The Dragon’s Eye is book two of the Yokai Calling series and a direct continuation of Spirit of the Dragon, so go read the excerpt from the previous installment first if you missed it!

Our beloved Hidekazu and Masanori return in The Dragon’s Eye, along with an additional point of view… Aihi! This story takes several themes explored in the previous book and amps them up a bit. Prepare yourself for a story of darkness, magic, and adventure with the next part of the Yokai Calling series!

Lacotl’s sinister game is in full swing.
The White Warlock wants his Dragon Eye back.
Both lead to the library where long-forgotten demons dwell… but no knowledge comes for free.

 

Warlocks and their draconic bloodlines once controlled the sun and stars. Beneath the banner of the Dragon Goddess, they conquered Yumihari with the help of the Dragon Eyes.

 

Dragon Eyes have been missing since the fall of the Warlock Empire. Until Hidekazu and Masanori found one in the hands of Lacotl, the dark sorcerer responsible for kidnapping noblewomen from Tsukiko and plunging Seiryuu into his dark game.

Princess Aihi and the twins refuse to abide by his plots. But when Lacotl plays his hand and tragedy strikes the palace, the trio has no choice but to pursue the secrets of the Dragon Eyes.

 

In their quest to unlock the artifact’s power, the demons they face will test their friendship.

 

Push their abilities to the limit.

 

The White Warlock pursues them, hunting after his stolen Eye. They aren’t the thieves who took it.

 

But they are the ones who will be punished.

Prologue

Masanori

Blood painted the audience chamber’s delicate rice paper walls.

Four corpses lay in a heap near the entrance, their silken robes speckled with scarlet. The scent of burnt hair mingled with the pollution of copper and fresh death.

Blue fabric spilled around a crawling woman on the other side of the room. She inched toward the door, reaching for her escape route with trembling hands. She pressed against a maple panel and tried to stand. Her fingers left crimson smears over the watercolour dragons beneath, and the creatures snapped at her with ferocious maws, unable to break through the paper. She collapsed beneath the weight of her clothes.

“I’m sorry. P-please—” Empress Aihi started, a half-gurgled sob escaping her throat.

Masanori’s hand wrapped around her ankle and yanked.

Aihi lurched forward, her thin shoulder tearing the fragile wall. Her foot lashed blindly at her attacker, torn silk flapping around her legs. She slammed into the tatami with a hard thump, landing in a pool of red. Blood from her victims splashed into her face. Masanori pulled her across the ground and away from the former Genshu clan members. She would pay for her crimes, and the Goddess mocked them both by giving him no choice but to be the one to enact punishment.

But if he didn’t, who else would stand up to her tyranny?

“Please, Masanori. Don’t—you don’t have to do this…” Aihi’s voice shook as though she were a frightened child, but when he flipped her onto her back, her eyes betrayed her wickedness and deceit. Fake tears drenched her cheeks, mixing with her blotchy kohl, gold flakes, and speckles of blood.

“You regret nothing.” Masanori straddled her legs, locking them in place with his thighs. He gripped her wrists to keep her from pushing him off. Her crown of peacock feathers was crushed and smothered with gore, but the purple mist hovering around her face was more concerning. Tendrils wove through the bells and ribbons threaded through her long braids, veiling her in a halo of corruption. Fog spread upward to obscure the rest of the room. The rest of the blood.

Her mouth revealed a sadistic smile. “Why would I?”

“Do you have any idea how many people you hurt? How many you will hurt in the years to come, with all your plans? How many lives did you sacrifice for this game of yours? Seiryuu isn’t a Go board. The world isn’t a field for you to push game pieces around on. We’re… I’m not one of your pieces anymore.”

“You think so small, dear Masa. You always have.”

The Dragon Goddess, Shirashi, had planned Aihi’s future, the role she would play in the renewal of Seiryuu. But she and the Goddess both had betrayed Masanori. Manipulated and used him for their own devices, and his family paid the price. Lavender energy coiled around his wrists, and he waved the tendrils off. It would be so easy to wrap his hands around Aihi’s throat and end this nightmare for good. But he… she was still his sister. Even after she’d shamelessly performed so much evil.

