Page 45 of Cloak of Night
The last shelf at the top of the bookcase was just the size of a cubbyhole, dark because of its size. Daemon flew a little closer.
Aha!Inside, flush against the wall, was a stack of three books. He hauled them into his paws and flew to the ground with them.
Once in boy form, Daemon inspected them, and his stomach flipped. These were books about old legends; Zomuri had taunted Prince Gin about needing to read them. One of the books wasThe Book of Sorrow, the third volume from the Kichonan Tales by Sora’s mother. The spine was creased to breaking, and the book fell open to the oft-read fable of the Evermore.
Daemon studied the cramped notes written in the margins of the story. They’d clearly been added to over the years, beginning with Prince Gin’s childish block printing then graduating to a more mature, impassioned script. Were there any clues here that could help them stop the pursuit of the Evermore?
The fable was about Emperor Mareo, the first to swear his loyalty to Zomuri in an attempt to win paradise on earth. It included the Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts, which Prince Gin had already conducted. After that, though, thestory concluded with Mareo setting off to attempt to conquer the kingdoms on the mainland. It was the same part of the tale that Prince Gin was currently in—nothing that would help them now. Besides, Mareo, like all the emperors who followed in his footsteps, had failed to come even close to achieving the Evermore.
“How’s it going?” Fairy asked.
“I’ve found nothing. No clues about Empress Aki or much else either.”
Fairy rolled up her scroll, her sketched copy of the map complete, and came over to his side. “Maybe there’s nothing else here to find.”
“Maybe,” Daemon said, “but Zomuri told Prince Gin to read up on old legends, so I feel like there might be something here.” He setThe Book of Sorrowon the desk while Fairy began investigating the walls of the study, tapping to listen for hollow compartments and checking for disguised buttons.
He picked up one of the other books. Its burgundy leather cover and the gold flames on the spine looked familiar. The title on the cover wasObscure Folklore.
This is the one, Daemon remembered. He’d seen another copy of this book before, when he was at the Society outpost in Tiger’s Belly, after Sora had been hypnotized on the Dragon Prince’s ship and Daemon had been left behind. This book contained the legend of Dassu, about a taiga who combined his magic with devilfire and burned down the middle of Kichona. When Daemon last read it, he’d been preoccupied with finding an explanation for why he was immune to Prince Gin’s mind control. But now, because of Zomuri, Daemon knew there was something else important in this book.
A few of the pages were dog eared. He opened to the first one: “Dassu and the Warrior.”
Daemon’s heart beat faster—this was the story he was looking for.
It was almost as he remembered. A taiga wanted more power, so he made a deal with a demon, Dassu, allowing Dassu to blend the taiga’s magic with his own. But when the gods found out what he’d done, Luna sent the demon back to the hells, and she smothered the taiga to death.
However, there was a part of the story that Daemon hadn’t paid attention to the last time he read it, because it hadn’t been relevant to his immunity from Prince Gin. He saw it now, though, because it had been underlined.
The warrior’s small daughter rode in the saddle in front of him, and as he lit the ground aflame with his newfound magic, she whispered, “Papa, I want fire, too.”
Kitari was his only child—her mother had died shortly after the girl’s birth—and the warrior spoiled her because she was the only thing connecting him to his wife. He could not deny Kitari any request, especially when she looked at him with her mother’s eyes. And so he held his daughter close and breathed some of the devilfire into her cupped hands.
Daemon frowned as he read to the end of the legend, where Luna killed the warrior and sent his soul to the hells as punishment for distorting the magic she’d given the taigas. That part Daemon had inferred from what Zomuri had told Prince Gin.
But the part that bothered Daemon was that there was no mention of what happened to Kitari, other than thewarrior asking Luna to spare her. Had the girl survived? Or maybe the author hadn’t wanted to include the grisly death of a child in the story.
But then why mention her at all?
Maybe there’s something else about her in this book.
He flipped farther into the book, and sure enough, one of the other dog-eared pages marked a tale titled “Kitari and the Curse.”
Fairy returned to the desk. “Nothing in the walls,” she said. “What are you reading?”
Daemon explained the legend of Dassu, then shifted the position of the open book so Fairy could read Kitari’s story at the same time he did.
Magic did not belong to humans. Only the Society of Taigas was permitted its use, and even then, solely in the limited capacity granted by Luna. Kitari was well aware of this, for she had watched her father die for his transgressions, his soul sent to the hells to be tortured for all eternity. Because of this, she hid the devilfire he’d given her, hoping to avoid the same wrath of the gods.
The years passed uneventfully. Kitari grew from a child to a woman, making a quiet living as a laundress in a town by the sea. She married a shrimp fisherman and bore him three children. Their hut was filled with the contentment of a small but safe existence, and as the years passed, Kitari let down her guard and began to use devilfire here and there, but only innocuously, to light a fire in the hearth when they were out of wood or to put on shadow puppet shows for her children. After a long life, Kitari passed away peacefully in her sleep.
But her spirit did not walk through the tunnel of light tothe afterlife. Instead, the path led her down, down, down, until it ended at an archway made entirely of flames.
“What is this place?” she cried as her skin began to crisp and blacken, like fish too close to the charcoal.
A figure emerged from the archway, holding out his hand. His face was partly ash, flakes falling off as he approached, and yet she knew him from his first step.
“Father.”
