“Emperor Gin . . .” Hana noticed Sora frown, and she quickly corrected herself. “Prince Gin isn’t easy to pin down. Sometimes he’s in his study mapping out attacks, sometimes he’s at the Citadel inspecting and coaching the new ryuu, and sometimes he just sits on his throne, staring at the mural on the ceiling.”

“He stares at the ceiling?” Sora asked. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

“The mural is of the moment he stole ryuu magic from the afterlife and came back from the dead,” Hana explained. “He thinks it was a message from the gods that he was given a second chance at life—with even greater magic—in order to shepherd his people and his country to the future they deserved.”

Sora grew painfully silent. Hana stopped, too, when she realized what else that mural represented—the moment Prince Gin had damned their souls.

A ship sank in Hana’s gut. She had grown up thinking he was a visionary. He was wrong, but it would still take her time to fully process that he wasn’t the gods-blessed leader she’d been told he was since she was six years old. She couldn’t say this out loud, though. It would seem like lingering loyalty, and that wasn’t it at all.

They had to cram that soul pearl back into his body and kill him. He was too powerful, too much of a threat, to be allowed to survive.

“When this is all over,” Sora said quietly, “we’ll blow up that mural.”

“I’ll help,” Hana said.

After a moment, Sora pointed back at Hana’s 3-D model of the castle, getting back to business. “Given how hard Prince Gin is to find, we’ll have to be flexible in our approach. But maybe the soul pearl can act as a guide. It seems to be attracted to his magic, and it went crazy in my pocket when he was actually right in front of us at Dera Falls. Good thing it’s small, or he might have seen it moving.”

“It would be really good if the soul pearl can help lead us. So”—Hana pointed to one of the towers—“if Wolf is back in time, he’ll drop us off up here, and we’ll either follow the pearl or make our way through to the most likely places in the castle.” She shifted the model to highlight where the ryuu were stationed—there were more guards now since Wolf and Fairy sabotaged the shipyard and broke into the prince’s study.

Sora studied the map. “And you know the patrol schedules, you said?”

“Yes. I came up with them.”

“Good. Depending on what time it is and how long it’s taking us to track down Prince Gin, we can change our path inside to avoid the ryuu with the most difficult powers.”