Page 8 of Circle of Shadows
“Nothing you think is stupid, Daemon. What is it?”
He scrubbed his hand through his hair. That irritatingly black-but-actually-blue hair. “I was thinking that maybe I’d try this year to figure out who my parents are. Or were. I want to know where I came from, who I am.”
Sora smiled. “I think that’s a great idea.”
He brightened. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Okay then.” The cloud over him dissipated, and knowing that Sora supported him allowed him to put the idea aside for now. It took only another minute for him to refocus on their mission. “Let’s wrap up the residential area and go downtown.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Sora said.
His steps lightened as they entered the noisier part of Tanoshi, full of shops and restaurants. There were artisan pottery stores, dry-goods shops carrying everything from rice to fishing rods, and stores for every other service the townspeople might need.
Daemon and Sora swept through the streets a little more slowly, since there was more to observe. But all was also in order here.
“Sorry we didn’t find any illegal warehouses full of opium,” Sora said.
“Guess we couldn’t be that lucky on our first mission.”
“Or maybe we can. A different kind of lucky.” She smiled broadly as she stopped in front of an enormous red lantern. It was the entrance to an iz, a tavern that specialized in skewers of all variety of meat, from chicken thighs to chicken livers to more acquired tastes, like gecko marinated in squid ink. Panels of blue cloth hung in the doorway,and raucous conversation wafted out of the izalong with the charcoal smoke of its tireless grills.
Sora’s stomach growled loud enough to be heard even over the street noise.
“Hungry?” Daemon asked.
“What else is new?”
They pushed through the cloth panels into the iz and found a seat at a table in the corner. A boy a few years younger than them appeared and asked for their order. He also appraised Daemon’s shirt and, after a second, nodded, a silent compliment.
Daemon really hadn’t needed garish pants to blend in.
Sora perused the menu. “We’ll have two orders each of bacon-wrapped shrimp, mushroom beef, and the ginger-honey chicken skewers, please.”
“And a carafe of cold sake and some tea,” Daemon said.
The serving boy had been gone hardly a minute when he returned with their drinks. Daemon poured. “Cheers to us finishing our first mission.”
She clinked her cup with his.
Soon, their meal arrived. The skewers were perfectly charred, each with a different sauce drizzled over the meat. Sora picked one and put it to her lips. Daemon watched, mesmerized by her mouth. Heat flushed through him.
Damn it!He jerked up his mental ramparts to block their bond, hoping Sora hadn’t felt his reaction through their connection. It’d been harder and harder recently to see her simply as his gemina. Everything he’d taken for granted about her in the past had started to captivate him—her sharp intelligence, her ferocious chokehold, even the way her pinkie stuck out a little when she held a skewer in her hand.
He flinched, though, at what those feelings meant. It would be disastrous if a romantic gemina relationship failed, because you’d still be bound to that taiga for life—sharing emotions, working with each other, together despite the desperate or angry desire to be apart. That’s why the Society forbade it.
Daemon poured himself another cup of sake and swallowed it in a single gulp to wash away the heat of his feelings for Sora.
At the bar behind her, shouts broke out. A glass shattered. Six men began to advance on each other, fists clenched.
Thank the gods,Daemon thought.A distraction.
He and Sora both stood.
“May I?” Daemon asked.
She flourished her arm in front of her. “Please, be my guest.”
