Aki rose from the meditation cushion. “Who is this apprentice?” she asked.
“She says her name is Spirit.”
“The one the Council arrested? Interesting.” Aki nodded. Spirit was the chief rogue, the one who’d plotted the fireworks at the palace. Some of the councilmembers thought she might be a traitor, but Aki thought they were shortsighted, limited by how they understood the world. Spirit saw and did things differently than tradition dictated. It was precisely what Aki needed, and she’d judge for herself whether Spirit was loyal or not. “Please send her in.”
Spirit entered the room and laid herself on the ground in the requisite bow. When she rose, she said, “Your Majesty, thank you for meeting with me. I don’t have much time. I came to ask permission to break off part of your palace. It’s the only way to defeat the ryuu.”
Both of Aki’s brows shot straight up. “I knew that you were creative, but this was more than I imagined.”
“I know I’m asking a lot. More than a lot. You don’t even know who I am, and—”
“You are asking for a great deal, but you’re wrong about one thing: I do know who you are.”
“Oh.” Spirit looked around nervously, as if anticipating guards jumping at her.
“Some of the Council believe you’re working for my brother,” Aki said. “But I don’t. If you were, I’d already be dead, wouldn’t I?”
Spirit nodded carefully. It must be strange—scary, even—for the empress to talk about assassination. “Yes, Your Majesty. If I were a ryuu sent to kill you, you wouldn’t have even known I was here.”
“All right,” Aki said, settling back onto her meditation cushion and surprised even at herself for feeling so calm and sure about Spirit. But now was the time for action, not overthinking. “Explain to me why I should let you demolish part of my palace. The Council has a battle plan. How is yours better?”
She didn’t say anything. Instead, Spirit held her arms out in front of her. Almost immediately, they disappeared from view, as if they’d been sliced off at the elbow.
Aki gasped. “How . . . ? What did you do?”
“I can make myself invisible,” she said, her arms reappearing. “I’m not the only ryuu who can. There are others who can make blood boil. They can form hurricanes. Cloud the sky with an army of locusts. Bend steel to their will. The Council doesn’t comprehend the full power of the ryuu. But I’ve trained with them. I know what they can do, and we don’t stand a chance fighting them the old way.”
The old way, Aki thought. That was, indeed, how Glass Lady and the others at the Citadel had been operating. In the busy lead-up to confronting Gin, she’d forgotten her frustration with the Council. But it was because of their inability to adapt, their sticking to traditional methods of warfare, that Aki had taken matters into her own hands and asked Fairy and Broomstick to go to Copper Bluff.
If it was true what Spirit said about the ryuu, then following the Council’s strategy of simply fighting Gin’s warriors head-on was a prescription for death. Not only for the soldiers themselves, but also for Kichona. Once the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts was completed, Gin would turn their peaceful kingdom into a war machine. Tiger pearls and whispering maple leaves would be replaced with blood and destruction. And the people would no longer be themselves at all once he hypnotized them. They’d just be extensions of Gin’s will.
“This isn’t simply the Rift all over again, is it?” Aki said.
“No, Your Majesty. You won’t win against Prince Gin this time, unless—”
“We think and fight differently.”
Spirit nodded. Her jaw set with a determination that reminded Aki of herself when she was young and fighting for the kingdom.
“My brother is almost here?” Aki asked.
“Yes.”
Aki touched the locket at her throat. He was coming. The man who used to be just a boy, her other half. The brother who used to play pirates versus taigas with her. Her partner in crime, sneaking into the palace kitchen together to steal peach pies.
The man who’d also torched the Imperial City, who was obsessed with the Evermore, and who would bring blood and destruction to Kichona again.
She inhaled deeply and waved her hand toward the hill outside her window. “You have my permission to do whatever you need to Rose Palace.”
“Really?” Spirit’s eyes widened, like a child who wasn’t sure if she’d truly been given free reign to do the one thing she’d never been allowed to do.
“Yes. You have my permission on one condition . . .” Aki stood. “You let me come with you. If we are to do things differently, then I want to be an active part of this. I will not sit in a gilded room while the taigas fight for me.”
Spirit’s eyes grew wider, if that was possible. “It would be an honor, Your Majesty.”
“Let me change into something more practical,” Aki said, gesturing at the gown sweeping at her feet and heading toward her bedroom. “But let’s be clear about this mission to dismantle my palace—it is also an honor for me to be able to join you.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
The gray of night still had a tenuous hold on the sky when Sora and Empress Aki slipped out the rear gates of the Citadel. It may have been Prince Gin who was the sibling blessed with magic, but now the empress was in a taiga uniform, and with her hair pulled back in a simple bun, a knife on her belt, and her commanding stride, she really could have passed as a young warrior.
Empress Aki had also found Sora a taiga uniform to wear. Sora stretched an arm out in front of her. It felt good to see a sleeve without the ryuu’s green whorls embroidered there.
I can wield their magic, but I am still a taiga, and I always will be.
Instead of heading up the winding road to Rose Palace, though, Empress Aki turned toward the Field of Illusions guarding the Citadel’s western fortress walls.
Sora hesitated. “Where are we going?”
“A secret that only the Imperial Guard and I know. And now you.” The empress winked.
She sprinted onto the sand, which immediately began to shift beneath her, in front of her, all around her.
In a matter of seconds, the empress was already fifty yards into the illusions. How was she so fast?
“Wait!” Sora ran after her. “Your Highness, you need a taiga guide or else—”
“Or else this will happen?” Empress Aki stopped abruptly in the middle of a black-and-white spiral of sand that swirled and made the ground look like a three-dimensional vortex that would swallow them whole.
And then it did swallow her.
“No!” Sora shouted.
But the empress’s laugh came from deep beneath the sand. “Spirit, stand in the middle. Follow me.”
Sora rushed into the spiral to the spot where Empress Aki had just been. She jerked herself backward at the last second when she realized there was a hole there. Her toe almost slipped down.
“It’s all right, Spirit,” Empress Aki said from below. “There’s a soft landing down here.”
Sora looked around to see if anyone was watching. She took a breath and stepped into the hole.
She let out a small cry as she plummeted. But as the empress had promised, she landed on her feet on a thick mat. Not unlike the ones the Society used for training.