The girl had managed to get past his guards and break into his vault. She had absconded with Gin’s soul and now carried her lug of a friend in tow like a giant sack of taro roots. Zomuri laughed again. He had to admit, it was quite a show; he was almost tempted to applaud.

Even better, she believed the boy had water from the lake in his lungs. But he didn’t. Humans needed only a hint of self-doubt planted in their minds before insecurity ran rampant, overtaking everything like weeds. It was the beauty of the Lake of Nightmares—one swim and most mortals were done for.

The girl, however, had escaped that fate, and so she would need to be punished for her theft.

But Zomuri could do that at any time.

He switched the vision in his dish of blood to show the young emperor.

The ryuu had fixed the holes in the warships and were now transporting them to the coast. Gin supervised their swift progress. They would be in Toredo by day’s end, and from there, they’d be able to launch an attack on their first target: the island of Thoma. Gin certainly was zealous about conquering those seven kingdoms.

No doubt the girl and her friends would try to stop the emperor. Zomuri contemplated what to do, if anything. He could crush the girl now. But she was feisty, and her antics were interesting in their unpredictability. And even though she had gotten hold of the soul pearl, the emperor would remain invincible as long as the soul remained outside his body. Gin had plenty of fight in him and didn’t need a god to intervene.

Zomuri decided he could be angry at the girl later for stealing from him, but at the moment, he wanted to be entertained. And so the god conjured a chair lined with lion’s fur and settled in. It was going to be amusing to watch how this mortal theater played out.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Fairy was a mess of tears as she paced around the chestnut grove. “Something’s wrong. It felt like Broomstick was losing his mind—our gemina connection was all chaos and black smoke and then it suddenly went blank. Where did he go? What happened? Do you think . . . ? Oh gods.”

Wolf tried to catch her, to put his arms around her and comfort her, but she shook away from him and continued her frenetic pace around the clearing. It was as if standing still would allow all the fear to catch up to her. She had to keep moving.

“Something definitely happened,” he said. “My connection with Sora is taut, like a fishing line. She’s worried—I can feel it in the tension of the bond—but at the same time, I can tell it’s not despair.”

“Why can’t I feel Broomstick, then?”