“Yes, Your Majesty,” Hana said, saluting despite the confusing swirl of feelings in her head. “You can count on me to find them.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Pain jerked Aki awake. After Virtuoso had left, Aki had squeezed through the crooked, narrow opening into her tiny cell. She’d collapsed on the bed, a wooden pallet and lumpy sack of straw, and smeared a thick layer of seaweed salve on her burns. After that, everything was a haze as she tumbled in and out of consciousness.
It had probably been a few days since Gin had held a bucket of acid over her head and Virtuoso had beaten her. Aki’s hands flew instinctively to her tender cheek. The touch sent a searing firebrand of agony through her skin, and she cried out.
Was this how she would die? Was this the price—the years—she’d paid summoning Sola before?
Aki tried to sit up, and the room spun around her. Only her right eye would open, her left swollen shut from Virtuoso’s attack.
Of course, Virtuoso had done that on her brother’s orders, and as bad as the beating was, it had been a lot less than what he’d wanted her to do.
Gin . . . What have you become?
Where was the boy who used to go fishing with Aki in the palace moat? Who used to make sure he’d be the first to wish her happy birthday at the exact moment of her birth and then laugh when his turn came nine minutes later? How had he turned into a man who could inflict acid torture on his sister’s face?
Sobs shook Aki’s body.
She cried over the loss of her brother. Over her pain and imprisonment. Over the darkness of Kichona’s future.
When the tears ran out, she stared at the rock walls.
“What am I doing, just waiting for the League of Rogues to save me?” Aki didn’t know what had become of them. She only hoped they were still out there, putting up a fight against Gin. But even if that were true, they probably had more urgent things to deal with than rescuing her.
“Is this really how Father raised me? To be a helpless princess?”
She stood up, brushed off the dust from the taiga uniform she was still wearing—there was no change of clothing in her cell—and tugged on the fabric to pull out the wrinkles as best she could. It didn’t do much, but smoothing the uniform made her feel a little better about herself. A little more like a warrior.
Now, how to get out of this prison? Obviously not through the acid falls.
She explored every nook and cranny in her small cave, the grotto, and the crevice that connected the two. There was no way out.
But then Aki smiled for the first time since she’d regained consciousness: when she’d fallen near the water, the ground hadn’t been solid stone. It was hard-packed clay.
I could make my own way out.
She found a sharp rock, shoved her pallet aside, and began scraping at the floor. It came off in sticky globs.
It might take a long time, but time was all Aki had. She would work on digging a hole, and then a tunnel, hiding the hole beneath her bed. And if no one came to liberate her, she’d burrow her own way out, one clay scraping after another.
“I am empress of Kichona,” she said as she dragged her rock over the ground again. “And I don’t plan on quitting until the day I die.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
At first glance, Naimo Ice Caves was a wonderland of pale ice deep in the pits of the southernmost island of the Kichona archipelago. Glaciers had carved majestic caves underground, like frosty, high-ceilinged ballrooms lit through natural skylights of translucent ice. A labyrinth of sparkling tunnels connected each cave to the next, the wind singing a gentle melody through its halls, the winter berries that grew in the icy crevices perfuming the chilly air with their honey sweetness.
But this beauty also guarded Zomuri’s most valuable possessions. Although the gods generally didn’t interact with people, Sora wasn’t sure that applied to those who stole something from under a god’s nose. Every step would have to be taken with care.
“I wish we actually knew what we were about to face,” Broomstick said.
“Me, too. But no matter what happens, we have to get that soul pearl. We have to reunite it with Prince Gin and kill him.”
Sora’s muscles seized up for a moment, a panic attack threatening to take over. But she gritted her teeth and kicked the anxiety away, shoving it into a box in her mind, where she’d also stashed the fear of what would happen if she failed today. There wasn’t time for contemplating defeat.
Instead, she and Broomstick peered into the maze of tunnels winding underground, and they gathered their supplies—compasses, flares, weapons, and explosives. Then they tied their horses and left them behind.
As if for luck, Sora touched the necklace at her throat. She would unfasten the pearl pendant and leave it as a decoy when she found and stole the Dragon Prince’s soul.
But that was later. Now, she called upon the ryuu particles to show her the path to follow to get to the Lake of Nightmares.
A faint trail lit up, descending into the caverns. Broomstick couldn’t see it, though, so she went first, and he followed with his compass.
“Mark each turn in the ice,” Sora said.
“Why?” Broomstick carved Luna’s triplicate whorls into the tunnel wall at their first bend.
“In case . . .”
“In case what?”
Sora pursed her lips. “In case something happens to me and you don’t have my ryuu particles to help guide you out on the journey back.” She turned away so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction. They knew they were risking their lives. But it was still sobering to think about actually dying.
As they traveled deeper, the natural skylights vanished, leaving them in the dark. Sora commanded her magic to light the way, and the emerald dust glowed, casting an eerie luminescence around her and Broomstick’s shadows on the walls of ice.
An hour into the tunnels, Broomstick swore.
“What is it?” Sora asked.
He showed her his compass. The needle had begun to spin in lazy circles, as if unable to find north but not caring.
“We must have run into the magnetic fields mentioned in Mama’s research,” Sora said.
“Yeah, which also means that at least one of her notes is true. And maybe the others are, too.”
Sora stopped for a moment as this sank in. First, magnetic fields to confuse those who tried to find Zomuri’s vault. If the notes were correct, next would be “ghost faces,” whatever that meant. Then a snow monster. And a lake filled with water that gave you hallucinations of the worst version of yourself.
She ran through the details of her plan.
When the “ghost faces” appeared, she’d make herself and Broomstick invisible, in hopes that the ghost guards wouldn’t be able to see them.
Broomstick’s bombs were for blowing up the snow monster.
When that hurdle was cleared, they’d reach through their gemina bonds to Daemon and Fairy. The idea was they’d tether Sora and Broomstick to reality, like when Sora had been shot with genka and Daemon had coaxed her back to reason through their bond. Of course, this situation could be totally different, but it was the best analogy she had. She and Daemon, and Broomstick and Fairy, had spent over a decade bonded to each other, finely honed to every spike or nuance in their gemina connection. If there was any chance of Sora and Broomstick keeping their wits about them as they swam through the Lake of Nightmares to get to Zomuri’s vault, their gemina bond was it.