Fairy.
She released Broomstick, and Sora swung him up onto Daemon’s back. They flew up and away from the claws.
“Are you all right?” Sora asked.
Broomstick nodded, securing himself into Daemon’s blue fur. “We have to go back for Fairy.”
“Already on it.” Daemon looped around and dove down again.
“My dear taigas,” Prince Gin’s voice projected from his bloodstone castle to the soldiers captured below. “Your empress is dead. I am the ruler of Kichona now, which means the Society answers to me.”
“Hurry!” Sora said. “He’s going to hypnotize everyone!”
Daemon growled and flew faster. Sparks flew in Sora’s face, briefly burning as they bounced off her skin.
They neared the dragon’s claw. Sora stretched her arm out again, and Broomstick held her waist to help keep her on Daemon’s back.
“Fairy! Give me your hand!”
Fairy climbed up onto the talon, trying to keep her balance as it shook her, attempting to jostle her into the cage of taiga prisoners in its palm below.
Daemon swooped down. Sora reached. Fairy jumped.
Another stone claw shot up out of nowhere. “Stars!” Daemon jerked out of the way at the last second, changing their trajectory.
Fairy was left with no one to catch her.
“Wolf!” she screamed. She began to fall toward the ground.
The blue light around him exploded, sparking and buzzing so brightly, Sora and Broomstick had to shield their eyes.
He flew at the speed of lightning, sound falling behind them, and snatched Fairy out of the air with his teeth.
It wasn’t until they were high up in the sky, out of the reach of the stone claws, that Sora realized they were all safe.
“Oh gods,” Fairy said, her breaths fast and shallow.
“Literally,” Sora said of Daemon. She reached down for her roommate, and together, she and Broomstick pulled Fairy onto Daemon’s back.
Below them, Prince Gin’s voice rumbled as he continued to address the taigas. “Bow to your new emperor.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Daemon growled. The blue around him flashed like an electric storm.
In the stone claws, though, a hush rolled through the taiga ranks, like a tumbleweed blowing through a deserted town. One by one, the soldiers inside the talon prisons fell to their knees, stretched their arms forward, and lay prostrate on the stone floor. “Long live Emperor Gin, ruler of all of Kichona!”
Sora braced herself for the warm, campfire comfort of Prince Gin’s hypnosis. She watched Fairy and Broomstick too for that familiar, contented glaze in their eyes that infected everyone under the Dragon Prince’s spell.
But it didn’t get to them. Daemon’s electricity sparked ferociously blue around them like a shield. It was similar to the orbs some of the ryuu had used, but even better—this was the magic of a demigod.
Still, it didn’t help the others. “The Society is gone,” Broomstick said sadly. “There’s only the four of us left.”
They all stared helplessly at the taigas below, whose minds had been stolen from them. From Bullfrog, the most opinionated councilmember, to the young Level 8s who had joined in the fight. Their free will had been brainwashed away. And now the Dragon Prince controlled an entire magical army.
As if on cue, Prince Gin emerged from inside the bloodstone castle, onto the large balcony of the tallest spire. “My loyal ryuu, the day I’ve dreamed of my entire life has finally come. Today, we begin our quest to make Kichona the greatest empire in history. Zomuri will give our island a paradise and immortality that, until now, has only existed in mythology. My dear ryuu, I promise that if we fight together, we will be rewarded. We will achieve the Evermore.”
Cheers broke out from the dragon claws, and from the existing ryuu lined up around the castle.
“Long live Emperor Gin!”
“Long live Kichona!”
“To the Evermore!”
Then two hundred men, women, boys, and girls filed out onto the balcony where Prince Gin stood.
Daemon snarled. “The Ceremony of Two Hundred Hearts.”
Sora’s own heart plummeted as if off the highest spire of the bloodstone castle.
“If we don’t stop him,” Fairy said, “he’ll declare war on the world?”
“Yes,” Sora said. “And the world will declare war on us. Kichona as we know it will be gone.”
“What do we do?” Daemon asked.
Bullfrog and the other councilmembers had been wrong. The taigas couldn’t retreat. They had to try to stop this now.
Sora looked down at the two hundred people below. “We have to take out Prince Gin.”
Daemon flew an arc in the sky to line himself up with the tower.
Hana stepped onto the balcony.
At first, relief lifted the tension off Sora’s shoulders. Her sister was alive.
But