Daemon smiled.
Then he concentrated on the muddy edges of his vision and on the feeling of being adrift. He collected the random clouds that floated among the throwing stars. He pulled away the giggles that floated in the air.
Give them to me, Sora.
His burden grew heavier, yet it was strangely light, like an ever-growing bundle of cotton on his shoulders and inside his head. Soon his skull cavity would be stuffed full with clouds and nonsensical laughter.
He couldn’t feel Broomstick’s hand anymore, even though it was probably still there. The throwing stars disappeared, replaced instead by a wolf cub, a bunny, and a kangaroo, all made of blue stars. They frolicked among lightning bolts, running to dodge them. Daemon giggled. What a foreign but glorious feeling; it was like being six years old again.
Thank you, Daemon, a girl’s voice said from somewhere that seemed very far away. I won’t let you down. I promise.
Daemon shrugged. He didn’t even know what the girl was promising. Was it something they’d discussed?
The constellation wolf cub bounded toward him. Daemon tossed a meteor out into the dark sky, and the little wolf chased it, leaving a streak of bright blue behind him.
He’s a good pet, Daemon thought as he giggled again. Even if he is a myth.
Chapter Sixty
With ryuu magic, Sora broke the cuffs around her wrists as easily as if they were made of paper. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened with Daemon. In fact, she didn’t remember most of what had happened after Bullfrog injected her with genka, but she had a lingering feeling that something unexpectedly intimate had just taken place. She also knew that Daemon lay on the floor with a childlike grin on his face, and that Broomstick was standing several feet away. Too far for a friend, too close for an enemy.
“Broomstick—”
“Wolf risked everything for you just now,” he said cautiously. “Not only by taking the delirium from you—though I still don’t understand how—but also by rescuing you. You’re under arrest by a councilmember. Freeing you could be grounds for treason.”
Sora stumbled as she closed the distance between them. It seemed that everyone wanted to try her for treason. But that was all the more reason to make sure at least her friends were on her side.
“I know.” Sora steadied herself. She put her hand on Broomstick’s shoulder. “I also know that you’re liable to be tried for treason too by accompanying Wolf. Thank you.”
Broomstick jerked backward. He still had a crazed look in his eyes. “Please tell me we were right to do it, Spirit. Tell me Fairy’s alive. I want to trust you, but my gemina bond feels like a gods-damn cemetery, and if you didn’t keep her safe, I swear I will break you in half.”
Sora nodded carefully. She was a good fighter and she had ryuu magic, but Broomstick was two hundred pounds of muscle, and she didn’t doubt the lengths he’d go to to avenge his gemina, especially if Sora proved to be the enemy. “You can trust me,” she said softly. “I gave Fairy rira to fake her death. I brought her back with me. . . . I don’t know where Bullfrog took her. To the infirmary, I’m guessing.”
He stared intensely at her for another moment as he processed this.
“Broomstick, I promise I’m telling the truth. I love Fairy. I love you and Daemon too. And . . . if we don’t believe in each other, what do we have left?”
He flinched. “That’s what Wolf said to me too.” His fists began to unclench.
But then he let out a barrage of new questions. “What happened at Copper Bluff? Why did you spare us? Why did you go back to Prince Gin, and then turn around and leave them again? I don’t get it.” He looked pointedly at her uniform.
Sora was suddenly very aware of her green belt and the green triplicate whorls on the cuffs of her tunic. She looked like a ryuu, and she’d actually been one for some time—she’d nearly killed her friends. She tried to shake off the guilt, because she hadn’t been herself, but it clung to her like a parasite.
“I know I did a lot of bad things . . . but I will make it up to you. I swear.” To avoid Broomstick’s scrutiny of her and her uniform, Sora looked down at Daemon. “Let me try to explain while we hide him. I think the closet would be a good place.”
She called on the ryuu particles to make Daemon quiet for as long as the genka had hold of him. Broomstick stepped forward and began to pick up Daemon’s feet, as if they were going to hoist him up. But Sora commanded the emerald dust to lift his slumbering body.
Broomstick took in a sharp breath. “Stars. How did you—? Oh, right,” he said, as if he’d suddenly remembered Sora levitating Fairy’s body inside the tent at Copper Bluff. “Ryuu magic.”
Sora nodded apologetically.
“S-sorry. I just . . .” He composed himself, still wary of her, but listening. “Go on.”
“My sister is alive,” Sora said. “Hana didn’t die during the Blood Rift. Prince Gin’s warriors actually kidnapped some of the tenderfoots to train as the next generation of their army, for when he would return to Kichona. Hana was one of them. She goes by Virtuoso.”
“What?” Broomstick cocked his head, as if he’d heard Sora wrong. In the meantime, the emerald particles floated Daemon into the closet and lowered him onto some spare bedding. The doors slid gently shut.
Without something else to do, Sora faced Broomstick now. “She’s been raised by a power-hungry, vengeful prince, and she doesn’t remember anything else. Her whole world is shaped by the Dragon Prince’s story. She’s a ryuu through and through. But she’s my baby sister, Broomstick. I couldn’t abandon her. I was making progress reconnecting with her. So I had to go back with her after Copper Bluff. I wanted to get through to her and show her how wrong Prince Gin is. I wanted to bring her back to our side.”
Broomstick sank down into one of Bullfrog’s chairs, an elegant piece of black wood and soft black leather. “Stars, Spirit. Here I was whining about putting myself out there one time, while you’ve been working undercover with the gods-damn Dragon Prince, risking your life every second you’re there, and simultaneously wrestling with the discovery that your little sister is still alive and beguiled by the enemy. I am a sorry excuse for a taiga for ever doubting you.”
Sora kneeled beside him. “It’s perfectly understandable. I know that what I’ve done doesn’t look good on its face.”
“But still. I know you. My loyalty shouldn’t have wavered. I should’ve been more like Wolf.”
She thought of how Daemon looked whenever he climbed to the top of a tree, smiling as if the heavens replenished him. How he’d become wild again in Takish Gorge, speaking with the alpha wolf. And how he’d somehow jolted her from the Dragon Prince’s hold, through sheer determination in their gemina bond.
In a sky littered with asteroids, he was the North Star.
Sora’s stomach fluttered, as if it were full of dragonflies. It was a new feeling that she didn’t quite understand, but what she did know was this: “No one is like Wolf.”
Broomstick nodded solemnly.
“You two made a bold move by saving me,” Sora said. “Now let me make it worth it. I have a plan, but I need you to convince the Council and spread the word to the other taigas. They won’t believe it, coming from me.”