Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(94)

He flinched. “That’s what Wolf said to me too.” His fists began to unclench.

But then he let out a barrage of new questions. “What happened at Copper Bluff? Why did you spare us? Why did you go back to Prince Gin, and then turn around and leave them again? I don’t get it.” He looked pointedly at her uniform.

Sora was suddenly very aware of her green belt and the green triplicate whorls on the cuffs of her tunic. She looked like a ryuu, and she’d actually been one for some time—she’d nearly killed her friends. She tried to shake off the guilt, because she hadn’t been herself, but it clung to her like a parasite.

“I know I did a lot of bad things . . . but I will make it up to you. I swear.” To avoid Broomstick’s scrutiny of her and her uniform, Sora looked down at Daemon. “Let me try to explain while we hide him. I think the closet would be a good place.”

She called on the ryuu particles to make Daemon quiet for as long as the genka had hold of him. Broomstick stepped forward and began to pick up Daemon’s feet, as if they were going to hoist him up. But Sora commanded the emerald dust to lift his slumbering body.

Broomstick took in a sharp breath. “Stars. How did you—? Oh, right,” he said, as if he’d suddenly remembered Sora levitating Fairy’s body inside the tent at Copper Bluff. “Ryuu magic.”

Sora nodded apologetically.

“S-sorry. I just . . .” He composed himself, still wary of her, but listening. “Go on.”

“My sister is alive,” Sora said. “Hana didn’t die during the Blood Rift. Prince Gin’s warriors actually kidnapped some of the tenderfoots to train as the next generation of their army, for when he would return to Kichona. Hana was one of them. She goes by Virtuoso.”

“What?” Broomstick cocked his head, as if he’d heard Sora wrong. In the meantime, the emerald particles floated Daemon into the closet and lowered him onto some spare bedding. The doors slid gently shut.

Without something else to do, Sora faced Broomstick now. “She’s been raised by a power-hungry, vengeful prince, and she doesn’t remember anything else. Her whole world is shaped by the Dragon Prince’s story. She’s a ryuu through and through. But she’s my baby sister, Broomstick. I couldn’t abandon her. I was making progress reconnecting with her. So I had to go back with her after Copper Bluff. I wanted to get through to her and show her how wrong Prince Gin is. I wanted to bring her back to our side.”

Broomstick sank down into one of Bullfrog’s chairs, an elegant piece of black wood and soft black leather. “Stars, Spirit. Here I was whining about putting myself out there one time, while you’ve been working undercover with the gods-damn Dragon Prince, risking your life every second you’re there, and simultaneously wrestling with the discovery that your little sister is still alive and beguiled by the enemy. I am a sorry excuse for a taiga for ever doubting you.”

Sora kneeled beside him. “It’s perfectly understandable. I know that what I’ve done doesn’t look good on its face.”

“But still. I know you. My loyalty shouldn’t have wavered. I should’ve been more like Wolf.”

She thought of how Daemon looked whenever he climbed to the top of a tree, smiling as if the heavens replenished him. How he’d become wild again in Takish Gorge, speaking with the alpha wolf. And how he’d somehow jolted her from the Dragon Prince’s hold, through sheer determination in their gemina bond.

In a sky littered with asteroids, he was the North Star.

Sora’s stomach fluttered, as if it were full of dragonflies. It was a new feeling that she didn’t quite understand, but what she did know was this: “No one is like Wolf.”

Broomstick nodded solemnly.

“You two made a bold move by saving me,” Sora said. “Now let me make it worth it. I have a plan, but I need you to convince the Council and spread the word to the other taigas. They won’t believe it, coming from me.”

“Tell me what I need to do.”

Sora pulled up another chair. “I assume Wolf explained how ryuu magic works?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, there’s no way the taigas are going to be able to match the ryuu in a fight. Prince Gin and his army are on the edge of Jade Forest; they’ll be here within hours, and even if I could teach everyone how to command ryuu magic, there simply isn’t enough time for them to learn and master it.”

Broomstick’s knuckles whitened as he squeezed the armrest on his chair. “This doesn’t sound too promising.”

“Exactly,” Sora said. “That’s why we can’t actually fight. We have to stop the battle before it ever begins, before they can overwhelm us and conduct the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts. We have to undermine the ryuu’s Sight.”

“What do you mean?”

Sora held her hand in front of her. “Right now, there is emerald-colored dust swirling in the air. The ryuu have to be able to see it in order to command it to do things. But if we blind them, they won’t have magic. However, we will. Or, worst case, we fight hand to hand, and the odds are even. Better for us, actually, because we outnumber them.”

Broomstick relaxed his hold on the armrest and leaned forward. “So how do we blind all of them? We can’t just poke out the ryuu’s eyes individually when they march on the main gates. I have a feeling the Dragon Prince won’t take well to that kind of welcome.”