Cloak of Night (Circle of Shadows #2) - Evelyn Skye Page 0,58

Sora took in her new surroundings. The tiny room was made of solid mud walls that led nowhere. A dead end.

Sora chewed on her lip. Had Liga been wrong? What if this wasn’t where Zomuri kept his treasure?

But it had to be. The Lake of Nightmares hadn’t been created for no reason.

Maybe this was another defense? It could be another ruse. After the lake, Sora should’ve known better than to believe the first thing she saw.

She walked up to the mud wall opposite the trap door and pushed. It was solid and left a reddish-brown smear on her palms.

“I refuse to believe it,” she said to the room. “You’re just showing me my worst fear, that I’ve come all this way for nothing.”

The walls throbbed, just barely, under her touch.

Aha. This really was more than it first appeared.

She took a few steps back, ran toward the wall, jumped, and kicked.

Her leg smashed through the mud. The facade of the cramped, empty room shriveled away as suddenly as a popped balloon.

Instead, Sora found herself in a vast space where every inch of the walls and ceiling was studded with rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. The ground was over four feet deep in gold coins and other trinkets, like small statues carved of flawless marble, crowns of filigreed platinum, and necklaces spilling out of suede satchels, all of it tossed haphazardly among the gold as if it were inconsequential. Which it probably was to Zomuri. He had enough treasure here to buy the world a million times over, and what did he even need it for? He was a god. He was hoarding for hoarding’s sake.

“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 as important 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