Daemon painstakingly recorded what he’d discovered of the Dragon Prince’s plans. It took multiple sheets of paper, and he hoped the Council could read what he wrote, but he did the best he could. If he were still a Level 2 or 3 apprentice, this scroll would be the highest mark he ever received in handwriting class. But alas, there were no such rewards for composing messages about impending doom.
He rolled up the scroll and secured it to one of the dragonfly’s legs using tweezers and thread. Then Daemon tried to set it free. It should know what to do, how to fly to the Citadel.
The dragonfly stood around the desk awkwardly, one-sixth of its legs bound to a scroll.
“Hmph,” Daemon muttered.
He tried nudging the dragonfly.
It remained where it was.
He tried talking to it, as if it could understand what he wanted.
Nothing.
Then, as Daemon was about to give up, the dragonfly seemed to wake up from its daze. Perhaps it had still been groggy from the icebox. It bolted into the air, circled the communications office twice, and zipped out a hole in the window.
Daemon exhaled and collapsed back in his chair.
He let himself rest for all of two minutes.
And then he launched himself into the other part of his self-appointed mission—he had to get through to Sora.
Hey-o, he called out through their bond. She wouldn’t be able to hear his words, of course, just feel his presence and his emotion, but sometimes he spoke to her to help convey his feelings.
But as before, his greeting seemed to ricochet off something and smack back into him. He actually ducked, as if the rejected “hey-o” could hurt him.
Undeterred, he tried again. Sora?
Her name boomeranged back.
The silence in their bond ached. Daemon’s and Sora’s minds had been interwoven, their partnership omnipresent, for eleven years. When they were children, they used to do everything together—eat together, spar together, study spells together. For things they couldn’t do together, like sleep, they’d stay connected to each other until the last moment, sending soothing thoughts through their bond until they were drowsy enough to fall asleep.
He took the pain of not having Sora and drilled that into their connection, shoving it like a battering ram. It would not be a nice emotion for Sora to receive, but that was the point. Maybe he needed something intense—like his terror when Sora was hypnotized by Prince Gin at Kaede City—in order to smash his will through their connection.
There was resistance, stubborn and solid like the Citadel’s fortress walls.
He drilled his anguish into their gemina bond over and over again. The battering ram kept smashing against Sora’s ramparts. Daemon broke out into a sweat. At one point, he felt a slight give, like he’d made a dent in the blockade, but then there was no more progress after that.
Daemon fell back against the chair again, utterly drained.
The dragonflies flitted in front of him, as if concerned.
He waved at them, shaking his head. “Thank you, but this is on me alone.”
Maybe he couldn’t get to Sora without better understanding what it was that he’d done in the first place. Or what had triggered it.
Daemon hesitated to think there was something special about him. Other than the odd origin of being raised by wolves, he had spent his life being decidedly not special. Sora could pick up new spells on the first try. Fairy had a golden touch with botanicals. Broomstick more than played with fire. But Daemon didn’t excel at anything besides physically fighting people to the ground, and honestly, even an ordinary Kichonan could be good at that if he trained hard enough.
There had to be an explanation for his strange ability to resist Prince Gin’s hypnosis. I’m stuck here until I get a dragonfly response from the Citadel, he thought. I should spend some time doing research. He’d seen a small library down one of the halls. Burying himself in stacks of books wouldn’t be as active as trying to reach Sora, but he wasn’t doing any good on that front and needed a break. Besides, good reconnaissance was as much about what one saw as what one understood about those observations.
Daemon pushed back from his chair. Who knows? Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe he’d learn something about his strange magic that would give him a clue about where he’d come from.
Chapter Forty
Aki paused outside the Council Room. The commander had summoned her, and she had come swiftly from Rose Palace. But now that she was here, she stopped. Why am I running to them like I’m one of their warriors? she thought. I’m the empress. It should be I who summons the Council, not the other way around.
Besides, what had the Society accomplished since the attack on Isle of the Moon? Aki had let them do things their way, but the old system had proven too slow.
She had great respect for the taigas, but now it was time for Aki to take charge.
She pushed her way into the room before the guard could properly announce her.
The councilmembers jumped at her entrance and hastily laid themselves prostrate at her feet.
Aki strode over to the commander’s high-backed chair. “I’m sitting here today,” she announced to Glass Lady, leaving no room for debate.
The commander, only halfway up from her bow and still on her knees, looked stunned for a moment. But proper etiquette meant she had to defer to the empress, so Glass Lady dipped her head in concession and pulled up an extra seat. Now she and the other councilmembers sat opposite Aki across the black stone table, the shift in power evident.
“This came in today, Your Majesty,” Glass Lady said, passing a stack of miniature papers, curled at the edges, to the empress. “You were right. Prince Gin is involved. And now we know his plans.”
Aki took the magnifying glass offered to her by Scythe, one of the councilmembers. She took her time reading the details of her brother’s attacks on Paro Village, Sand Mine, Kaede City, and Tiger’s Belly, as well as his subsequent targets.
“This message didn’t come from your naval ship,” she said when she’d read the pages twice.
Glass Lady’s usual arrogance faltered. “No, Your Majesty. It’s from an apprentice.”
“An apprentice? I thought you said you didn’t have any taigas who could reach the far outposts before the navy could?”
“Er, we didn’t send Wolf,” Glass Lady said, looking down at the table. “He and his gemina, Spirit, slipped out of the Citadel on their own initiative.”
Spirit? The name sounded familiar. Aki glanced up from her magnifying glass. “Was Spirit the one who set off the fireworks at Rose Palace?”
One of the other councilmembers, Bullfrog, made a croaking noise. “Unfortunately, yes. She and her friends have a penchant for breaking rules. Or at least for finding the loopholes in them.”
“And you say the Council didn’t sanction Spirit and Wolf leaving the Citadel?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
Aki pondered this for a moment. The Council had been spinning their wheels, unable to figure out the mysterious assault at Isle of the Moon or protect against Gin’s stealth attacks. They were relying on a specific way of doing things, which may have worked in the past, but clearly wasn’t getting them anywhere right now. In the meantime, Spirit and Wolf had tossed traditional methods aside and uncovered Gin’s plot on their own.