him prisoner as they began to kiss his oiled skin.
“Stop!” Sora shouted from the cliff. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Leave them be,” Prince Gin said, approaching behind Sora.
She fell to her knees and bowed. “Your Highness.”
He gestured for her to rise. “The ryuu have been working hard. They deserve a little reward.”
Sora frowned. She wanted to believe him, to agree with his words that warmed her like sweet wine, but something felt wrong. “They’re forcing themselves on him.”
Prince Gin shrugged. “And they’ll kill him afterward. Those three have earned themselves the nickname ‘the Black Widows.’”
“No . . .” Sora shook her head. Again, that sensation that she wasn’t seeing the whole picture nagged at her. It was like that eel of Daemon’s memory, lurking in the muddy water just out of reach.
“The diver is one of our people,” Sora said. “I don’t understand. Aren’t we fighting so we can make all of Kichona happier?”
The ridges on Prince Gin’s face tightened as he pursed his lips together. Was he thinking? Was he considering what Sora had said?
A few moments later, he grunted and walked to the edge of the cliff. “Black Widows,” he said, “stop what you’re doing.” He didn’t have to yell. Somehow, his voice just carried on the wind down to them.
Tidepool pouted. “Why? You’ve always allowed us playthings.”
“That was in Shinowana. But this is our home country, and that diver is one of us. Save your appetites for the war abroad. Then you’ll have free rein to do what you want. It won’t be much longer that you have to wait.”
The women grumbled but backed off the diver. They rode off on a wave Tidepool commanded.
“As for you,” Prince Gin said to the diver, who stood shivering but immobile from his encounter with the Black Widows, “they didn’t hurt you. Everything is all right. Yes?”
The man looked up in wonder. A smile broke across his face, and his body stopped trembling. “Your Highness. You’ve come home.”
“I have.”
The man nodded. “Then yes, everything is all right.”
Prince Gin waved his hand, and the diver quickly gathered his oysters and pearls and dove back into the sea, swimming in the direction of home.
“Is that better?” the prince said, turning to Sora.
She saw him as if through a haze of heat. At the same time, a swell of ambition and purpose washed through her, and she couldn’t recall why she’d protested a minute ago. How silly to question the Dragon Prince. He knew what he was doing. He had Kichona’s best interests at heart.
She looked down at the sleeve of her uniform, where the green triplicate whorls of the ryuu reflected the sunlight off the surface of the water. She smiled and traced the embroidery. So beautiful. Like pride and power woven straight into the threads.
“Yes, everything is better,” Sora answered the prince.
“Good. Because I have a mission for you and Virtuoso.”
“A mission? For Hana and me?” Happiness bubbled up inside Sora, like a cauldron of sweet tapioca soup, overflowing. The Dragon Prince wanted her to do something for him. And with her sister. What an embarrassment of riches!
“That’s the kind of enthusiasm I like. You’ll have to pack quickly. I need you to leave within the hour.”
Sora didn’t care. She would have left yesterday if she could.
“What’s our mission?” she asked.
Prince Gin looked at the ground and kicked a rock over the cliff’s edge. “You’re going to assassinate the empress.”
Sora nodded. “It’s time the empress’s rule was put to an end.”
“This is the most important task right now,” he said. “Are you ready for it?”
She could hardly wait to run back to the ship, grab her things, and go. She had to put her palms on her legs to force herself to stand in place for just another minute, to have some dignity in front of the Dragon Prince.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Sora said. “I’m more than ready.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Sora tore through the treetops, chasing after Hana, who sprang from branch to branch as if she’d been born a panther. “You call that fast? I call it pitiful,” Hana yelled, only half teasing as she darted into a hole between cypress branches and emerged several tiers below.
Sora concentrated even harder. It wasn’t that her legs were too slow. It was that she wasn’t completely accustomed yet to the way ryuu saw the world, everything brighter and sharper, as if she’d been myopic before and had only now discovered this marvelous invention called spectacles.
Of course, there were no spectacles, not real ones. And