tunics and dresses worn by the people; the bountiful orchards full of yuzu; and the nets full of shrimp and fish. And that wasn’t even touching upon what he could eventually do to the minds of the citizens themselves. He would probably conscript them for the army, to support the ryuu.
“The speed that we’re getting ready for war is, uh, exciting,” Broomstick said through gritted teeth. “How long is this war supposed to take? And how do we know when we do enough to bring paradise on earth?”
Because that was the point of it all. The Evermore—a promise of transforming Kichona into a utopia and giving all Kichonans eternal life to enjoy there. The only problem was that hundreds of thousands—probably more—would have to die before Kichona achieved the goal.
“We’ll be granted the Evermore when Emperor Gin delivers the hearts of all seven monarchs to Zomuri,” Crossbow said matter-of-factly.
Broomstick paled as he ran through the countries and their rulers.
High King Erickson of Shinowana
Ria Kayla of Brin
Emperor Geoffrey Stafford of Caldan
Queen Meredith of Fale Po Tair
Tsarina Austine of Thoma
Empress Vivíana of Xerlinis
Queen Everleigh of Vyratta
How long would it take to win against all of them? To conquer their kingdoms, capture the monarchs, and murder each one? It would be decades of bloodshed.
On top of that, the start of war against the mainland meant the other kingdoms would band together to fight back against Kichona. Like Sora had said, they wouldn’t stay overseas either. They would come here, and everything Broomstick had ever known would be destroyed. Cities and villages torched. Innocent people—like his parents, brothers, and sisters at home—would be taken prisoner, beaten, and killed. Kichona’s beautiful, peaceful way of life trampled in the mud and rotted by death.
Moss reached over to grab a report on increased output goals for mining iron ore. His actions were, again, that horribly bizarre mind control where Broomstick’s old friends seemed completely normal except for their unflinching lack of morality and their dedication to the Dragon Prince’s war. Broomstick, on the other hand, could hardly breathe, let alone read the papers in his hands.
If he, Fai
ry, Spirit, and Wolf couldn’t assassinate Prince Gin, Kichona would cease to be Kichona.
Chapter Seven
Fairy darted through the Citadel’s grounds, keeping away from the paths and staying along the back sides of the buildings whenever possible. Her first stop was the mess hall. There was a boiler room beneath the main dining room that no one ever went to except the maintenance staff, and it was both out of the way and uncomfortable enough to be used as a prison cell.
She tiptoed to the back door of the mess hall and pressed her ear against it. It was relatively quiet on the other side. Thank the gods it wasn’t mealtime.
But Fairy didn’t go inside. If the boiler room was being used as a jail for the empress, the main access door from the inside would be locked and heavily guarded. Luckily, Fairy knew a secret way in. (She’d brought a boy down there once, but it had been way too steamy—and not in the good way.)
She knelt in the garden behind the mess hall and brushed the ground with her hands, searching. Mud caked in her fingernails, and a couple rocks scraped her.
She kept digging. It had to be around here somewhere.
The footsteps were nearly upon her before Fairy noticed. Her pulse flitted like a caged hummingbird.
Nines, she swore as she dove into the bushes. Hopefully it was dark enough that they wouldn’t see her, or if they did, she’d pass as the silhouette of one of the boulders scattered around the garden.
“It’s better than we could have imagined,” a woman was saying. “Who knew that when he swore loyalty to Zomuri, it would impact the people?”
“Still not as strong as direct mind control,” a man said as they approached where Fairy hid.
“No, but it’s achieved with zero effort. And I’m sure Emperor Gin will find a way to magnify Zomuri’s influence.”
