Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to save her. Sora touched the necklace at her throat. It was the gold memorial pearl her mother had given her during Autumn Festival, in remembrance of Hana. Sora still wore it, even though she now knew that Hana was alive.
“Hey-o, are you okay?” Daemon asked. Sora’s distress had curdled their gemina bond like sour milk.
“Hana is just around the corner,” Sora whispered. She wasn’t prepared—physically or emotionally—to face her sister again. To see her fury seething beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed.
Daemon’s eyes widened in alarm. “We need to get inside the castle, now. Hana can see us even if we’re invisible because you have the same ryuu talent, right? She’ll kill us.”
Sora bit her lip so hard it split open. “Wh-what if we could convince her to abandon Prince Gin?”
“And fight on what might be the losing side, just because it’s right?” Daemon asked. “Sora, you already tried that, and Hana rejected you. I know you’re hurting, but we can’t save her right now. If you confront Hana, it’s the end of both you and our hopes of saving Kichona.”
“I don’t want that to be true.”
“But it is. I’m sorry. We need to move.” He pointed up to the third floor of the tower near them. “I think we can get in through that open window. We have to climb, fast, before the ryuu head this way.”
Sora glanced with longing at the bend in the castle perimeter, as if she could just will Hana to shift allegiances from around the corner. But Daemon was right. Sora had already attempted that, and it had backfired.
Daemon was already halfway up the wall with a gecko spell when he looked back down at her. “Sora! Come on!” He shot a sharp arrow of alarm through their bond, and it pierced through the fog of her regret, jolting her to action.
She followed him up the wall and swung herself in through the window frame, landing on the floor without a sound. Just in time, too, because the ryuu turned the corner where she had just been. Sora let out a long exhale.
Daemon looked around the room, perplexed. “It’s completely empty in here.”
“The castle is only a few days old,” Sora said. It was probably too much to ask that it already be furnished.
With Hana left behind, Sora forced herself to get back to her job. She tiptoed to the door and pressed her ear against it. It was quiet on the other side, so she pushed it open a crack and slipped through.
Here, there were torches. The tower was narrow, and the center was mostly a spiral staircase with only a room or two on each level. The walls were made of black stone streaked with crimson, and the flickering of the torch flames made the red look like pulsing veins full of blood.
She and Daemon poked into the room opposite. Again, no one there.
“If you were the Dragon Prince, where would you stash a usurped empress?” Sora asked.
“Nowhere as obvious as a tower,” Daemon said.
“My thinking as well.”
They trod carefully down the stairs. The ground floor connected the tower with the rest of the castle. Sora and Daemon hurried along the corridor.
They examined every room they passed for Empress Aki, listening for hollow spaces in the walls and floors where she could be imprisoned. They went up and down the other towers, too. But other than a locked room—which was totally silent—and a few ryuu here and there, the bloodstone castle seemed abandoned.
It was too quiet. The little hairs on Sora’s arms stood on end.
And too much time had passed already. “We need to get out of here soon,” Daemon said.
“One more passageway,” Sora said. There was a corridor up ahead that branched off from the others.
As they turned the corner, she took in a sharp breath.
If the rest of the castle was already eerie with its red-streaked, black stone walls, this dark hallway was the crown jewel. There were no windows, torches, or lanterns; the only light came from the sinister glow of what looked like giant dragon’s teeth, each taller than Sora and composed entirely of crimson crystals seemingly lit from within. It was like walking straight into a dragon’s jaws.
The corridor led to a heavy set of wooden doors. The handles were carved with dragons, their eyes inset with red rubies, their claws outstretched as if ready to tear into prey.
“I have a feeling one of the two people we’re looking for is behind those doors,” Daemon whispered. “And it’s not Empress Aki.”
Their gemina bond tightened, the taiga equivalent to holding hands to give each other strength. Sora nodded at Daemon. There was no time like the present for regicide.
Knives and throwing stars at the ready, they snuck up to the twin keyholes and peered inside.
Gods almighty.
The throne room was a massive receiving hall, with walls made of the same red-streaked black stone as the castle. There was a huge mural painted on the ceiling—although Sora couldn’t quite make out its subject from the angle of the keyhole—and also a throne, a menacing opus of crimson stone and black velvet, with fiery flames made of orange sapphires to frame Prince Gin’s head.
He wasn’t sitting on the throne, though. The Dragon Prince knelt before the fireplace in front of real flames, chanting over and over in what sounded like Kichonan but older. Like an ancient version of their modern language.
“What is he doing?” Sora whispered.
Daemon didn’t get to answer, though, because the fire in the throne room suddenly extinguished itself, and a giant appeared in the air in its place, his long dark beard fluttering like a flag, his ten-fingered hands stained red with a millennium’s worth of blood.
Zomuri.
Chapter Nine
Sora staggered back a step. Gods rarely deigned to interact with humans. Sola, goddess of the sun, would visit the emperor or empress only if summoned with imperial blood and a sacrifice of a year of his or her life. Non-royals like Sora never got to see deities. She would light incense and pray, hoping that the smoke would carry her wishes to Celestae, the island paradise in the sky where the gods lived. But people didn’t expect to ever see a god during their lifetimes, let alone twice. Yet Zomuri had appeared for the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts, and here he was again.
Why?
It had to be bad. Zomuri may have been more willing to appear to humans than the other gods, but still, he came only if there was something worthwhile to him. Hearts to eat. Emperors’ promises of glory in Zomuri’s name. Or possibly worse.
Sora pulled herself together and mashed her ear against the keyhole to catch what she could of their conversation.
“I do not like being summoned like a dog,” Zomuri said. “What is the meaning of this?”
Prince Gin bowed to the ground. “My lord, you know I am your most humble servant. I am working toward creating a vast empire to worship you and to achieve the Evermore for my people. However, I’ve been reviewing my research on the emperors of the past who marched this path before me, and always, they fail before conquering all seven of the mainland kingdoms because the Kichonan forces are outnumbered. I want to ensure that I’m not susceptible to this same human frailty, and so I have a request to make of you.”
Zomuri’s voice rumbled ominously in the back of his throat. “Why should I give you anything more? By declaring your kingdom’s loyalty to me, rather than the sun goddess, you have already gained an advantage.”