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Before I could reply, she dove out the window. With a smile perched on my lips, I set a lantern by the window and counted the seven stars of the sacred crane.
Maybe it was my imagination, but tonight they seemed to burn brighter than all the stars in the entire sky.
I smelled the fires at dawn.
The air had gone thick, and I woke up coughing and kicking off my blankets. Seconds later, the palace bells clanged, and the war drums soon followed.
I hurried to the window, and my chest constricted as I searched the horizon. It was the darkest dawn I’d ever seen; the sun was pale enough that I could stare at it without blinking. Clouds splattered the horizon like dark ink. I didn’t have a view of the Holy Mountains, but the billowing smoke guided my eyes to a flare of unnatural red light.
The forests were burning. And not with any ordinary fire. The flames were a garish red, as black at their core as a starless night. It was a blaze I knew all too well, one that could not easily be quenched, except by magic. Demonfire.
If you will not enter the fire, then Kiata will burn in your place, the priestess had warned me.
And so it had begun.
If I didn’t help, the demonfire would spread. It would destroy everything.
“Tell Takkan to meet me in Raikama’s garden,” I instructed Kiki, stuffing her beak with a hastily written message. “My brothers, too. Quickly!”
I dressed in record time, lacing the leather armor Hasho had lent me over my chest and pulling on a helmet. Then I scooped up the knapsack filled with paper birds and slid the mirror of truth inside. On my way out, I rapped loudly on my brothers’ doors. Miracles of Ashmiyu’en, they all answered, ready to go.
“It’s a trap,” said Andahai, speaking what was on everyone’s mind. “The priestesses want to draw you out.”
“One lick of the fire and you’ll turn to ashes,” Yotan agreed.
“We agreed on this yesterday,” I said. “Nothing changes just because it’s demonfire. I have to go.”
“You waste time by bickering.” Qinnia appeared in the hall, one hand protecting her belly, which was just starting to show. “Let her go.”
“You should be resting,” Andahai said, his voice softening from firm to tender.
“If I weren’t with child, I’d come with you,” Qinnia said to me, ignoring her husband. One of the tiny paper birds she’d folded had fallen out of my knapsack, and she tucked it back inside. “May you have the luck of the dragons today, my sister. Come back to us safely.”
I hugged her, and then off I went before anyone else could argue.
Takkan arrived at Raikama’s garden at the same time as me. Like my brothers, he was sheathed in his sentinel’s armor, but only the sight of Takkan made my stomach flutter. He’d tied his dark hair back, and I took in everything about his face. The rounded outline of his ears, the sharp slope of his cheekbones, his chiseled jaw. Two of the gold-spun cords knotted over his shoulders were tangled, and I combed them with my fingers, trying not to blush as my gaze fell to the steel plates over his chest. “Good morning.”
He gifted me with my favorite smile, a beat before tossing me a rice dumpling. “Breakfast,” he said, throwing one to each of my brothers too. “They’re from yesterday, so they might be a touch stale, but I figured we’d need our strength. Shiori, especially.”
“I don’t understand how we’ll meet up with Benkai,” Reiji said. “We should be gathering our mounts and joining the rest of the soldiers on the way to the mountains.”
“You’ll be glad you didn’t bring your horse,” Takkan replied, exchanging a look with me. “The stairs are narrow.”
“Stairs?” Wandei’s brows knit with confusion. “I don’t see stairs.”
“I trusted you when you said you had everything planned out,” said Andahai, “but—”
“You forget our stepmother was a sorceress,” I interrupted. “A very powerful and capable sorceress. Are we ready?”
As Takkan and my brothers murmured their assent, Hasho went to the pond. He had also thought ahead, and he dipped a sheaf of handkerchiefs into the water.
“For the smoke,” he said, handing each of us a damp cloth.
He sat again by the pool. A trio of larks had settled on his shoulder, and he let out a low whistle as he stroked their feathers with his wing. He could feel Raikama’s magic, just as I could.
I folded the handkerchief into my pocket and took one last bite of my rice dumpling. Then I gestured my brothers to the pool. “Watch.”
Holding up Raikama’s ball of red thread, I cried, “Take me to the Tears of Emuri’en.”
