Aki tried to look as stupid as he thought she was, and scared. Of course she hadn’t actually thought she could capture the ryuu. But if she’d put together something that was obviously an alarm, they would have suspected her. So Aki had purposely rigged a pathetic-looking trap because she knew they would think her dumb enough to try, and that would prevent them from realizing that she was smart enough to have something better, like a tunnel in which to hide. And the glass jars did double duty, serving not only as counterweights to hold the net up until her trip wire was triggered but also to alert her when she had company.

The man glowered at Aki. “I was planning to drop in and introduce you to your new guards before we went back outside,” he said. “But now you’ve made me angry. So I think maybe we’ll stay. Meet Bone One and Bone Two. There are hundreds more just like them outside the acid falls.”

Aki’s mouth hung open as two more men climbed out from the bedsheet net. She hadn’t paid attention to them before, only saw their figures out of the corner of her eye. But now she saw that they weren’t men at all.

They were skeletons.

Bone One pointed a sword at her. Bone Two circled to the other side of Aki, his movement as graceful as if he were still alive.

“How . . . ?”

“They don’t call me Skeleton for no reason. I can control bones.”

“A-and you dug up dead bodies as your minions?” She gaped at the moving corpses.

The ryuu smirked. “The Society of Taigas’ cemetery, to be exact.”

Bile rose in Aki’s throat at the desecration of the taigas’ hallowed burial ground. But she didn’t say anything, because a third body emerged from beneath the net. This one, however, was fully fleshed out and still wore a taiga uniform. When she turned her head to reveal her face, Aki gasped.

It was Bayonet, one of her former Imperial Guards, but slightly rotted. Maggots had taken residence in Bayonet’s eye sockets, and the eyeballs themselves had sunken and shriveled like cherries left out for too long in the summer sun.

“She can’t hear you,” Skeleton said, his satisfaction dripping like grease off his voice. “She’s just a sack of bones that moves at my command. A vicious sack, though.”

The corpse stalked up to Aki until she was mere inches away.

“Bayonet,” Aki said, “if there’s any humanity left inside you—”

The former Imperial Guard opened her mouth to reveal a pit of worms.

Aki lurched backward. Then she fell to her hands and knees and threw up all over the grotto floor.

“Pitiful,” Skeleton said. “I expected more from a former empress than a childish net and a weak stomach. You’re not anything close to a threat.”