“Thank you, but I need . . . I don’t know what I need. I have to think. I can’t. . . . It’s too much.” She ran away from the Society post and into the dense woods that surrounded Paro Village.

Sora kept running. She shoved through vines and ducked under half-fallen trees. She zigzagged through rocks and pushed onward, even when thorns snagged the hem of her trousers and scratched the skin beneath bloody.

Finally, her legs turned to jelly from exhaustion, and she sagged against a boulder, shaded by a scraggly oak. She buried her face in her hands.

It was quiet here, not even a bird chirping, but still, she noticed when the breeze shifted ever so slightly above her.

“You followed me,” she said, without looking up at the branches far overhead.

Daemon alighted from the tree and swooped to the forest floor. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.” He sat beside her and put his arm around her again. “I’m so sorry, Sora.”

She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Instead, fury balled up her insides. “How could Prince Gin do this?” Sora pounded her fists against Daemon’s broad chest. “What kind of monster can so cavalierly damn other people’s souls for eternity just to get what he wants?”

Daemon let her keep hitting him. “The same kind of monster,” he said, “who can sacrifice two hundred innocents and watch them cut out their own hearts.”

“I hate him,” Sora said, each blow landing on Daemon with a thump. “I hate him I hate him I hate him!”

It’s all too much, she thought. Why bother fighting at all? Why not let Prince Gin do what he wanted instead? If he succeeded, he’d bring his dream of the Evermore to reality. Sora would be immortal. She wouldn’t have to worry about her soul being condemned to the hells.

But as soon as Sora thought it, her conscience flared up, so hot that she actually startled. How could she have believed—even for a second—that allowing the Dragon Prince to win was an option? Too many people would die on the quest to achieve the Evermore, and every ryuu who was killed would spend eternity being tortured in the hells. It was selfishness that drove Prince Gin, and that wasn’t what Sora was made of.

She collapsed against Daemon. He held her as she shook in silent sobs, still no tears but sadness nonetheless.

“Distract me,” Sora said. “Tell me about your training. How has it been going with Liga?”