Page 58 of Cloak of Night
“How am I supposed to find a single gold pearl in here?” She couldn’t dig through all the treasure in the vault. It would take forever, not to mention the fact that she didn’t have anywhere to put what she’d already sorted through. There were so many riches in here, as soon as she dug a hole, more gold and jewels would cave in to fill the empty space. She wouldn’t be able to separate it to keep it straight.
But surely Zomuri wouldn’t just toss something asimportant as a soul into the pile, would he?
Sora perked up. “Or if he did, it would be on top.” After all, the golden pearl of Prince Gin’s soul was a very recent addition.
She began crawling on hands and knees over the surface of the treasure, moving slowly so she could examine every inch around her. It was better than trying to search all the treasure, but progress was still almost sloth-like.
Methodically check a three-foot radius around herself.
Shift forward.
Repeat.
Soon, Sora’s neck began to ache, and her eyes were crossing from focusing too hard. She couldn’t keep this up.
What Sora needed was better vision. She had an arsenal of taiga eyesight spells that she could cast in her sleep, but ryuu magic was more powerful. Perhaps she could combine the two, but which spell to choose?
Not a hawkeye spell. Nor a jaguar or lemur. Sora needed something that would be good for identifying things that were ordinarily underwater, like pearls.
“Octopus spell!” she said, surprising even herself. Octopodes had some of the most impressive vision in the sea. They could see colors and textures where other animals couldn’t; that’s how they were able to camouflage themselves so well.
Instead of linking her thumbs together in the taiga mudra and undulating her eight other fingers as if they were tentacles, she conveyed the intent of the spell to the ryuu particles.Sight like an octopus, she thought over and over until the magic understood what she wanted and her vision opened wider and sharpened at the same time.
“Yes,” she gasped.
The room wasn’t just shiny with gold and jewel tones anymore. It was now a kaleidoscope, variations of light and all manner of colors that Sora had never seen before. Each piece of treasure stood out as unique, with different smoothnesses, brighter or darker reflections of the gems next to it, varying degrees of smudges and dust.
That’s how Sora saw what she was looking for. On top of a pile of gold to her right, there was a small ivory jewelry box that was free of any dust at all, as if the lid had recently been opened.
She crawled over and carefully opened the box.
A single gold pearl rested inside, on a pillow of deep green satin. It rolled right off the satin and into Sora’s fingers, as if it had been waiting for her all along.
“Got you,” she whispered.
Sora reached behind her neck and unfastened her necklace, the one Mama had given her during Autumn Festival break when they’d been at Hana’s shrine. It was a traditional Kichonan memory pendant, with a single golden pearl representative of the deceased’s soul. The pearl on Sora’s necklace was only a little smaller than Prince Gin’s actual soul that had been on the satin pillow before her.
She could slip the pendant off the chain and leave it as a decoy.
Could a god be tricked that easily?
Either he’s going to notice the soul pearl is gone or he isn’t, she realized. Maybe it wasn’t worth leaving this behind. A different pearl in the soul’s place probably wouldn’t make a difference. And irrational as it was, Sora had been a littlesad about leaving her pendant here. The necklace had been a tribute to Hana, and it had also been a family jewel for a decade.
If only her sister could see that she was fighting on the wrong side. If only Sora could have another chance to convince her that the Dragon Prince was misguided.
But if she didn’t, she wanted to have something to remember Hana by, to hold on to that memory of when she still looked up to Sora and wanted to be on the same team.
So Sora clasped the necklace back on. She just had to hope Zomuri wouldn’t realize the soul pearl was missing before she could reunite it with Prince Gin.
But when Zomuri did notice, how would he punish her?
She curled into herself for a second, thinking about how gruesome Zomuri’s retribution would be.
I’ll face whatever consequences there are, Sora thought. Taigas were trained to sacrifice everything, if they had to, for their country. She could do this.
Sora took a deep breath. Then she tucked the soul pearl into a secure pocket deep inside her tunic, clung tightly to her gemina bond, and jumped up through the vault door, swimming back into the Lake of Nightmares.
Chapter Thirty-One
