Cloak of Night (Circle of Shadows #2) - Evelyn Skye Page 0,86
if she’d put together something that was obviously an alarm, they would have suspected her. So Aki had purposely rigged a pathetic-looking trap because she knew they would think her dumb enough to try, and that would prevent them from realizing that she was smart enough to have something better, like a tunnel in which to hide. And the glass jars did double duty, serving not only as counterweights to hold the net up until her trip wire was triggered but also to alert her when she had company.
The man glowered at Aki. “I was planning to drop in and introduce you to your new guards before we went back outside,” he said. “But now you’ve made me angry. So I think maybe we’ll stay. Meet Bone One and Bone Two. There are hundreds more just like them outside the acid falls.”
Aki’s mouth hung open as two more men climbed out from the bedsheet net. She hadn’t paid attention to them before, only saw their figures out of the corner of her eye. But now she saw that they weren’t men at all.
They were skeletons.
Bone One pointed a sword at her. Bone Two circled to the other side of Aki, his movement as graceful as if he were still alive.
“How . . . ?”
“They don’t call me Skeleton for no reason. I can control bones.”
“A-and you dug up dead bodies as your minions?” She gaped at the moving corpses.
The ryuu smirked. “The Society of Taigas’ cemetery, to be exact.”
Bile rose in Aki’s throat at the desecration of the taigas’ hallowed burial ground. But she didn’t say anything, because a third body emerged from beneath the net. This one, however, was fully fleshed out and still wore a taiga uniform. When she turned her head to reveal her face, Aki gasped.
It was Bayonet, one of her former Imperial Guards, but slightly rotted. Maggots had taken residence in Bayonet’s eye sockets, and the eyeballs themselves had sunken and shriveled like cherries left out for too long in the summer sun.
“She can’t hear you,” Skeleton said, his satisfaction dripping like grease off his voice. “She’s just a sack of bones that moves at my command. A vicious sack, though.”
The corpse stalked up to Aki until she was mere inches away.
“Bayonet,” Aki said, “if there’s any humanity left inside you—”
The former Imperial Guard opened her mouth to reveal a pit of worms.
Aki lurched backward. Then she fell to her hands and knees and threw up all over the grotto floor.
“Pitiful,” Skeleton said. “I expected more from a former empress than a childish net and a weak stomach. You’re not anything close to a threat.”
“You’re wrong,” Aki said, even though she was currently heaped on the floor in a mess of mud and vomit. She might have been an acid-scarred prisoner in a grotto, guarded by an army of skeletons, but she was also a descendant of some of the greatest rulers in Kichona’s history. There was gold in her hair, fire in her veins, and, most important, a fierce love for her people in her heart. No matter the obstacles she faced, she would fight to her last breath to save them from her brother’s clutches.
“One day I’ll be free of here, and then you’ll see,” Aki said. “You’ll be sorry you ever crossed me.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The tiger’s paw of Kichona was composed of four small islands. The one with Dera Falls was a sharp sliver, just the tip of a claw. That was where Sora thought Prince Gin might be hiding Empress Aki.
Sora lay on her stomach on another of the islands that formed the claw, crawling up to the edge of the white cliffs that dropped straight down five hundred feet into the sea.
The last few hours had been terribly awkward. Daemon had come back to the mining shack as dusk settled in, already in the form of a wolf.
“It’s time,” he’d said, but his growl lacked any bite, and even the sparks coming off his fur seemed dimmer than usual. They were a muted, dull blue, rather than the bright electric light that had previously illuminated him.
Sora walked up to Daemon and touched his shoulder softly. “Where did you go? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine. Fairy told me what happened. Do you want to talk about it?”
Daemon’s ears pricked, and the fur on his back stood alert. “What did she say?”
Sora tried to soothe the fur down. “Not much, just that she broke up with you.”