Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(15)
Aki shifted uncomfortably. But she didn’t have time for self-doubt, for the commander of the taigas entered the room.
Glass Lady was completely disheveled. Her hair—usually pinned with great precision—stuck to her face, stiff from the salt of the sea. Mud streaked her uniform. Her boots squelched as she moved. Aki gasped.
Despite her appearance, the commander was as poised as ever. She dropped gracefully to her knees and laid herself prostrate on the marble floor. “Your Majesty, I apologize for interrupting your night.”
Aki rose shakily from her throne. “What happened?”
“A typhoon hit Isle of the Moon this evening, and the Council had to evacuate,” Glass Lady said as she stood up.
It was then that Aki saw the sticky dark red that covered the left side of the commander’s uniform. It had been camouflaged by the wetness of the fabric. “You’ve been injured!”
The commander waved at her to sit down. “I’m fine; I’ll have a doctor look at it when I return to the Citadel. It’s much more important that I finish my report to you first.”
Aki had the distinct sensation that she was swimming in deceptively calm waters but about to be carried out to sea by a riptide. She didn’t want to sit down. But the commander gave her a firm look, like a tutor scolding her student. Aki obediently sat.
“Um, please continue,” she said, trying to regain her authority as empress.
“It’s not typhoon season,” Glass Lady said. “What struck us today was not a storm. It was a calculated attack, using magic we’ve never seen before.”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Aki said.
“There was a ship in the distance, launching the wind and waves at the isle. We don’t know how. But whoever or whatever that was, I’m certain this will not be their only attempt at Kichona. They must have known the Council would be there. It’s possible they wanted to wipe us out because we run the Society of Taigas.”
The whole room seemed to pitch. Aki gripped the armrest of her chair. The last time Kichona had pitted magic against magic—the Blood Rift—was still raw in her memory. Aki had barely won that time, and she’d known it was coming because it was her brother she’d faced. But now? She couldn’t prevail if she didn’t know her enemy or what they were capable of.
“Which of the nearby kingdoms is attacking?” she asked. “And why?” Other than its tiger pearls, there was nothing special about Kichona, and it hadn’t bothered anyone in decades. The kingdom traded pleasantly with countries on the mainland but otherwise minded its own business—wasn’t that enough to have everyone else in the world leave Kichona alone? Aki’s breath hitched as if the riptide were swirling around her, testing its grip. “What do we do?”
“All squadrons will be immediately dispatched back to their posts around the kingdom,” Glass Lady said. “We don’t know who the enemy are or what they want, but when they attack again, they will most likely hit close to where we saw their ship. For that reason, we will send additional taiga warriors to reinforce the squadrons already based in the cities in the north.”
“And what of their magic?” Aki asked.
“Our best scholars will research day and night until we figure out what sort of magic can control the elements, and how we can defeat it,” Glass Lady said. “They will sleep in the library if they have to.”
The fact that the commander seemed confident was like a life preserver thrown to Aki. This is the Society’s job, she reminded herself. I am empress, but I don’t have to solve all the problems alone. She exhaled, even though she still drummed her fingers on the cushion of her chair.
“I think we should keep the knowledge of this attack within the Society,” Aki said, “until we have a better understanding of what or who it is out there. I don’t want the citizens to panic.”
Glass Lady dipped her head. “I agree that is wise.”
“What do you need me to do in the meantime?” Aki asked. “Anything the Society needs, it’s yours.”
Glass Lady closed her eyes and exhaled deeply before she opened them again and spoke. “You only need to stay safe, Your Majesty. And pray.”
Chapter Seven
If the Imperial City was the eye of the tiger of Kichona, Takish Gorge was part of the tiger’s tail. For the last part of their Autumn Festival break, Sora and Daemon left Samara Mountain and rode south, through sparsely populated farmland and rice paddies to land not populated at all.
Now they raced through towering cypress trees atop the edge of a canyon, their horses pushing through dense green ground cover and soft soil. It was also a good thirty degrees cooler here, as if winter were creeping in early on the Kichonan autumn’s reign.
Daemon gasped as he looked up at the delicate, feathery pink clouds above.
Sora glanced up and smiled. It was as if the gods had cast an ethereal lace in the sky. “Welcome home,” she said.
He simply sighed. She heard the actual sigh as well as felt the echo of it in their gemina bond, the wisp of contentment like a shadow trailing behind the original.
Daemon closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. Sora followed suit. The air here smelled evergreen, as though it had been kissing the dew on the trees for millennia. Breathing it in was Daemon and Sora’s ritual each autumn when they returned, a marker to the start of another school year together. And this breath felt more significant, because it was their final year before graduating.