Page 26 of Circle of Shadows
Fairy smiled a little. “That’s a good plan.”
But already, Sora was thinking of the journey ahead. And the last lines of the Evermore fable also lingered, a haunting reminder of what was at stake.
It was not man who achieved immortality but, rather, the curse, which trailed their greed like an unshakable, eternal shadow.
The Evermore was never worth its price.
But the opposite was also true. It was worth any price to stop Prince Gin and everyone else who pursued the unattainable legend of the Evermore.
Sora threw open her closet and grabbed a bag. She’d need some clothes, a canteen for drinking water, which she could fill in ponds and streams, and a cloak for concealing herself and keeping warm in the night.
And of course, weapons. She unhooked two leather bands from the wall. One had her usual throwing stars, and the other had spikes, poison darts, and exploding eggshells filled with blinding powder. She strapped several more knives onto her body and into the hidden pockets in thesleeves and every fold of her tunic.
When she turned around, Fairy handed her a small leather pouch. Her favorite, which she always kept strapped to her belt.
Sora’s mouth fell open. “Fairy... you don’t have to give me your satchel. I can just take a few of your concoctions—”
“I want you to take it,” she said. “Then I feel like... I don’t know. This is stupid. But I’ll feel like a part of me is there with you, helping.”
Sora hugged the satchel to her chest. Inside were half a dozen squat glass vials of poison, each with its own slot. These were Fairy’s babies wrapped in blankets, all in a row. She didn’t like going too long without cradling them. It was a big deal to hand them over to someone else. “Thank you.”
Sora jostled the finicky latch and opened the leather flap. She admired the different poisons, which Fairy lovingly milled and distilled herself.
“What is this syrupy amber one again?” she asked about the leftmost one.
“Demon sugar. One drop on a cake or in a cup of tea will send the victim into paralysis and a slow, strangled death.”
“Right,” Sora said. “The blue powder, I remember, is ground gaki berry mixed with salt from the Emerald Sea.”
“Yes. A little sprinkle of that on a dish, and the victim will get so hungry, he’ll go crazy and eventually devour his own limbs to satisfy his appetite.” Fairy went on to explain the other four powders and serums in the pouch.
When she finished, she whirled abruptly and hurried to a set of drawers, the one that seemed like a bottomless pit of anything one could possibly need. It was, of course,meticulously organized inside into little trays. Sora had seen Fairy retrieve everything from hair clips to seaweed strips to a romantic novel from the drawers’ depths. Now Fairy came back with a small red envelope.
“Hold out your hand,” she said. She took what looked like two pink coins out of the envelope and placed them in Sora’s palm. They were heavy too, like coins. Lines crisscrossed the disks.
“What is it?”
“Pressed rira powder. In small doses—like an eighth of this disk—it will put someone to sleep. In large doses...”
Sora’s heartbeat stumbled. But perhaps that was the point. Fairy was giving her and Daemon a way out, in case they got in over their heads, and in case the dancers’ camp really did turn out to be Prince Gin and a small army.
“I hope we don’t have to use them,” Sora said softly as she slipped the rira disks into the leather pouch.
Fairy looked away. “I hope not too.”
Chapter Fourteen
Getting out of the Citadel hadn’t been a problem for Daemon and Sora. The Council and the other taiga warriors were too busy preparing for another attack from their mysterious assailants to pay attention to the apprentices. He and Sora simply had to show the guards at the gate their leave passes, which Broomstick had gotten for them.
A day after leaving the Citadel, Daemon and Sora arrived at the base of Samara Mountain, where Sora’s parents lived. The trails that led up its steep face were as dark as the taigas’ cloaks, obscured entirely by the night and the fog. The Kichona Sea tinged the air with salt, and its waves smashed themselves into the saw-toothed cliffs.
Sora bit her lip as she looked upward. Her fear seeped through their gemina bond and into Daemon’s pores.
“I know I’ve been obsessed with the idea that we saw Prince Gin,” she said. “And I know that maybe we were wrong. But that doesn’t mean there’s no threat. I’m scared about the attack at Isle of the Moon. What if it happensagain? And what if next time it’s not an island with just five taigas on it, but a place like this with ordinary people too? People like my parents. They could be hurt.”
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.
