Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(52)

She recognized that acid-tinged voice. It was Virtuoso, the girl who’d been training the recruits.

“I’m, um, fixing the bell,” Sora said, her back still to Virtuoso.

“How interesting. I didn’t realize bells could be fixed with cotton. Or kagi powder.”

Sora whirled around and saw with horror that the little paper packet of poison had fallen out of her sleeve, probably when she grabbed her knife to cut the fabric. And now the envelope was in the hands of Virtuoso, the top flap open where white powder spilled out.

She looked up from Virtuoso’s hands. The ryuu’s face was shrouded by the heavy hood of her cloak.

She didn’t dare spare a glance past Virtuoso, to where Daemon was, for fear of revealing him.

Run! she wished she could say. She tried her best to convey the feeling of it through their gemina bond.

Resistance pushed through the connection.

Sora pushed back. Go, go, go! She sent the urgency to him. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t get caught too.

His sadness harpooned through their bond. But he’d made her a promise, and his intention reverberated through their connection. He would get off the ship. He would make it to shore, somehow, because he knew that otherwise, Sora’s sacrifice wouldn’t be worth it.

She saw out of the corner of her eye when he fled.

Please get away safely.

She focused on Virtuoso again. Sora dared to reach for her sword.

Virtuoso took a step back, as if momentarily caught off guard. But then she laughed. Green mist coalesced out of thin air. It was shaped like a snake’s head, a smaller version of the one that had menaced over Kaede City.

“I’m ordering you to stop.” Sora pointed her sword to strike at the snake.

But it snapped its misty jaws around the tip of the blade, then sucked it down. Sora’s sword disappeared, eaten in a single gulp.

She jerked back in shock.

The mist snake coiled around Sora, locking her arms against her body. She struggled to get free, but the snake might as well have been made of iron, not fog.

“You’ll never pull this off,” Sora said, hands balled into fists. “The Society will fight you. You’ll never get what you want.”

Virtuoso sighed. “Trust me, I’m used to not getting what I want.” A resigned kind of sadness tinted her tone. It was almost as if the ferocity and arrogance from before was a facade.

She stepped toward Sora. Then she pulled the hood of her cloak off her head.

She really was just a girl. One with pale blond locks, almost platinum, the same color as Sora’s beneath her taiga-black dye.

And a similar sprinkle of freckles across her cheekbones.

And the same button nose.

The ship seemed to lurch all around Sora, and she grabbed onto a citrus drum for stability.

I must be seeing things.

But she wasn’t.

Virtuoso wasn’t just any girl.

Sora’s sister was alive.





Chapter Thirty-Two


Sora gasped. “Hana.”

Her world spun. The deep pit she’d felt in her heart for the past ten years, everything she thought she’d known about the Blood Rift, no longer made sense. How was her sister standing before her? Alive?

The girl nodded curtly. “You recognize me.”

“Th-the hair. The freckles, like mine. And you have Mama’s nose and Papa’s sharp jawline.” Sora’s voice was barely louder than a whisper.

Hana bit her lip. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember them.” Her voice was a little sad, but also bitter. The years apart had left their mark.

“We still remember you,” Sora said. “Stars . . . Mama and Papa will be beside themselves when they find out you’re alive.”

Sora could see Hana’s return home now—Mama tripping over the hem of her long skirt as she ran down the pebbled path in front of their house to greet her, her face already splotched from crying, and Papa standing back to let his girls reunite, quiet tears streaming down his face as he looked on. They would spend the first evening at home, just the four of them. Mama would cook a feast of all of Hana’s favorite foods. Papa would begin sketching a new piece of pottery to commemorate her homecoming. Sora would read from Mama’s newest stories as they curled together in front of the fire. And in the morning, they would walk down the mountain path together and dismantle the shrine, perhaps offering one last slice of cake to the gods to thank them for Hana’s safe return. They would be an unbroken family again, no more ghosts whispering guilty things in their ears, no more sad, burnt skeletons in memories anymore.

Several ryuu recruits emerged from the galley, and Hana’s tough outer shell snapped back into place. “What are you staring at?” she said. “Sound the alarm. Alert Prince Gin and the others that we have a stowaway, and search the ship to see if there are more. I suspect that, at the very least, this taiga’s gemina is on board.”

The steely prick of panic pierced Sora again, although this time, it was her own. But Daemon would feel it and know they were after him now.

Please, please, get off the ship.

The ryuu rushed off to carry out orders. Hana turned back to Sora.

“You say you remembered me,” Hana said, the harshness of giving orders still lingering, “and yet no one tried to come after me. If you and the Society cared as much as you claim, someone would have pursued us. We were tenderfoots, for gods’ sake. I waited for you that Friday night for our sleepover, and you didn’t come. You just left me in the nursery for them to take us.”