“I’m thinking about the future of our people.” Masanori’s head spun from the thickening smoke that invaded his lungs with each breath. His vision blurred between staring into purple nothingness and at Aihi’s bloody grin beneath him.

“You don’t sound so sure of yourself.” Her lips twitched as if trying to restrain laughter. “When did you change your mind about being by my side? You could not harm me even if you wished to. You are bound by your honour. A sacred oath. Our spirits are linked, and you know what happens to those who betray a promise to the Goddess.”

Masanori flung a hand to the side, and storm-blue energy shot from his irezumi and through his fingers. Lightning tore across the room. A shard of glass flew from the floor and into his palm. “Our oaths are only sacred in the eyes of Shirashi, and you’ve forsaken her. As have I. I wonder what that means for the two of us?”

As his shaking hands squeezed the glass, steaming blood gushed between his bone-white knuckles. The voices of spirits whispered through the fog surrounding him and Aihi, their taunts urging him to finish her, to put an end to her gross abuse of power.

Finish her.

Fulfill your purpose.

Fulfill your Calling.

Yet still, as Masanori stared into her wide eyes, a trickle of doubt broke through the noise. What if none of this was her fault? Corruption had bested them before. Masanori had reacted on impulse, not certainty. Rage, not calculation.

“You are thinking far too much. Come now, Masa, you are not Hide. Why torture yourself like this?”

A growl escaped Masanori, and he tightened his grip on the shard. But he hesitated to finish her. Why was she so confident when she was on the floor, a shard of glass ready to plunge into her guts?

There was still a way to uncover the truth about what had happened to her before he made another mistake. He extended his senses outward, searching for Aihi’s energy. He pulled strands closer to his spirit, wrapping hers around his. She screamed the second they made contact, but he kept on, sifting through threads of power in search of a reason to let her live. She thrashed beneath him, and he put more of his weight down on her. It was like she wanted him to kill her.

Lilac spread over his arms, strands fed to Masanori from the core of Aihi’s spirit. He recoiled from the familiar dark purple—Lacotl’s mark.

The kan’thir and his game had soured her so thoroughly that her spirit was stained with his taint. Could she ever come back from that?

The answer came before the question fully formed in his mind: No, she couldn’t. They couldn’t heal the corrupted aki, and so she couldn’t heal herself, either. No one could.

This was the Goddess’ punishment for Masanori’s failures. He hung his head. He should have seen Lacotl’s hand in Aihi’s actions. He should have been the one to protect her, to stop the kan’thir’s plans from coming to fruition.

“What are you waiting for, dear Masa? I thought you were here to kill me. Or have you seen enough death today?” Aihi said. “Killing me will not bring them back.”

Masanori glanced away from her on instinct, back to the heap of bodies. His vision blurred behind the image of his family’s lifeless bodies. His mother’s face, her cheeks burned beyond recognition through Aihi’s torture. Hidekazu…

This time, when the corrupted mist curled around Masanori’s arms, he embraced the energy. A chill cracked through his ribs as the tendrils took root. Violet coils exploded through his arms and wove around his heart, tightening with each heartbeat. The darkness gave him the strength to erase its kindred, locking his morals and mind in the depths of his body. He drifted further inside himself with every pulse, and before he realized the prison he’d let himself fall in, it was too late.

Masanori pushed back against his internal gate. Foggy tendrils strangled him, squeezing out his last bits of life with each act of resistance.

Right up until the moment he became the corruption. Worse than Aihi, who was only contaminated by a single strand.

The tendrils became denser, constricting his spirit and wreathing his head, much like Aihi’s. Masanori prayed to Shirashi, not for strength and resolve or a steady hand, but to make her watch the result of her treachery. She was the reason Aihi had fallen from grace. The reason Masanori had tumbled after her.

