Good, Fairy thought. Come closer. Because I have one more trick up my sleeve. She pried at one of the corpse’s fingers that was mostly bone, not flesh, and snapped it off.

Skeleton stalked over to Fairy and bent down, face close to hers. He wasn’t worried about her fighting back this time. The corpse had her prisoner.

Fairy used her last bits of energy and breath to stab him with the corpse’s finger bone in his uninjured eye.

Skeleton howled in pain. “You bitch!”

Without vision, his command on ryuu magic vanished. The corpse released Fairy, and they both tumbled to the ground. The two skeleton warriors collapsed into piles of bones.

Fairy wheezed and swallowed air, doubling over until her vision cleared.

But Skeleton wouldn’t give up that easily. He drew a sword. He’d still be able to fight. Like Fairy, he was trained for hand-to-hand combat in the dark, where vision wasn’t required.

“No, you don’t.” Fairy drew a stout knife from her pants leg and threw it into the artery in his throat. Skeleton cursed but kept advancing.

She scuttled to where he’d confiscated her stilettos and threw each of those into other major arteries.

Skeleton staggered forward.

Then he stilled and toppled to the ground, right on top of his corpse warrior.

Fairy fell to her knees, overcome with relief.

Daemon’s orb surfaced from the grotto pool. His eyes were wide as his sphere opened.

“Did you do that?” he asked.

Fairy blinked at Skeleton, the corpse, and the piles of bones. Then she nodded.

“He tried to kiss me,” Fairy said. “But this is what happens when you go around touching girls without their permission.”

Chapter Fifty

Sora was curled into a ball in the bottom of her orb, sobbing so hard she threw herself into coughing fits that left her gasping. Tears and snot dripped down her face, and she didn’t care that her orb was passing through a waterfall. She didn’t notice that their spheres carried them through a deep pool. She didn’t try to get up when the orb opened onto the shore of a damp grotto.

Mama was dead, and Hana had Papa as a prisoner.

Strong arms slipped beneath Sora and lifted her. She couldn’t uncurl her body to see who it was. The only thing holding her together was the ferocity with which she tucked into herself.

“I’m here,” Daemon said, cradling Sora to his chest as he carried her out of the orb. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

Sora cried even harder.

He held her closer and didn’t let go.

Chapter Fifty-One

Tink, tink, tink.

Aki hit her metal spoon against the rock wall at the end of her tunnel.

Clank, clank, clank, something—or someone—answered in return.