Page 76 of Circle of Shadows
Aki
Prince Gin took a long, slow breath. When he’d finally exhaled, he said, “It seems my dear sister has figured out what we’ve been up to.”
“It appears so, Your Highness,” Hana said. “But it’s not unexpected. You knew she’d catch on to your plans sooner or later.”
“Yes, but I’d hoped to capture one or two more cities before we were discovered.”
Prince Gin glanced at a small cage hanging from the bottom of the wooden sign. There was a dragonfly inside, presumably so he could respond to the Society. “They’re still using these messengers,” he said. “How quaint.”
He quickly scrawled a note to Empress Aki, accepting her request for a meeting, and simply enchanted the scroll to fly itself to the Citadel, without the dragonfly.
“You’re going to go?” Hana asked, mouth hanging open in disbelief.
“It’s a trap. I’m sure of it,” he said. “And yet, this would be a good opportunity to get Aki off the throne, away from all the witnesses in the Imperial City. Then I could take the crown without being seen as killing my own sister.”
“You could have one of the ryuu do it, Your Highness. You’d avoid the risk of being ambushed yourself while still achieving your goals.”
The prince’s expression was uncharacteristically conflicted, his eyes shadowed and mouth turned down at the corners. Was it just that he was unsure of what to do next? Or was there something more that made him hesitate?
But then he nodded. “That’s an excellent idea. Make it happen, Virtuoso.”
Hana’s breath caught. Crow’s eye, she hadn’t meant to volunteer herself. She didn’t know if she could do it. Hana wanted Prince Gin on the throne, but his sister was still the ruler of the kingdom. Assassinating an empress with one’s own hands was a very different thing than talking about someone else doing it. As much as she hated to admit it, Hana still respected the symbol of the throne, even if the person sitting on it was the wrong one.
But the relief in Prince Gin’s expression—the way the creases around his eyes and the frown lines at his mouth smoothed at her suggestion—extinguished her doubts. Hana would get this done for him. Somehow.
Prince Gin looked again at his sister’s message hoveringin the air. “Take Spirit with you. Two invisible ryuu are better than one. And it will be a good test of her abilities.”
Great. Not only do I have to do the impossible, I have to do it with my sister.
But even as she told herself that, she knew she was starting to feel differently about Sora. And Hana reluctantly admitted that it was unreasonable to have expected her sister to come after her a decade ago. As Sora pointed out, they were children then. A bunch of eight-year-olds couldn’t have commandeered a naval ship and sailed after the kidnapped tenderfoots. There was nothing they could have done differently during the Blood Rift.
Hana could try to forgive her. Or at least work with her, for Prince Gin’s sake. There were many who were sacrificing more than their pride to move Kichona closer to the Evermore.
“Of course, Your Highness,” she said. “Spirit and I will go to Dassu Desert, kill your sister, and bring her body back to you.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Adiver emerged from the sea, climbing onto the rocky shores with a heavy net full of oysters. Sora stood on the cliff above the Striped Coves, watching one of Kichona’s oldest trades. Pearl hunting was a family legacy, the expertise passed down from generation to generation. It took years of training to learn how to dive to depths of a hundred feet on a single breath alone, how to navigate the dark underwater caverns, how to identify the oysters with the most beautiful tiger pearls. She wondered how many centuries this diver’s family had been hunting for the orange-and-black-striped jewels, and how they’d discovered them in the first place.
The man sat on the slick rock for a minute, letting the sun warm him as he filled his lungs with precious oxygen. His nearly naked body shimmered, coated in coconut oil to keep him warm beneath the surface. But if he knew Sora was there, he didn’t care. Tourists often came to gawk at the process. One girl on the cliff wouldn’t bother him.
Soon, he upended his net and dumped the oysters onto the rock. In one deft motion, he inserted a small knife into the shell, slid it around the edge, and popped the oyster open. He pressed on the soft mollusk inside, and a second later, a large pearl slipped out into his fingers.
“It’s perfect,” Sora whispered. With her hawkeye spell, she could see the famed orange and black stripes on it, gleaming even though the jewel was unpolished. The pearl was round too, not oval or lopsided, but an exact sphere. And it was nearly an inch in diameter.
The diver nodded to himself, as if approving, set the pearl on top of a small silk pouch to dry, and moved on to the other oysters in his net.
Daemon had spearheaded the Level 12 fund-raiser to buy Empress Aki a string of tiger pearls during Autumn Festival.
Sora startled at the thought. She’d almost forgotten her gemina existed, which was a horribly disloyal thing, since they’d been best friends for ages. Mortified, Sora latched onto the memory.
But as soon as she tried to hold it, it wriggled away, like an eel. She lunged for it again, but it began to fade, the memory swimming into the murky depths of her mind.
This had happened before, hadn’t it? She’d remembered Daemon, but the thought had disappeared quickly, subsumed by something else.
She also felt strangely guilty for thinking about him. Or was it that cutting him off was wrong?
The diver shouted in alarm. Sora rushed to the edge of the cliff, her cloudy musings forgotten at the sound of someone needing help.