He plunged the bloodstained shard into Aihi’s chest.

She screamed, her now freed arms flailing to push him off. Masanori did not budge. Her hand beat at him, but her wrath was but a candle beside the eternal sun smouldering within him.

Masanori withdrew the glass. This was for Hidekazu. He stabbed. For their mother.

The sharp fragment pierced her again. Scarlet drizzled from her lips.

For their father. And again. For Hana.

And again. For every other poor spirit she slew without cause.

Blood splattered Masanori’s face, gushed over his shaking hands, slicked the tatami floors. Aihi’s scream dwindled to a gurgle. A glossy sheen formed over her eyes, their light fading. Her arms fell to her sides as her muscles failed. When she released her final breath, he squeezed his eyes shut.

His palms were cut to the bone from the glass, but he only felt the thick wetness on his fingers. Aihi was dead. At last, he could put Lacotl’s corruption to bed. He could stop a thousand wars before they began. He could reverse the damage she did to Seiryuu in her short reign.

Aihi twitched, groping for his hand. Masanori flinched and opened his eyes.

“Ma… sa…” she said as a dim light sparked in her eyes and she became reanimated. “I thought… I thought I meant something to you.”

The blood soaking her skin and kimono sunk back into the gouges in her chest and stomach, the wounds stitching flesh together and closing. She was supposed to be dead. Masanori had heard her take her last breath. But she curled her fingers around the glass in his grip and tried to wrest the fragment away.

Masanori choked on a sob. His prayers for the end had failed; the Goddess still spurned him, still mocked him after all these years. Why? Why couldn’t she see this was what they all needed? Aihi would destroy Shirashi’s legacy. She would see the Warlock Empire renewed in all its bloody glory. That couldn’t happen.

He wrapped his other hand around Aihi’s and pressed the splinter back into her heart.

She gasped, convulsing. “Oh, Great Warlock, it hurts.”—Masanori twisted the glass—“It’s not t-too late…” Her head fell back. “…to stop…”

He ignored her, plunging the shard over and over. Aihi’s lips parted, and the light once again left her eyes.

Masanori wept. He wept for a thousand failures over the years. How he could have stopped this sooner, long before her death became a necessity.

“I wish… Aihi, I’m sorry, I-I’m sorry…”

He wiped his tears, replacing them with ruby stains across his cheekbones. Aihi deserved to die, had to, for the sake of Yumihari’s future. Still, he loved the memory of the woman she’d once been. His sister, not by blood, but by choice.

She remained still, but Masanori stabbed one last time. The glass slipped from his hands, splashing in the crimson puddle beside them. He shuddered as he stared at his mutilated flesh. Blood glided back into his veins, and the muscles, tendons, and skin repaired themselves.

Aihi’s blood-slick hand grabbed his wrist. His eyes snapped to meet hers as her face twisted. Lips black as coal, teeth polished to a bloody grin. Her eyes were wild, bloodshot, irises slimmed to slits.

“You are not sorry either, Masanori… you turned into a killer long ago. Or did you forget?” She laughed, maniacal, reminiscent of her kan’thir patron. “Did you forget what we made you?”

Their toxic words rang in Masanori’s ears, but he blocked them out. He only listened to the darkness in his spirit now, the corruption leaking into the depths of him. It said this needed to end. It didn’t matter how many times he had to kill her. He was stuck here until she stayed dead.

He lunged for the glass as Aihi sat up.

“You must try harder than that if you truly want to kill me, brother.”

The shard bit into his palm as he twisted and jammed the fragment into her torso again and again until he ceased to exist.

She did not bother to struggle. She would come back, after all. It would be the two of them, here, trapped in death and madness for eternity. That was what she wanted.

“He will always win…” Aihi sucked in a deep breath. “You can’t stop him.”

CHAPTER 1

Aihi

ONE MONTH EARLIER

Black, crescent-shaped bars of solid ki suspended the infamous kan’thir, Lacotl, in the centre of the occupied Warlock Cell. Aihi stole a glance at her prisoner while she paced across the chamber.

