two steps later, she tripped on something and fell. She swore, as she stumbled and tumbled to the shrine floor for the third time.
Yet she was an inch off the actual floor, even though she wasn’t asking the ryuu particles to help her levitate. What was going on?
She ran her fingers over the air beneath her. It wasn’t air. It was a reed mat. Invisible, but there.
“Gods,” Sora said, as she ran her fingers over it again.
Like how Hana hadn’t truly vanished, she realized. During the scrimmage, the visible part of her sister had just been camouflaged, but her physical body still existed in the ordinary world. The same had happened with the reed mat—it was both here and not.
Hana had told her to focus on basic firsts. But Sora never had been one to follow the rules.
“I’m going to make myself invisible too,” she declared.
Her sister’s veil of disdain lifted, as if Hana had forgotten she wanted to dislike Sora. It was replaced by a cautious curiosity. “Try,” Hana said, her mouth parting into a small O as she watched.
Sora located the emerald dust. Make me invisible, she willed it.
Her hand trembled, but nothing happened.
Try again. Make me invisible.
Again, nothing.
She thought about what had happened with the reed mat. The magic had swirled around and then the reeds had soaked them in.
Sora smiled. She rose to her feet. Instead of asking the ryuu particles to come to her, she would go to them.
The emerald particles flurried before her. She hurled herself into them, as if diving into a pool.
Stars! They absorbed her, or she absorbed them, and they were cool and hot at the same time, on her skin, in every blood cell, penetrating all the way to her core. She inhaled sharply. This wasn’t just the sauna-like feel of the magic before. Sora lit up from within. The ability to make herself invisible was a thousand Autumn Festival sparklers inside of her, and she laughed, spinning in a circle with arms out, intoxicated by the power.
Hana made herself invisible too, but she appeared to Sora as if shimmering, like the form of her sister but composed entirely of green jewels. Sora looked down at her hand. It was delightfully the same.
“We’re made of emeralds,” she said.
“I can’t believe you figured out how to do this so quickly.” There was nothing but wonder in Hana’s voice.
“I’m learning as fast as I can for you,” Sora said, her belly filling with warmth, as if she’d just eaten the most delicious, hearty stew. Being a part of Prince Gin’s ryuu made her feel as if nothing could go wrong. Fate had put her here, in this time and place, to be a ryuu. With Hana. “I want us to be able to do things together. I want to share your ambitions. I want to be your sister again.”
Hana frowned, her defenses going back up a little. “You’re doing this for Prince Gin. It’s because of his vision for Kichona that we’re all here.”
Sora shrugged. “Yes, for Prince Gin. But also for us. We’d get to fight together, Hana. We can forge a new path for Kichona, make history and be part of building a kingdom together. I know it’s hard to have me here all of a sudden, but you have to believe when I say I love you and always have, and I would have come after you a decade ago if I could. But I was eight.”
Hana tensed.
That was the wrong thing for me to say, Sora realized. Because no excuse was good enough, not when you were as scared and lost and hurt as tenderfoot Hana must have been. All she’d wanted was her sister, and Sora hadn’t been there.
“For what it’s worth,” Sora said, “if anything happened to you now, I would fight to the ends of the earth to save you.”
Hana blinked as if surprised. She opened her mouth to say something.
But then a horn sounded. The ryuu had rounded up all the taigas from the vast countryside in Tiger’s Belly. It was time to assemble them in the Society outpost building so that Prince Gin could speak with them.
Giddiness burst inside Sora like a geyser in Rae Springs, and the conversation with Hana was immediately forgotten. Sora jumped up. “Come on! Let’s go see the new recruits get initiated.” Prince Gin’s charisma was addicting, and she craved being in his presence some more.
She hurried toward the stairs that led down from the shrine’s tower. “I