When they reached the floor, he took the glass pane away from her and set both Fairy and the window down gently. They would replace it again on their way out, welding it back into place with Daemon’s sparks.
Now he could really take in the soaring room, two and a half stories tall. The walls were the same red-streaked black stone as the rest of the castle, and one wall was a towering bookcase, each shelf packed full of hardback tomes. Across from the Dragon Prince’s desk was the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the ocean. Beyond that sea lay the mainland and the seven kingdoms he aimed to conquer. It was like a target set out before him so he would never lose sight of the bull’s-eye. Daemon’s stomach turned.
Ahead of him, there was nothing to see but the closed door to the hallway, decorated on either side by the long yellow-and-green, fork-tongued banners of the Dragon Prince. But on the fourth wall was the map the group of ryuu had been looking at. It was of Kichona and the mainland. There were ships and little soldiers, too—Prince Gin’s navy and army—with dotted lines marking possible routes of attack.
“Looks like we were spying on a war council,” Daemon said. “We were right to sabotage the shipyard last night.”
“I’m going to copy that map so we can study it in more detail later,” Fairy said.
“I’ll search the rest of the room,” Daemon said.
He started with Prince Gin’s desk. The bronze chair was severe yet luxurious, the metal like dragon’s scales but the seat a thick cushion upholstered in gray silk. It reeked of violent power, and even sitting on its edge made Daemon cringe. The desk was decorated with similar bronze scales.
There was only one long shallow drawer, where Fairy had gotten the paper to copy the map. He slid it open, but inside there was nothing more than parchment, pens, and wax for sealing documents. No wonder it hadn’t been locked. Still, considering what had been in the captain’s quarters of Prince Gin’s ship—detailed warrior profiles and a list of the ryuu’s targets—Daemon had expected something less mundane than stationery here.
The truly important things were probably concealed. But after checking the drawer for a false bottom—there wasn’t one—Daemon abandoned the desk to search the rest of the study.
He turned his attention to the bookcase, because Prince Gin had mentioned research when he spoke to Zomuri. This could take a while, and that was time Daemon didn’t have. He would have to flip through the books quickly, checking for hidden compartments inside them, as well as in the bookcase itself. He began on the lowest shelf.
The first book felt heavy in his hands, and he eagerly opened it, thinking there might be something inside. But it turned out to be rather ordinary, albeit with very thick pages, which accounted for its weight.
He moved on to the next one, which also proved to be nothing special. As did the next and the next and the next.
Three shelves later, Daemon rubbed at a cramp in his neck. He glanced over at Fairy, who was halfway through her sketch. They’d need to leave as soon as she finished. Taiga training had taught them to get in and out as fast as possible, because every minute increased the risk of being caught. Daemon and Fairy had already been in the study for half an hour. They were courting disaster.
He needed to go about the books in a different way. Daemon shifted into wolf form and drifted upward, peering at each level of shelves, scanning the spines for titles that sounded significant or books that looked particularly worn, and poking at the back wall of the bookshelf in case there were hidden panels. But he found none.
The last shelf at the top of the bookcase was just the size of a cubbyhole, dark because of its size. Daemon flew a little closer.
Aha! Inside, flush against the wall, was a stack of three books. He hauled them into his paws and flew to the ground with them.
Once in boy form, Daemon inspected them, and his stomach flipped. These were books about old legends; Zomuri had taunted Prince Gin about needing to read them. One of the books was The Book of Sorrow, the third volume from the Kichonan Tales by Sora’s mother. The spine was creased to breaking, and the book fell open to the oft-read fable of the Evermore.
Daemon studied the cramped notes written in the margins of the story. They’d clearly been added to over the years, beginning with Prince Gin’s childish block printing then graduating to a more mature, impassioned script. Were there any clues here that could help them stop the pursuit of the Evermore?
The fable was about Emperor Mareo, the first to swear his loyalty to Zomuri in an attempt to win paradise on earth. It included the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts, which Prince Gin had already conducted. After that, though, the story concluded with Mareo setting off to attempt to conquer the kingdoms on the mainland. It was the same part of the tale that Prince Gin was currently in—nothing that would help them now. Besides, Mareo, like all the emperors who followed in his footsteps, had failed to come even close to achieving the Evermore.
“How’s it going?” Fairy asked.
“I’ve found nothing. No clues about Empress Aki or much else either.”
Fairy rolled up her scroll, her sketched copy of the map complete, and came over to his side. “Maybe there’s nothing else here to find.”
“Maybe,” Daemon said, “but Zomuri told Prince Gin to read up on old legends, so I feel like there might be something here.” He set The Book of Sorrow on the desk while Fairy began investigating the walls of the study, tapping to listen for hollow compartments and checking for disguised buttons.
He picked up one of the other books. Its burgundy leather cover and the gold flames on the spine looked familiar. The title on the cover was Obscure Folklore.
This is the one, Daemon remembered. He’d seen another copy of this book before, when he was at the Society outpost in Tiger’s Belly, after Sora had been hypnotized on the Dragon Prince’s ship and Daemon had been left behind. This book contained the legend of Dassu, about a taiga who combined his magic with devilfire and burned down the middle of Kichona. When Daemon last read it, he’d been preoccupied with finding an explanation for why he was immune to Prince Gin’s mind control. But now, because of Zomuri, Daemon knew there was something else important in this book.
A few of the pages were dog eared. He opened to the first one: “Dassu and the Warrior.”
Daemon’s heart beat faster—this was the story he was looking for.
It was almost as he remembered. A taiga wanted more power, so he made a deal with a demon, Dassu, allowing Dassu to blend the taiga’s magic with his own. But when the gods found out what he’d done, Luna sent the demon back to the hells, and she smothered the taiga to death.
However, there was a part of the story that Daemon hadn’t paid attention to the last time he read it, because it hadn’t been relevant to his immunity from Prince Gin. He saw it now, though, because it had been underlined.
The warrior’s small daughter rode in the saddle in front of him, and as he lit the ground aflame with his newfound magic, she whispered, “Papa, I want fire, too.”
Kitari was his only child—her mother had died shortly after the girl’s birth—and the warrior spoiled her because she was the only thing connecting him to his wife. He could not deny Kitari any request, especially when she looked at him with her mother’s eyes. And so he held his daughter close and breathed some of the devilfire into her cupped hands.