Sora jostled the finicky latch and opened the leather flap. She admired the different poisons, which Fairy lovingly milled and distilled herself.
“What is this syrupy amber one again?” she asked about the leftmost one.
“Demon sugar. One drop on a cake or in a cup of tea will send the victim into paralysis and a slow, strangled death.”
“Right,” Sora said. “The blue powder, I remember, is ground gaki berry mixed with salt from the Emerald Sea.”
“Yes. A little sprinkle of that on a dish, and the victim will get so hungry, he’ll go crazy and eventually devour his own limbs to satisfy his appetite.” Fairy went on to explain the other four powders and serums in the pouch.
When she finished, she whirled abruptly and hurried to a set of drawers, the one that seemed like a bottomless pit of anything one could possibly need. It was, of course, meticulously organized inside into little trays. Sora had seen Fairy retrieve everything from hair clips to seaweed strips to a romantic novel from the drawers’ depths. Now Fairy came back with a small red envelope.
“Hold out your hand,” she said. She took what looked like two pink coins out of the envelope and placed them in Sora’s palm. They were heavy too, like coins. Lines crisscrossed the disks.
“What is it?”
“Pressed rira powder. In small doses—like an eighth of this disk—it will put someone to sleep. In large doses . . .”
Sora’s heartbeat stumbled. But perhaps that was the point. Fairy was giving her and Daemon a way out, in case they got in over their heads, and in case the dancers’ camp really did turn out to be Prince Gin and a small army.
“I hope we don’t have to use them,” Sora said softly as she slipped the rira disks into the leather pouch.
Fairy looked away. “I hope not too.”
Chapter Fourteen
Getting out of the Citadel hadn’t been a problem for Daemon and Sora. The Council and the other taiga warriors were too busy preparing for another attack from their mysterious assailants to pay attention to the apprentices. He and Sora simply had to show the guards at the gate their leave passes, which Broomstick had gotten for them.
A day after leaving the Citadel, Daemon and Sora arrived at the base of Samara Mountain, where Sora’s parents lived. The trails that led up its steep face were as dark as the taigas’ cloaks, obscured entirely by the night and the fog. The Kichona Sea tinged the air with salt, and its waves smashed themselves into the saw-toothed cliffs.
Sora bit her lip as she looked upward. Her fear seeped through their gemina bond and into Daemon’s pores.
“I know I’ve been obsessed with the idea that we saw Prince Gin,” she said. “And I know that maybe we were wrong. But that doesn’t mean there’s no threat. I’m scared about the attack at Isle of the Moon. What if it happens again? And what if next time it’s not an island with just five taigas on it, but a place like this with ordinary people too? People like my parents. They could be hurt.”
Daemon nodded. Being this close to her family made the threat more real. He brought his horse next to Sora’s and squeezed her shoulder. Even though what he really wanted to do was wrap her up in his arms and tell her everything would be all right. But he couldn’t do that, for multiple reasons.
“We should probably stop for the night,” Sora said, trying to shake off her worry.
“Yes, but let’s ride a bit longer. I recall a creek not far from here.” It wasn’t that Daemon wanted to travel more tonight; they’d been riding hard enough to make good time. It was that he thought it would be better to draw Sora away from Samara Mountain. Unlike Glass Lady, Daemon believed that emotion could be beneficial to a taiga, providing motivation when it was needed. But in this case, the mountain was such a looming reminder of what was personally at stake for Sora, it was probably the right choice to move on.
Brows knit tightly, she looked up the switchbacks once more before she nodded and nudged her horse to continue.
They rode until they heard the lullaby of the water. There was a clearing set back from the road, sheltered by a cluster of ancient camphor trees, their moss-covered trunks as wide as Daemon’s horse was long, their fissured branches plunging deep into the fog. A patch of muddy grass would have to do as both grazing for the horses and bedding for him and Sora. The air smelled of damp and camphor mint.
They brought their horses to the water and tied the reins to the trees. Daemon caught a few small carp from the creek, which they cooked over the fire Sora started. Soon after dinner, a chill sliced like a scythe into the night.
Sora shivered as she unrolled her sleeping mat.
“Cold?” Daemon asked. “You can have my blanket.”
She smiled but waved him off. “I’ll be all right. Thank you, though.”
Daemon looked at her a few seconds longer than he needed to. When he caught himself, he coughed and glanced away.
Sora lay down on her mat and pulled her wool blanket over herself. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I do. Do you think the camp will still be there when we arrive?”
But Sora had already fallen asleep.
Daemon lay on his own sleeping mat and listened to the featherlight in-and-out of her breath. After a while, her teeth began to chatter.
He removed his own blanket and spread it over her. He’d make do with his riding cloak.
But he couldn’t sleep. His mind raced with thoughts about Isle of the Moon, about the Evermore story that he’d hated as a kid, about the scars on that man’s face in Takish Gorge. Maybe his scaly skin had been stage makeup, as the Paro Village taiga report suggested. That would be good. Daemon and Sora could return to the Citadel knowing that there was no Prince Gin, that he was (still) dead, and they’d leave the Isle of the Moon attack to the Council and actual warriors to deal with.
Then again, if the hooded man really had been the Dragon Prince, Daemon and Sora could return to the Citadel as heroes for having uncovered it. Maybe they could even sneak into his camp and assassinate him. Daemon imagined riding triumphantly through the iron gates at the Citadel, the evil Dragon Prince’s body thrown over the back of his horse.
He let his mind wander to other versions of victory.
But eventually, he got up. His inexplicable need to see the stars nagged at him, tugging at him from up high. I need to clear my head.
Daemon found a tall pine nearby. He climbed quickly, and when he broke through the fog at the top, he cried out like a man in the desert who’d finally stumbled on an oasis of water. His cloak was cold and damp from the mist, and pine needles poked into his hair, but none of it mattered. There was sky, sky, sky, not the suffocating blanket of fog. There were stars and there was the moon, glowing fiercely into the night.
Why did he crave this so badly? Was it simply because he’d been raised in the wild? Or was there something else in his past that made him need the freedom he found at the tops of the trees? Maybe he’d spent his infancy in a mole tunnel or something.
But then Daemon closed his eyes, and he imagined not only the comforting, dark infinity of the sky around him but also the smell of leather and steel mixed with black currant and sandalwood. The curiously alluring scent of Sora’s weapons and her soap. Daemon breathed in deeply and let his mind wander, just a little, to Sora’s smile, the taut lines of muscle on her body, and to a recent sparring session when she’d pinned him to the dirt floor of the arena and straddled him, pressed her knife against his throat, and leaned forward to whisper, “It looks like I win.”