Page 61 of Cloak of Night
Then she placed the soul pearl in a small silk pouch, tightened the drawstring, and secured it in the interior pocket of her tunic.
Levitate Broomstick, she said to the ryuu particles. It would cost Sora a great deal of energy to float him all theway to Paro Village. But she would do what she had to do to get them out of here.
She slung their bags over her shoulders and motioned for the emerald dust to carry Broomstick out of the tunnels.
“Let’s get out of these caves,” she said, “and never, ever come back.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Zomuri looked into the saucer of blood in front of him and chuckled.
The girl had managed to get past his guards and break into his vault. She had absconded with Gin’s soul and now carried her lug of a friend in tow like a giant sack of taro roots. Zomuri laughed again. He had to admit, it was quite a show; he was almost tempted to applaud.
Even better, she believed the boy had water from the lake in his lungs. But he didn’t. Humans needed only a hint of self-doubt planted in their minds before insecurity ran rampant, overtaking everything like weeds. It was the beauty of the Lake of Nightmares—one swim and most mortals were done for.
The girl, however, had escaped that fate, and so she would need to be punished for her theft.
But Zomuri could do that at any time.
He switched the vision in his dish of blood to show the young emperor.
The ryuu had fixed the holes in the warships and were now transporting them to the coast. Gin supervised their swift progress. They would be in Toredo by day’s end, and from there, they’d be able to launch an attack on their first target: the island of Thoma. Gin certainly was zealous about conquering those seven kingdoms.
No doubt the girl and her friends would try to stop the emperor. Zomuri contemplated what to do, if anything. He could crush the girl now. But she was feisty, and her antics were interesting in their unpredictability. And even though she had gotten hold of the soul pearl, the emperor would remain invincible as long as the soul remained outside his body. Gin had plenty of fight in him and didn’t need a god to intervene.
Zomuri decided he could be angry at the girl later for stealing from him, but at the moment, he wanted to be entertained. And so the god conjured a chair lined with lion’s fur and settled in. It was going to be amusing to watch how this mortal theater played out.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Fairy was a mess of tears as she paced around the chestnut grove. “Something’s wrong. It felt like Broomstick was losing his mind—our gemina connection was all chaos and black smoke and then it suddenly went blank. Where did he go? What happened? Do you think ...? Oh gods.”
Wolf tried to catch her, to put his arms around her and comfort her, but she shook away from him and continued her frenetic pace around the clearing. It was as if standing still would allow all the fear to catch up to her. She had to keep moving.
“Something definitely happened,” he said. “My connection with Sora is taut, like a fishing line. She’s worried—I can feel it in the tension of the bond—but at the same time, I can tell it’s not despair.”
“Why can’t I feel Broomstick, then?”
“I don’t know,” Wolf said gently. “I do know, though, that I lost track of Sora before and she ended up all right. Broomstick lost track of you, too, remember?”
Fairy gave Daemon a flat stare. “Yes, because I was drugged to a deathlike state of unconsciousness.”
“You weren’t dead, though.”
“I could have been!” Fairy threw her arms in the air.
“He’s...” Wolf shook his head. “He’s got to be alive. I’d know it if he weren’t. Sora would send me some hint of it through our bond.”
Fairy paced some more. She understood the logic of what Wolf was saying, but it didn’t make being here—away from her gemina—any easier. What was she supposed to do? Just sit around and wait until Sora sent them another messenger? Or until there was complete emptiness in her connection? Warriors who had lost their geminas described the feeling as a boulder slamming their bond shut, a heavy finality when there was no longer someone else on the other end. That’s not what she sensed now, but it was eerily silent, as if she was walking through an abandoned corridor that might lead to that boulder.
“We have to go to them.” She marched toward their meager camp.
“What?” Wolf trailed behind her. “We’re supposed to stay here and keep searching the Imperial City for Empress Aki. And we’re still waiting to get a response from my brother.” They’d been trying to reach Liga ever since they returned from the Dragon Prince’s study but to no avail.
Fairy whirled on him. “The empress isn’t here, all right? We’ve spent days crawling through the castle and the Citadel and haven’t found a trace of her. For all we know, Prince Gin already killed her. But my gemina—ourfriend—isn’t dead yet, and we need to help him!”
Wolf stopped short. He looked guiltily at his feet. “You’reright. We’re supposed to be there for each other.”
He closed the distance between himself and Fairy and held open his arms. This time, she let him hold her. She buried her face in his chest and allowed the fear to hit her fully, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What if Broomstick isn’t all right? What if he dies and I wasn’t there for him?” she said.