Visiting Lacotl in the cells beneath the Cedar Palace became a sickening habit. An unfortunate necessity. For although the kan’thir hung in their prison, no bushi or spell could make him speak. Only Aihi’s presence loosened his tongue, and still, he said little of value about the women he’d slain or his plans overall.

Without his skull mask, he was less of an enigma. Dried blood matted the brown fur on his goat-like face and his dilated, horizontal pupils focused on her. Gashes in his arms opened and closed as his body moved with each breath. He seemed weak: A pathetic afterimage of the creature Aihi fought in the Silent Hills, but he was still dangerous.

“What do you wait for, princess? Why so quiet? Taking up my nap time,” Lacotl said in his familiar singsong voice.

“You will pay for each life you took. Every woman you stole from Tsukiko, every spirit tainted by your hand since you first came into your power.” Aihi halted her pacing to address the maddening creature for the first time since her arrival. “Whether now, in a month, or six years, Shirashi will receive justice. I will be the one to strike you down on behalf of her and your victims.”

“No, no, no, no dying.”

“If you give me nothing, we will execute you one day or another, perhaps after a decade of torture. Tell me, why do you insist on delaying the inevitable?”

“Oh you know why, silly princess, will say no more,” Lacotl grumbled.

“Yes. Your ridiculous game.”

Aihi’s instinct was to sneer at how he played with human lives like toys, but she restrained herself. She could use his misguided conceptions to her advantage. If she levelled to his understanding, perhaps she could reel out more information.

“You sacrificed lives of the Dragon Goddess’ chosen.” She folded her hands in front of her, putting on a show of confidence. “Their spirits charged the corruption within the primary aki now also resting within these halls. How does altering the crystal’s energy serve your game?”

Lacotl’s lips peeled back to reveal his yellowed teeth like the snarl of a rabid dog. “Ask for so much, give so little in return. Rude, rude, rude, princess. Why so rude? Stealing things, disrupting my plans, and this…” He lolled his elongated face from side to side, emphasizing the extent of his restricted movement.

“You may just die in this cell, forgotten to the world above. These walls may well become your legacy. But that does not bother you at all… no, you wanted to come here, didn’t you?”

His smile, if you could call it that, became vicious. Nasty. Aihi wasn’t sure how, but she’d scored a reaction out of him.

“Never forgotten. We are eternal, unlike your warlocks. Cannot blame a tourist, can you? Wanted to see the famous Warlock Cells. No other way to get here.”

Aihi pursed her lips. Couldn’t he be a good goat for once and bleat out all the answers she needed? But of course, that would be far too easy.

“Who is ‘we’?”

Though Aihi caught his tiny slip, she had already suspected he had more allies in Seiryuu.

Lacotl’s wicked smile deepened, but he stayed voiceless.

If Aihi were to get anywhere with him, her questions had to be less direct, more misleading. Yet he was the trickster; he would see through any lies she told. A sour tang grew in her mouth. Did she have no choice but to go along with his delirious obsession of calling his murders a game?

“You demand compensation for the information in your devious little head, but in my eyes, you already stole your payment. You haven’t forgotten about the women you kidnapped, correct? Or the twenty-six you murdered? What about the peculiar artifact I found within your cavern home? You stole from my people long before I took from you.”

“Wrong, wrong,” Lacotl warbled. “Your people owe a debt to mine. Overdue by hundreds, no, thousands of years. I collect, I do, I am.”

“You are a murderer and a thief, a sorcerer bent on corrupting the will of the Godde—”

“The Warlock Empire butchered—”

“We are not the Warlock Empire! The people of today owe you nothing. We owe you nothing!”

Lacotl cackled with glee. “Oh, princess, so much anger! Let it free, let it free!” He yanked his chains, and purple flecks of ki appeared near his wrists. The metal handcuffs glowed white-hot and absorbed the energy.

