“Spirit,” Fairy said. Or, she tried to say it, but her roommate’s chokehold was tight, and she could barely get out a whisper.
“I don’t want to hear from you,” Spirit said. The tip of her knife pierced Fairy’s skin.
“You’re hurting her!” Broomstick said. “That’s—”
But Wolf had unhooked his bo. He lunged at Spirit, trying to reach her around Fairy.
Spirit dodged. She threw Fairy into the air, and somehow, Fairy remained floating there, where no one could reach her. A strip of her dress tore itself off and gagged her.
Broomstick gawked.
“Try to get her down!” Wolf instructed him.
Meanwhile, Spirit drew her sword and advanced on Wolf with rapid slashes.
He spun his bo up, down, left, and right, to block the blows. “You’re not yourself, Sora. Think hard. Remember Kaede City? Do you remember what happened to the taigas there?”
“I remember wanting to join Prince Gin.” She faltered. “And . . . you prevented me!” In anger, she rushed at Wolf.
He thrust the end of his bo into Spirit’s stomach. It forced the air out of her, and she doubled over.
Spirit recovered and swung her sword at the bo. Wolf shifted its angle at the last second and caught the blade in a nick in the wood. He twirled the bo, which wrenched the sword from Spirit’s hand.
“I don’t even know why I’m fighting you,” she said, her voice full of frigid disdain. “It’s the empress that matters.”
She unsheathed a knife from her sleeve and aimed it up to the tent’s ceiling. She pulled back her arm to throw.
Fairy saw her entire life in a split second. The faint memory of being a tenderfoot, waking up each morning in the nursery, where it always smelled of warm milk and tea biscuits. The night they became Level 1 apprentices, when Luna’s moonbeams lit up the grassy amphitheater, and the triplicate whorls on Fairy’s and Broomstick’s backs glowed at the same moment, bonding them as geminas. The first day of chemistry class when she was thirteen, when she discovered her love for botanicals and potions. All the nights she stayed up late with Spirit, laughing over a prank they’d pulled or rehashing Fairy’s latest boy-conquering escapades.
It had been a good life. And it would be a noble ending.
Fairy closed her eyes and waited for the knife.
Chapter Forty-Nine
No!” Daemon jumped at Sora. The air around him crackled, as if charged with electricity. He tackled her, and as soon as they collided, a jolt blasted through Sora’s body.
She lay flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her. The knife fell out of her hand. Daemon kept her pinned.
And all his fear gushed through their gemina bond, like a dam that had burst. It swept over Sora, and for a moment, she was completely submerged in the whirlpool of his terror that she would kill the empress, that he would hurt Sora, and that Sora was irretrievably lost.
Suddenly, Sora’s vision turned blue with bright light. The sensation was vaguely familiar, as if it had happened before. It whipped at her skull like a lash of lightning. The brightness reached inside, targeting her love of Prince Gin, trying to rip away the roots of it in her mind.
She tried desperately to hold on. The instinct to fight was so strong.
Daemon’s emotion didn’t relent. When Sora grabbed onto a tendril of her loyalty to the Dragon Prince, a lasso of blue sparks yanked it away. Her mind tried again, and again, holding on to each root, and yet each time, the light in their gemina bond wrenched the tendril out of her brain.
And then the dedication to Prince Gin was gone, all the porridgy mush and cloudy, unquestioning bliss, cleaned out completely.
But Sora didn’t feel empty. Daemon was here.
On top of her.
“Hello,” she whispered. It was all she could manage as she tried to sort out what it was she was feeling. She wanted to flip him off her, as if they were sparring. She also wanted to hug him, because all their time apart fell on her in an avalanche, and she missed him like she missed breathing. And then there was his closeness, both physically and through their gemina bond, that overwhelmed her and made her feel like she was drowning again.
He looked her intensely in the eyes. “Is it you? Did I really break the spell again?”
Sora nodded, still trying to breathe and recover from his tackle.
Then it began to sink in. She had been about to kill the empress. Holy heavens. Horror washed over Sora, and she just let herself go limp on the ground. “The Dragon Prince. I . . . He . . . I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry.”
Daemon climbed off her. “It’s okay. You’re you again. Everything is all right now.”
It wasn’t, though. At that moment, the ryuu particles in the tent began to vibrate, as if trying to contain their excitement but unable to. And the magic closer to the tent’s entrance was actually bouncing off itself, reacting like magnetic waves near a ryuu.
Hana was right outside. She must be nearly finished fighting the Imperial Guards. She’d be inside any minute.
Sora felt paralyzed. What was she supposed to do? If Hana saw Daemon and Broomstick, she’d think they were getting in Sora’s way, and she would kill them. Prince Gin wasn’t here; there was no one to charm taigas to join the ryuu. So Hana had been executing the taigas outside one by one.
But if Sora protected Daemon and Broomstick, then Hana would know that the spell had been broken. Sora would be the enemy again. And that would mean losing the inroads they’d made in their reconciliation.
And there was another thing. Sora had promised her mother that she’d be the best person she could, because Hana hadn’t had the opportunity to. Well, now her sister did have the chance. She was one of the original ryuu, so she hadn’t needed to be enchanted to follow Prince Gin. Which meant Sora could possibly get through to her and convince her that the goals Prince Gin and the ryuu aspired to were wrong. Hana had had her future stolen from her by the Dragon Prince. She deserved to get it back.
Sora made her decision. It was inelegant, but it was the only way to save everyone she loved.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Broomstick. She grabbed Daemon’s bo and whacked Broomstick in the back of the head. He slumped to the carpeted floor.
Daemon gaped, not understanding what had suddenly changed—again—in Sora. But he had daggers in both hands, poised to fight.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Sora said. “But you have to trust me.” She commanded the ryuu particles to knock him unconscious. He sprawled out across the floor.
Hana pushed through the tent flaps, just as Sora caught the empress’s body in her arms. She held her in a headlock again, Empress Aki’s back pressed against Sora’s chest.
“Stay quiet,” Sora whispered so quietly, her words almost got lost in the swirls of the empress’s gold hair. “I have to pretend to kill you right now. If I don’t, my sister will do it for real in about thirty seconds.”
She reached for the tiny, hidden pocket sewn into the inside of her collar and retrieved the pink rira disk that was meant to be Sora’s way out if things went awry. She broke off half of it and crammed it in Empress Aki’s mouth.
“This much won’t kill you, but it’ll slow your vital systems to the point of seeming like you’re dead. You’ll wake up in about a week, maybe less. Understand?”