Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(26)

Daemon nodded. Being this close to her family made the threat more real. He brought his horse next to Sora’s and squeezed her shoulder. Even though what he really wanted to do was wrap her up in his arms and tell her everything would be all right. But he couldn’t do that, for multiple reasons.

“We should probably stop for the night,” Sora said, trying to shake off her worry.

“Yes, but let’s ride a bit longer. I recall a creek not far from here.” It wasn’t that Daemon wanted to travel more tonight; they’d been riding hard enough to make good time. It was that he thought it would be better to draw Sora away from Samara Mountain. Unlike Glass Lady, Daemon believed that emotion could be beneficial to a taiga, providing motivation when it was needed. But in this case, the mountain was such a looming reminder of what was personally at stake for Sora, it was probably the right choice to move on.

Brows knit tightly, she looked up the switchbacks once more before she nodded and nudged her horse to continue.

They rode until they heard the lullaby of the water. There was a clearing set back from the road, sheltered by a cluster of ancient camphor trees, their moss-covered trunks as wide as Daemon’s horse was long, their fissured branches plunging deep into the fog. A patch of muddy grass would have to do as both grazing for the horses and bedding for him and Sora. The air smelled of damp and camphor mint.

They brought their horses to the water and tied the reins to the trees. Daemon caught a few small carp from the creek, which they cooked over the fire Sora started. Soon after dinner, a chill sliced like a scythe into the night.

Sora shivered as she unrolled her sleeping mat.

“Cold?” Daemon asked. “You can have my blanket.”

She smiled but waved him off. “I’ll be all right. Thank you, though.”

Daemon looked at her a few seconds longer than he needed to. When he caught himself, he coughed and glanced away.

Sora lay down on her mat and pulled her wool blanket over herself. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I do. Do you think the camp will still be there when we arrive?”

But Sora had already fallen asleep.

Daemon lay on his own sleeping mat and listened to the featherlight in-and-out of her breath. After a while, her teeth began to chatter.

He removed his own blanket and spread it over her. He’d make do with his riding cloak.

But he couldn’t sleep. His mind raced with thoughts about Isle of the Moon, about the Evermore story that he’d hated as a kid, about the scars on that man’s face in Takish Gorge. Maybe his scaly skin had been stage makeup, as the Paro Village taiga report suggested. That would be good. Daemon and Sora could return to the Citadel knowing that there was no Prince Gin, that he was (still) dead, and they’d leave the Isle of the Moon attack to the Council and actual warriors to deal with.

Then again, if the hooded man really had been the Dragon Prince, Daemon and Sora could return to the Citadel as heroes for having uncovered it. Maybe they could even sneak into his camp and assassinate him. Daemon imagined riding triumphantly through the iron gates at the Citadel, the evil Dragon Prince’s body thrown over the back of his horse.

He let his mind wander to other versions of victory.

But eventually, he got up. His inexplicable need to see the stars nagged at him, tugging at him from up high. I need to clear my head.

Daemon found a tall pine nearby. He climbed quickly, and when he broke through the fog at the top, he cried out like a man in the desert who’d finally stumbled on an oasis of water. His cloak was cold and damp from the mist, and pine needles poked into his hair, but none of it mattered. There was sky, sky, sky, not the suffocating blanket of fog. There were stars and there was the moon, glowing fiercely into the night.

Why did he crave this so badly? Was it simply because he’d been raised in the wild? Or was there something else in his past that made him need the freedom he found at the tops of the trees? Maybe he’d spent his infancy in a mole tunnel or something.

But then Daemon closed his eyes, and he imagined not only the comforting, dark infinity of the sky around him but also the smell of leather and steel mixed with black currant and sandalwood. The curiously alluring scent of Sora’s weapons and her soap. Daemon breathed in deeply and let his mind wander, just a little, to Sora’s smile, the taut lines of muscle on her body, and to a recent sparring session when she’d pinned him to the dirt floor of the arena and straddled him, pressed her knife against his throat, and leaned forward to whisper, “It looks like I win.”

Daemon had grinned, though, because he’d felt he was the winner of that match. Not because of the fight itself, but because she’d been so close to him, her lips nearly grazing his ear, the razor edge of her hair skimming his cheek as she declared victory . . .

He exhaled.

Everything was going to be fine. It had to be.





Chapter Fifteen


Paro Village was a town swallowed by the forest. Trees draped in long sheets of flowering vines curtained the buildings, so thick that a traveler could easily pass the city by, if not for the fact that the gravel roads ended abruptly here, going no farther south. The shops and homes themselves were made of stone and covered in thick blankets of moss, as if they’d risen from the forest floor as part of the natural landscape. And a waterfall in the nearby cliffs kept the air thick with chill.