The energy-sealing restraints were perhaps redundant in a dungeon where prisoners were stripped of their ability to use the Goddess’ ki, but no one understood Lacotl’s strange energy. His corruption was not rooted in Shirashi’s grace but a much darker malevolence. Ensuring he stayed in this prison was of utmost importance.

Thankfully, it seemed the Warlock Cells severed him from his powers, too.

She drew herself back in, and the crimson ki circling her arms flit away. Letting Lacotl get to her was a huge mistake. However, few were aware of the extent of the Warlock Empire’s sins; even Aihi couldn’t claim to understand the whole story.

Her parents had fought to better Seiryuu and overcome the filthy history of their nation’s past. All Aihi knew was that the empire was gone, and the world was better for its absence. Soon, Aihi would wear the legacy of their forebears and the new one built by her parents on her shoulders. She already did within the palace walls.

“Whatever slight our ancestors paid your kind, there is no one left to provide recompense,” Aihi said with a more measured voice. “You are the one in prison for mass murder. I will not apologize for the slights of the Warlock Empire.”

“Murder? No, no, not murder. They have evolved to a more…. mmm…. useful form.”

Aihi’s hands flexed again. She wanted to understand his motivations, but she could not stand to let him trivialize the deaths of her friends, the noblewomen of Shirashi.

Burning hot ki snaked from her irezumi, ready to beat this kan’thir bloody. Until she met Lacotl and learned of Guard Captain Akihiro’s complicity, Aihi never thought she was capable of such wanton violence against an individual who could not fight back. But the pair tested her limits, no, forced her beyond any conceivable and arbitrary limitations she placed on her capacity to harm another living being.

Those limits had been erased the second Lacotl lay a hand on Torra, Aihi’s now-deceased beloved.

However, Lacotl revelled in the guards’ punishments as if he enjoyed them. Further torture seemed pointless for the time being. There had to be another way to get to him.

The rage pulsing in her veins ebbed when she reconsidered what Lacotl had said: the first two hints at what he was after. He believed that what he did was justified because of the Warlock Empire. He sacrificed women loyal to Shirashi to the aki, corrupting divine energy with their spirits, but why?

“They are dead. Spirits destroyed. How is that more valuable than life?”

Blood-tinged slobber trickled from Lacotl’s lips and chin. “Always repeating myself. It’s for the game, the game, the wonderful game.”

Aihi lifted an arm. Spirals of water collected around the mizu kigou in her palm and spun toward the kan’thir’s face. Maybe there wasn’t any point in torturing him, but inflicting a little pain would make her feel more in control. The scalding current stopped inches from his snout, droplets splattering his dangling body. He flinched. Steam rose from his wet fur, and a sulphuric scent tainted the air as it burned.

“Your life is in my hands. As is your death. Do you really want to push me?” Aihi waited, but when Lacotl said nothing, she splashed him with the hot water. “I know it is all for your game, you wretched monster. What I want to know is how destroying their spirits helps you at all.”

The kan’thir thrashed in his bonds, making a spluttering, guttural sound before gasping out another taunt. “Little princess, pretending she is strong when she is oh-so-lost without her little friend.” The whirlpool of boiling water spiralled quicker, and liquid spattered over Lacotl. The kan’thir hissed. “Come, come, why pretend? She was part of you, and now, she’s gone. I took her.”

“How dare you bring her into this. Killing her wasn’t enough?”

Aihi raised her hand to spray him again. A wrathful river roiled between them, filling the room with mist. The humidity dampened her kimono and tainted the fine layers of brocaded silk. She wanted to boil him alive. Scald him.

She could torture Lacotl for the rest of his days, but to what end? That would make her no better than him. Sparks of violet ki illuminated his manacles as he struggled against the burning heat. His sanity flickered in his eyes, diminishing as though on the verge of reverting to an animalistic nature. The bands of black energy expanded to keep him contained.

