Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(70)

The man looked up in wonder. A smile broke across his face, and his body stopped trembling. “Your Highness. You’ve come home.”

“I have.”

The man nodded. “Then yes, everything is all right.”

Prince Gin waved his hand, and the diver quickly gathered his oysters and pearls and dove back into the sea, swimming in the direction of home.

“Is that better?” the prince said, turning to Sora.

She saw him as if through a haze of heat. At the same time, a swell of ambition and purpose washed through her, and she couldn’t recall why she’d protested a minute ago. How silly to question the Dragon Prince. He knew what he was doing. He had Kichona’s best interests at heart.

She looked down at the sleeve of her uniform, where the green triplicate whorls of the ryuu reflected the sunlight off the surface of the water. She smiled and traced the embroidery. So beautiful. Like pride and power woven straight into the threads.

“Yes, everything is better,” Sora answered the prince.

“Good. Because I have a mission for you and Virtuoso.”

“A mission? For Hana and me?” Happiness bubbled up inside Sora, like a cauldron of sweet tapioca soup, overflowing. The Dragon Prince wanted her to do something for him. And with her sister. What an embarrassment of riches!

“That’s the kind of enthusiasm I like. You’ll have to pack quickly. I need you to leave within the hour.”

Sora didn’t care. She would have left yesterday if she could.

“What’s our mission?” she asked.

Prince Gin looked at the ground and kicked a rock over the cliff’s edge. “You’re going to assassinate the empress.”

Sora nodded. “It’s time the empress’s rule was put to an end.”

“This is the most important task right now,” he said. “Are you ready for it?”

She could hardly wait to run back to the ship, grab her things, and go. She had to put her palms on her legs to force herself to stand in place for just another minute, to have some dignity in front of the Dragon Prince.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Sora said. “I’m more than ready.”





Chapter Forty-Five


Sora tore through the treetops, chasing after Hana, who sprang from branch to branch as if she’d been born a panther. “You call that fast? I call it pitiful,” Hana yelled, only half teasing as she darted into a hole between cypress branches and emerged several tiers below.

Sora concentrated even harder. It wasn’t that her legs were too slow. It was that she wasn’t completely accustomed yet to the way ryuu saw the world, everything brighter and sharper, as if she’d been myopic before and had only now discovered this marvelous invention called spectacles.

Of course, there were no spectacles, not real ones. And yet the world was new. Besides the omnipresent emerald specks of magic in the air, there were smaller things that surprised Sora. Being able to see a faint green path through the seemingly chaotic mess of forest, for instance. Hana was beating her right now because she not only saw the path between trunks and jagged branches clearly; she also trusted it. Sora had the vision but had not yet acquired the trust to fling herself headlong toward wherever the magic directed her.

She caught up to Hana only when they reached Ao Hills, their stop for the evening. It was another two days to Copper Bluff. Perhaps less, considering ryuu speed.

Sora dropped to the dry grass on the ground. Hana was already roasting a fox she’d somehow caught and skinned in the time it took for Sora to arrive. The blond pelt had been cast aside.

How do I talk to her? Sora wondered. Hana had spoken little since they’d left the Striped Coves. Besides confirming that they were going to kill the empress, Hana hadn’t given any more details. Not how they were going to do this or where they were going. Sora wasn’t even sure if it was progress in their reconciliation that Hana had agreed to the mission, or if it was just following Prince Gin’s orders.

Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. I’m focusing on me. I should think about her.

Maybe the best way to start a conversation would be to appeal to what Hana was most proud of—her ryuuness.

“I’m hesitant to hurl myself through the trees, even though the path is obvious,” Sora said. “I only hope I can be as good with the magic someday as you are. How do you do it?”

Hana didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Sora let her turn the spit in silence, with only the crackling flames to interrupt.

“You’re slow because you’re afraid of crashing into a trunk or not being able to fit through a crooked opening between trees,” Hana finally said. She didn’t look away from the flames as she spoke. “But the magic won’t steer you wrong. If you let yourself go and have faith in it, it’ll work.”

The fox meat suddenly caught on fire. “Crow’s eyes!” Hana cursed.

For a moment, Sora found a tiny spark of joy that her little sister still favored the swearwords that Sora had always liked, the ones she used to tell Hana she was too young to use. Sora grabbed a dead branch and used its leaves to slap at the flames on the meat.

The fire snuffed out, leaving a charred carcass on the spit.

Hana’s fierce exterior broke, and she looked young all of a sudden, not the hard Virtuoso she usually liked to be.