Fairy and Broomstick nodded. Daemon lagged, but then he kicked himself in the proverbial ass and got himself together. So what if he’d been a magical wolf for one brief, glorious night? Sora had always been better at this stuff than he was. Things were no different now. He could handle this.

Daemon, Fairy, and Broomstick kept watch from the base of the Citadel walls while Sora ran silently up the stone steps. When she was near the top of the staircase, they triple-checked that there weren’t any ryuu in sight.

She took the last steps at a full sprint and jumped.

Sora landed on the parapet, disappearing from view behind the crenellations of the wall. Daemon’s heart stopped. There could have been ryuu hidden there, waiting to ambush her.

But a moment later, Sora popped up.

“Thank the gods,” Daemon whispered.

She pointed to Fairy.

“Here I go,” Fairy said as Sora began to float her up, just as she’d done with the piece of Rose Palace. Hopefully, though, she wouldn’t drop any of them. Like the piece of Rose Palace.

Daemon remembered then that Rose Palace was now a pile of rubble. What stood in its place was the Dragon Prince’s bloodstone castle. His stomach turned.

Sora deposited Fairy successfully beside her and began to work on Broomstick. It was a more wobbly effort, since he was twice Fairy’s size, but a minute later he, too, was safely posted on watch at the top of the Citadel’s entrance.

Daemon stepped forward. He thought he might feel something at the touch of ryuu magic, but other than levitating off the ground, nothing was different at all. Ryuu magic was even subtler than taiga magic, at least as far as he could tell. Or maybe it didn’t affect him because he was essentially a parcel being transported from one place to the next, like the citrus crate Sora had hidden in when they were on Prince Gin’s ship.

She set him down carefully on the battlement. “Everyone all right?” Sora asked.

“Yes and no,” Broomstick said.

Daemon crept up to where his friend was peering through the crenellations at the Citadel below.

“Daggers,” Daemon cursed. The ryuu weren’t up at the castle anymore, as they had been after the battle. They were swarming here at the Society’s headquarters, at least a thousand of them taking it over as though the Citadel was theirs. Sharpening swords in the armory courtyard. Training in the sparring arena. Meeting in the outdoor amphitheater. They just hadn’t been guarding the entrance because there was no one—other than Daemon, Sora, Fairy, and Broomstick—to attack.

And the ryuu seemed more organized than Sora had accounted for.

“We need to split up now,” Sora said. “Rendezvous in Jade Forest in three hours. But whoever finds Empress Aki first, don’t wait. Grab her and get out. All right?”

“All right,” Fairy said.