No one could reverse what Lacotl had done. When Aihi was so close to achieving results, losing her temper now would only jeopardize the progress she had made so far. She let her arm fall. The steaming torrent collapsed to the floor as the whirlpool disintegrated.

“Why did you pick Torra?” Aihi said. Sweat and hot water pooled on her skin, slipping away along with her patience.

The kan’thir jerked and fell still, his pupils shifting to focus on her. “She was… for you, yes, to bring you to me. All part of the game, each one, each girl, each a piece. With them, oh, maybe you would have won. Now they are gone, and I will win, yes, yes, I will.”

How could someone expend human life like foot soldiers on a Shōgi board? She would play along with him for as long as necessary to uncover the answers she needed, but that didn’t mean he didn’t disgust her.

“A game,” she said, testing the word on her tongue. It tasted rancid. “You told me you wanted my help. Tell me about this game you are playing, and perhaps I will consider your proposal.”

Lacotl’s chuckles turned to shrieks. “Oh-ho-ho, you ready? Yes, play with me, much fun, you will see. You will help me win.”

“What is the point of this game if you play against me and expect me to make you win? If you want my cooperation, I expect you to explain the rules. What is the goal? What do I get if I win?”

“Oh, princess, not knowing, not playing? What a mistake. We play, always looking, always fighting.”

There was that we again. Was this game of life and death something the kan’thir played? Aihi neglected her studies of the kan’thir as a girl, as she thought her time better spent on more pertinent matters such as Seiryuu’s never-ending feud with Kairo in the south.

Few kan’thir ever passed into Seiryuu, so she had believed she could catch up at a later date. That had been a terrible mistake. If she knew more, she might decipher Lacotl’s words, how best to use his ‘game’ against him. Games favoured her, at least those following logic. As per her mother’s instructions, Aihi mastered the strategy game Shōgi as a child, and later Go, the preferred pastime of the Sānlóngguón diplomats.

She despised how Lacotl claimed she was another piece in his game. But that dream she had, against another wretched, evil spirit, that was exactly what Aihi had been.

That was what the women touched by Lacotl’s game became: pieces on an illogical game board, one with an endless grid, where Aihi was outnumbered one to fifty, and she didn’t know the rules.

“You are locked in my dungeons.” She gestured to the barrier of sapphire ki behind her. “Did I not win already?”

Lacotl cocked his head. His horizontal, slit-like pupils shrunk to slivers. “No, no, no, oh, no, not so easy.”

“Tell me the rules, and I shall best you at this game of yours.”

“No rules, only death.”

Regulations made games possible. What would be the point of Shōgi and Go without guidelines and thus room for strategy?

You will try to play this game like Go or Shōgi, but you must not. If you do, you will lose. We all will, Torra had said.

But those were the games Aihi knew. If she couldn’t rely on her experience, what else could she fall back on?

She swiped her irezumi and pulled her katana from the ink, a subtle buzz of ki at her fingertips. She pressed the sharp tip to Lacotl’s jugular. The kan’thir cackled, his body swaying enough to nudge the edge into his throat. Blood welled and stained his fur, but Aihi pulled away before causing him serious injury.

Lacotl seemed disappointed. “Cannot kill me, little princess, not yourself, not with help, not without the—” Aihi’s wrist jerked as he stopped himself short. His body rocked, chains clanking, the black ki warping to hold him still.

He claimed their lives were pieces in the game, but perhaps death wasn’t the objective after all. He claimed the spirits of the dead became more useful. If he wouldn’t give her any clues about how or why, beyond how their sacrifice had tainted the primary aki, they had to be important to his final objectives. What if the reason Lacotl came to the Warlock Cells was because he wanted to monitor the aki?

Aihi let out an exasperated sigh. That was impossible. What would be the point if he couldn’t leave his cell?

Regardless of the absence of any clear rules in his game, the tactics she learned in strategy games might become more important without any strict guidelines to abide by. When playing Go with her father, he always reminded her to watch her opponent’s moves, to strike at their desired positions. Their key point was her key point.

