I have one more trick up my sleeve. She pried at one of the corpse’s fingers that was mostly bone, not flesh, and snapped it off.
Skeleton stalked over to Fairy and bent down, face close to hers. He wasn’t worried about her fighting back this time. The corpse had her prisoner.
Fairy used her last bits of energy and breath to stab him with the corpse’s finger bone in his uninjured eye.
Skeleton howled in pain. “You bitch!”
Without vision, his command on ryuu magic vanished. The corpse released Fairy, and they both tumbled to the ground. The two skeleton warriors collapsed into piles of bones.
Fairy wheezed and swallowed air, doubling over until her vision cleared.
But Skeleton wouldn’t give up that easily. He drew a sword. He’d still be able to fight. Like Fairy, he was trained for hand-to-hand combat in the dark, where vision wasn’t required.
“No, you don’t.” Fairy drew a stout knife from her pants leg and threw it into the artery in his throat. Skeleton cursed but kept advancing.
She scuttled to where he’d confiscated her stilettos and threw each of those into other major arteries.
Skeleton staggered forward.
Then he stilled and toppled to the ground, right on top of his corpse warrior.
Fairy fell to her knees, overcome with relief.
Daemon’s orb surfaced from the grotto pool. His eyes were wide as his sphere opened.
“Did you do that?” he asked.
Fairy blinked at Skeleton, the corpse, and the piles of bones. Then she nodded.
“He tried to kiss me,” Fairy said. “But this is what happens when you go around touching girls without their permission.”
Chapter Fifty
Sora was curled into a ball in the bottom of her orb, sobbing so hard she threw herself into coughing fits that left her gasping. Tears and snot dripped down her face, and she didn’t care that her orb was passing through a waterfall. She didn’t notice that their spheres carried them through a deep pool. She didn’t try to get up when the orb opened onto the shore of a damp grotto.
Mama was dead, and Hana had Papa as a prisoner.
Strong arms slipped beneath Sora and lifted her. She couldn’t uncurl her body to see who it was. The only thing holding her together was the ferocity with which she tucked into herself.
“I’m here,” Daemon said, cradling Sora to his chest as he carried her out of the orb. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”
Sora cried even harder.
He held her closer and didn’t let go.
Chapter Fifty-One
Tink, tink, tink.
Aki hit her metal spoon against the rock wall at the end of her tunnel.
Clank, clank, clank, something—or someone—answered in return.
She held her breath. It was possible she was imagining things. Or that there really was someone outside, perhaps another ryuu or skeleton, and this was a trap.
Still, she had to try again, because she didn’t know when she’d have another chance. Gin had paid her a visit not long ago to remind her that he had every intention of keeping her alive and suffering in this prison. But then there’d been a commotion as Gin and the two non-ryuu he’d brought—were they ordinary Kichonans? What was their significance?—hurried out of the waterfall and up to the surface. Aki had used the excuse of being emotionally overwhelmed and needing a nap to retire to her little cell in the grotto walls. Her skeleton captors had been all too willing to believe her fragility in the face of their mighty emperor.
But instead of resting, Aki crawled down her tunnel. She hadn’t known what she could do, since the solid rock still blocked her escape, but maybe she could dig in a different direction. She started scraping at the clay with her spoon, but each time, the metal had hit the wall. Until she’d gotten that clanking response.
Was it someone come to rescue her? Is that why Gin had left in such a hurry?
Aki was about to try again when a keening like an injured animal pierced the air. She jumped. The sound had come from the far end of the tunnel. What was happening out there? Aki had to hide the entrance to this route before the ryuu barged into her cell and she was discovered.
She hit her spoon against the rock wall rapidly, like an alarm, in case whoever was on the other side was here to help, and then she scurried down the tunnel back to her cell.
Aki exhaled in relief as she climbed out from beneath her mattress pallet and found no one in her room. She squeezed herself through the