Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(105)

“He’s not using me.”

“He is, Hana.”

“Stop calling me that! And the emperor isn’t using me. He trusts me and respects me! Which is more than I can say about you. It was a shame I even gave you a second chance.”

No, Sora thought. I refuse for this to be the end of me and Hana.

It was only a postponement. It had to be. Sora needed to save Kichona first, but then she’d make a third chance for her and Hana. Somehow.

No matter what happened next, as long as Sora was alive, she’d come back for her sister. Hells, even if Sora died, her ghost would devote itself to Hana. It would be a fitting afterlife for a taiga named Spirit.

“Now that Prince Gin is the emperor—” Hana was saying.

Fairy stepped forward. “I hate to break it to you, but he’s not. His sister is still very much alive.”

Hana smirked. Which was much more dangerous than a glare.

Sora froze.

“Did you think that would surprise me?” Hana said. “When Spirit revealed that she wasn’t under Prince Gin’s spell anymore and the ‘empress’s’ body disappeared from camp, I put two and two together. My sister has always been a schemer. I figured she must have been up to something, and you weren’t a corpse; otherwise, you wouldn’t be worth stealing. So yes, I already know the empress is still alive. Why do you think only half the ryuu are here? The rest are already inside Rose Palace. And they’ve got the Hearts with them.”

Holy heavens . . . Sora’s chest clenched. She’d thought the ryuu would have to get past the Citadel first. But Prince Gin had been raised in the imperial family, too. He would know about the trapdoor in the Field of Illusions and the secret network of tunnels underground . . .

Empress Aki wouldn’t know he was coming.

Emerald dust eddied around Hana, then dove into her, saturating her with magic. She vanished.

Sora summoned her own whirlwind of ryuu particles. She absorbed them and went invisible too.

No one else would be able to see them fight. Or die.

Hana called on more magic, which rushed to her and formed itself into a hundred tiny daggers and flew at Sora.

She conjured a shield of her own emerald dust and deflected the knives, each one pinging against her shield.

“Not bad,” Hana said. “But basic.” She formed a sack with the magic and brought it down over Sora’s head, tightening the bottom like a noose around her neck.

Sora panicked and sucked in too much air, and suddenly there wasn’t enough oxygen. She clawed at the balloon surrounding her. The noose around her throat kept tightening.

Can’t breathe. Can’t fight. Can’t . . .

As her brain fogged, the one thing she could think was how, when Hana was a tenderfoot, she always wanted to do whatever Sora was doing. If Sora was juggling apples, Hana wanted to juggle apples. If Sora was sparring against three others at the same time, Hana wanted to spar against three others.

If Sora was being suffocated by an invisible balloon . . .

On the brink of passing out, Sora issued one last desperate command to the ryuu magic.

Throw a bag over Hana’s head too.

A mirror-image balloon appeared and tightened itself around Hana’s neck. Her eyes bugged.

But Hana had a stronger killer instinct than Sora did. Instead of standing there and losing consciousness, she ran for Sora and butted her head straight into Sora’s stomach.

They both lost control of ryuu magic, the emerald particles bursting out of their bodies like a shower of glitter.

They both became visible, and the suffocating balloons around their heads exploded away.

They both flew off the top of the fortress wall.





Chapter Sixty-Eight


Sora!” Daemon yelled. He dove off the fortress wall after them.

Everything around him went blue and bright, like lightning. Everything rumbled like thunder. Daemon felt sparks on his skin, electrical charges in his bones. It was terrifying and thrilling. Adrenaline vibrated through his veins.

For a moment, time slowed, as if the universe were stretching. Daemon flew off the wall like an arrow shot through water, straight and true but not as fast as reality ought to be.

He aimed himself at Sora to intercept her fall. Hana held on to her. But as Daemon reached Sora, he drew power from the buzzing light around him. He snatched Sora out of her sister’s weakening grip.

As soon as he touched her, the sparks on his skin enveloped Sora too. She gasped as the world went blue.

Daemon hugged her close to his chest, and they flew forward together, defying gravity.

He landed in a cypress tree, as softly as if his feet were made of air. He set Sora down on a branch.

Then all of a sudden, time sped up again.

Daemon looked back at the fortress walls. Ryuu and taiga bodies alike littered the dirt, the ground a deep red, as if paint had spilled down from the heavens. But the taigas had overwhelmed them. They began securing the ryuu who were still alive, blindfolding them to prevent them from using Sight when they woke from the genka, and shackling their hands behind them with iron gloves and cuffs so they couldn’t form mudras for taiga spells. And the remaining ryuu were fleeing, running back into Jade Forest.

Hana wasn’t there.

“Where is she?” Sora whispered.

“I don’t know.” He’d seen her fall toward the ground when he took Sora from her grip.