So what was Lacotl’s real goal? What else did she know about him and his plans that could lead her in the right direction?

She smiled. She’d almost forgotten. There was much for her to speculate about, but in one regard, she still held an advantage over Lacotl. “Tell me about the Dragon Eye. Where did you pilfer such an artifact?”

Malice shone in Lacotl’s beady eyes. “Oh, wish to know more, hm? Not so easy, knowing, you. Play with me, maybe, and I will tell. One day, yes.”

Lacotl’s mangled Seiryan tangled in Aihi’s head, but she understood enough. The Dragon Eye, like the corrupted aki—the sacred elemental crystal he had been sacrificing his victims to—were essential to his plan. This was her way in.

“You will tell me about the Dragon Eye if I compete with you,” she clarified.

The kan’thir nodded, swaying while he waited for her response.

Dragon Eyes were legendary warlock artifacts, objects that granted warlocks control over the ki of their clan’s bonded dragons. The only caveat was that the dragon had to die, which was part of the reason they were so rare… and so coveted.

The warlock families of old had hidden away and protected their Dragon Eyes so thoroughly that in the 45 years since the fall of the Warlock Empire, none had been recovered.

Until Lacotl came.

While Aihi understood the basic function of a Dragon Eye, all information on using these types of artifacts was either hidden or lost like the rest of the Eyes. Lacotl couldn’t have simply stumbled upon the relic on accident; he had come to Seiryuu with a purpose, an elaborate plan, and using the Eye was a significant key.

Yet, according to the myths, no one without the blood of dragons could operate the Eye. Surely Lacotl did not qualify; he acted against the Goddess at every turn. But what if he believed there was someone in Seiryuu who could unlock its secrets?

She almost laughed at the absurd idea. The warlocks were dead. If Lacotl’s plan hinged on finding one, he was doomed to fail.

What harm could truly befall her, or Seiryuu, if he was imprisoned and there were no warlocks left to see his master plan put into action? Indeed, she asked for trouble by contemplating participating in Lacotl’s schemes at all, let alone an unstructured and deadly game. But if Aihi understood the circumstances correctly, she, and Seiryuu, were already involved. There was no backing out.

At least, not while Lacotl was looking.

Aihi needed to take the chance. If she played cautiously, the knowledge she obtained might serve as a tool to put Lacotl down. To heal the sacred aki corrupted by his hand. And most important of all, avenge the dead. Games were her specialty; she could win.

“Let’s say I will play your gam—”

Aihi’s body seized. Her lungs searched for air but found none.

Everything went black. Silvery lines forged an unfocused image in her mind, curving into the shape of an eye. The picture shimmered and expanded, the lights moulding half the contour of an elegant woman’s face. There was enough detail for Aihi to realize she knew the woman, not enough for her to place a name. Aihi memorized what she could before the silhouette exploded in purple flames, cracking and disappearing in the darkness.

Oh, Goddess. Her mind throbbed with the effort of remembering, but the face was incomplete and impossible to identify.

Aihi came to on her back. She winced at a sharp stab at the base of her skull, and she stood, stumbling away from Lacotl’s swinging form. How did he…

“Tock, tock, ticking, the clock goes,” Lacotl sang, his head lolling.

Aihi raised a hand, summoning her katana back into her palm. She had thought Lacotl defenceless, at her mercy, yet he incapacitated her without moving. What else could he do from within these walls?

Sweat clung to Aihi’s back, and the burn of copper and lost dreams flaked across her tongue. She’d underestimated him. They’d all underestimated him.

“Save her, yes? Can you, Ai-hime?”

Aihi backed away. She had no choice but to play. But she swore on Torra’s grave that she would defeat him.

“Silly Princess,” Lacotl said, almost sounding sad. “Kuro Hana always wins.”

***

Thanks for reading, I hope you decide to continue the series!

These books have been both a pleasure and a living hell to write. But readers like you make every second enjoyable no matter what.

—Erynn