could stomach to blend in.
Nevertheless, it was good enough, for the townspeople walked past them without a second glance. Everywhere Daemon and Sora went, people were smiling, pausing to chat with each other under strings of orange Autumn Festival lanterns or in front of crates of muscat grapes. They bought each other cold bottles of freshly pressed pear juice—traditional in this region of Kichona in the fall—and drank them together on the sidewalk.
“This place is so peaceful,” Daemon said, but it was more of a complaint than a compliment.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Sora asked. “This kind of life is what the Ora emperors and empresses have always wanted for Kichona.”
Daemon shrugged. She was right, of course. There were pirates roaming the ocean surrounding the kingdom, but the Imperial Navy worked diligently to keep them away from shore so the regular citizens of Kichona didn’t suffer. The Imperial Army kept posts throughout the island to ensure that traders from the mainland were really traders and not anything more nefarious. And there were also local police forces of taigas to keep the peace.
Even so, Daemon was jittery. “I just want something to do today, something to show for our work. If we’d been sent to a bigger ocean-side town, we could have investigated the harbors for suspicious ships. Maybe we would have found some pirates or smugglers or, I don’t know, a spy from another kingdom. But here in farm country . . . what are we even looking for?”
“Don’t worry,” Sora said. “As long as we’re thorough, we’ll get good marks.”
He knew it was hard for her to understand his need to prove himself. Sora was naturally good at magic. She had the luxury of not caring, because everyone knew that if she ever became ambitious, she’d blow them all out of the water. Daemon, however, constantly questioned whether Luna had made a mistake in marking him as a taiga.
But then Sora smiled at him, and he was momentarily dazed. She was tall and lean, all grace and muscle, and when the sun hit her just right—like it was doing now—he could see her curves silhouetted through the thin silk of her blouse. She had a spattering of freckles across her cheekbones, and her nose ended in a button that was an adorable contrast to her fierceness. He fought the urge to run his fingers through her hair, which fell like a painter’s brush along the edge of her jaw.
He touched his own hair. His blue roots were due to be colored soon. Technically, he didn’t have to dye it; it was dark enough in its natural state to comply with Society Code. But a genetic quirk gave him blue hair, and the strangeness meant he’d been teased mercilessly during their early years at the Society. As soon as he turned seven and became a taiga apprentice, he’d dyed his hair black and had kept it that way ever since. Daemon winced at the memory.
But Sora was still smiling, and his embarrassment faded away. Her mere presence made everything better.
“Should we check the north side of town first and make our way south?” she asked. They knew Tanoshi fairly well. Other than Shima, Tanoshi was where apprentices liked to go when they had weekend leave from the Citadel.
“You want to do the south side last because you’re hoping to end up at a restaurant there, huh?” Daemon smirked. “Always letting your stomach lead.”
“You know me so well.”
His heart skipped happily.
They started down the first street. This section of Tanoshi was all business, made up mostly of stern wooden buildings bereft of decoration, lined up on a straight grid of streets numbered one through five from north to south, and named by trade from east to west. There was Accounting Street, Bookbinder Way, Architect Road, and many others. It was quiet here, and Daemon and Sora finished sweeping through the streets quickly.
Next was the residential district. The buildings here had considerably more character than the ones in the business grid. Although the homes themselves were simple in architecture—compact wood structures with brown tile roofs—each door was painted brightly to express the family’s personality. One was rainbow striped. Another featured a fisherman catching an enormous fish, bigger than the sun. Another depicted the life cycle of a phoenix, from egg to bird to flames and ashes, in a never-ending circle.
In front of all this, a small group of children played in the middle of the dirt road, chasing after a ball and