Circle of Shadows (Circle of Shadows, #1)(17)

Sora laughed. “You really want there to be a hidden conspiracy so we can report something interesting to the Council, don’t you?”

Daemon looked so mortified, though, that Sora shut up. She shouldn’t have said that. They quickly formed finger-fluttering mudras and chanted the moth spell. Sora’s voice box tingled as the enchantment took hold. Daemon needed a few tries before his spell worked.

They slinked up to the edge of the camp and hoisted themselves over the wall of logs. Sora landed on the ground as quietly as a ghost—her near-soundless movement, after all, was why she’d been given the taiga name Spirit.

Daemon lowered himself from a nearby section of the perimeter wall, tugging on a wire that trailed him. He’d secured one end to a tree outside the wall and planned to tie off this end inside the camp. It would be easier to leave via tightrope on their way out than scrambling over these slippery logs again.

Lanterns on posts cast a dim red glow over everything. Sora and Daemon crept through the spaces between the tents, sticking, as always, to the shadows. After a few minutes, she found a tree they could climb to get a better view.

She glanced over her shoulder to confirm they were still alone before she wriggled her fingers in a mudra and whispered: “I am a spider, I am a spider, I am a spider.” Immediately, her fingertips felt fuzzy, as if there were hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs to help her climb and grip.

Then she jumped to the tree. Her hands and feet made quiet contact with the bark, and the spider spell adhered her to the trunk. She scuttled up the tree, limber and arachnid quick. Daemon followed, although he didn’t need a spell. He’d been climbing trees since he could crawl.

There was a sound below them, a rock skittering over the ground. Sora and Daemon froze.

A few seconds later, a pair of guards in light armor walked by. They didn’t look up.

She exhaled but spun to face Daemon. “Why would an Autumn Festival celebration require armed guards?” she asked, audible only to him at this moth level.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably the same reason they would have log fortifications. I told you something was off about this party.”

The easy, feline grace that had accompanied Sora now tensed. On alert, she was more panther than cat.

She pushed her way through the branches and climbed to the roof of the nearest tent. They hopped their way across the camp until they were just outside the circle of dancers and the bonfire.

A reedy melody weaseled itself through the air. It came from a long woodwind with a curved bell.

“What is that?” Daemon asked.

Sora had never seen nor heard that instrument before. “I don’t know,” she said. But the number of “I don’t knows” was beginning to heap up to an uncomfortable pile.

As the music intensified, the crowd of dancers stilled. It was then that Sora noticed their clothing.

“Daggers,” she swore. “Daemon—is it me, or are their tunics and trousers eerily similar to the taiga uniforms?”

He took a few seconds to study them. “Their belts are green; ours are black. Otherwise, they do look similar. But then again, how creative can you make a tunic and trousers? It’s not as if the Society owns the color black.”

“Maybe . . .”

At that moment, the flaps of a nearby tent parted, and a man in a hooded cloak stepped out. He folded his arms behind his back and walked casually to the dancers.

The fire flared. Then its flames changed from orange to green.

Sora gasped. How is this happening? Flames were yellow, orange, sometimes blue . . . but not green. Not like this.

The fire stretched taller. The tips of the flames rounded, and narrow eye slits formed in each one.

Fiery mouths yawned open and forked green tongues flicked at the sky. They looked like serpent heads.

Sora’s heart pounded like a taiko drum.

“What in all hells is happening?” Daemon whispered.

“I don’t know,” she said again.

“I think we should go before we get caught,” Daemon said. “We have enough to report to the Council.”

Sora glanced down at the bonfire and the cloaked man. They were not the fun sort of trouble.

The man let the hood fall away, and even from this distance, Sora could see how the light and shadows of the flames taunted the scalelike ridges of his face.

“Impossible,” Sora whispered.

But she knew who he was. All of Kichona did. This young man had been burned in a kitchen accident when he was a child, leaving half his skin covered in reptilian scars. Because of this, some called him the Dragon Prince.

Officially, however, he was known as Prince Gin.

Sora’s mouth fell open. Daemon’s shock reverberated through their gemina bond at the same time.

“He’s supposed to be dead,” Daemon whispered.

But here he was now, right in front of Sora. Her stomach lurched, not only because this traitorous, violent prince had returned, but also because he was the reason her sister was dead.

Ten years ago, as the Blood Rift was brewing, Sora and the other taiga apprentices had paid little attention. The politics surrounding Rose Palace had seemed too removed from them. On the same day the prince’s and princess’s factions prepared to fight, Sora had been preoccupied with much more interesting things.

“Is it Friday?” six-year-old Hana had asked earlier that afternoon. It was her last year as a tenderfoot—the rank of children marked by Luna but too young to be apprentices—so she lived and slept in the nursery. But on Fridays, she had a standing date to sleep over in Sora’s dormitory with the older girls, and she looked forward to it every week.