Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(16)

They sat still on their horses for a few minutes, simply breathing.

When Daemon cleared his throat, Sora opened her eyes. He smiled at her, recharged, and it seemed almost as if the air around him buzzed with his renewed energy.

“Let’s climb some trees,” he said.

She laughed. “You know, sometimes I think you belong in the sky, not on the ground with the rest of us.”

Every night at the Citadel, Daemon climbed out his window and onto the boys’ dormitory rooftop to lie under the stars. He said there was something about the sky’s vastness—its possibility and infinity—that comforted him. There were too many limits imposed down on the earth.

Sora dismounted and tied her horse to a tree. “Shall we climb?”

“Yes, please. I’m itching for height.”

They hiked into the woodland. After a few minutes, he picked a tree, cast a squirrel spell, and quickly scaled the trunk, into the branches. Sora followed, and the crisp smell of the evergreens greeted her again. She watched as Daemon inhaled deeply before he pushed off and jumped into the next tree. He bounded from bough to bough, working his way farther down the canyon but higher into the treetops. Sora leaped from tree to tree in a path parallel to his.

Eventually, she landed on the tallest cypress in the area and climbed up until she was on the highest, thickest branch that would support her weight. She wrapped her legs firmly around the trunk and stood up, opening her arms and tossing her head back toward the sky. The wind blew her back and forth, as if she were a mere dandelion swaying in the breeze. Contentment washed through her.

“You see?” Daemon shouted from where he had also found himself a cypress towering into the sky. “This is why I love being up high.”

A raptor soared above her and let out a shrill whistle. Sora whistled back.

The bird jerked in flight and steered away from her, as if offended by Sora’s birdcall.

Daemon laughed.

“Oh, shut up,” Sora said.

She looked over in his direction. A waterfall came into view, crashing hundreds of feet to the whitewater pools below. And then, beyond that, the trees cleared, and she could see straight down into the bottom of the gorge.

What in Luna’s name—?

She leaped through the trees until she was beside Daemon. “I think there’s an Autumn Festival celebration going on down there.”

He squinted. “Really?”

Sora formed her hands into tapered oval shapes and chanted, “Eyes like a hawk. Eyes like a hawk.”

The skin around her eyes tightened, and her long-distance vision sharpened. She homed in on the canyon floor.

“Whoa,” Sora said. “There’s an entire encampment of red tents, with long yellow-and-green banners whipping in the wind. Thirty or forty people are dancing around a fire.”

Daemon tried to cast a hawkeye spell too, but a few seconds later, he muttered a string of half-intelligible curses under his breath. “Stupid mrphrk bumbling grffff magic never works . . .”

“I think we should sneak in and join the party,” Sora said.

“I don’t know. . . . It’s weird that there’s a celebration in Takish Gorge. No one ever comes out here. This is wolf and bear territory.”

He was right about that. Takish Gorge was far from civilization; Paro Village was the closest town, and because it was already one of the remotest parts of Kichona, its residents wanted to go into the heart of the kingdom when they traveled, not farther away. The canyon was also known for its unfettered wildness, home to a dense population of wolves, bears, cougars, and poisonous, camouflaged snakes. Takish Gorge was not the kind of place most people wanted to go, especially for a celebration known for its carefree, gluttonous, and drunken excess.

“Besides,” Daemon said, “I thought we just decided to get serious. Would the heroes in your mother’s stories crash a party?”

Sora paused to think about it. But then she grinned. Being mischievous and being renowned weren’t mutually exclusive. “The most legendary figures did all sorts of outlandish things. It’s part of what makes their tales worth retelling. So yes, if there’s a once-in-a-lifetime event in the middle of nowhere, I think it would be part of Kichonan lore. And we should definitely go.”

As they got close, though, Sora frowned. A wall of wood surrounded the camp, looming eight feet high above them. She’d seen it from far away, but Sora had been so focused on the party inside, she hadn’t registered that the beams were actually spiky protrusions, more like fortifications to protect from enemies.

“That’s . . . strange,” Daemon said.

Sora nodded. But then she shrugged. “Like you said, Takish Gorge is full of wolves and bears and other predators. It would really ruin a party if any of those got inside.” She walked right up to the logs and began to study them, figuring out the best way to get inside.

Daemon hung back a moment. “This isn’t an ordinary Autumn Festival celebration. Maybe we should rethink going in.”

“Nope. We already agreed that we should definitely go in if it’s not an ordinary Autumn Festival celebration.”

He chewed on his lip, then sighed. “All right. But let’s cast moth spells on ourselves before we go in.” It would mute their whispers to an ultrasonic level inaudible to the human ear, but which they could use to communicate while in the camp.