Sunburner (Moonburner Cycle Book 2) Read online

  “She won’t die,” Hiro whispered. “She’s the strongest woman I know. This will pass by and we’ll look back and laugh at how worried we were. And then I’ll ask her to marry me the right way.”

  A knock sounded on his door and Hiro flew to his feet. “Come in,” he said.

  The door opened to reveal Hanae. The look on her face was grave. “You had better come with me.”

  Hiro watched helplessly as Kai thrashed in her bed. Her sheets were drenched with sweat, and she looked as pale as a corpse. She twitched, moaning and holding her hands up to fend off some invisible foe. “No…Tsuki…stop.” The words wrenched from Kai’s lips were laced with terror.

  Kai had been moaning and screaming Tsuki’s name for hours now, unnerving everyone in the room.

  Quitsu lay on a bed next to Kai, limp and quiet. Though no one would admit it, the fact that the disease was harming Quitsu was almost more worrisome than its impact on Kai. No one had heard of a seishen getting sick, even if its burner did. Certainly, the burner and seishen were linked, but even the most experienced moonburner healers hadn’t seen anything like this before. It was a disturbing omen.

  Hiro had sat by Kai’s bedside for the last day and night, watching the woman he loved grow sicker and sicker. The healers had tried everything. Herbs, tonics, poultices. Every form of healing the citadel moonburners knew. Master Vita was poring over his tomes, searching for any evidence of a previous outbreak of this type, grasping desperately for a clue to a cure. They had consulted the best of Kita’s healers through Nanase and General Ipan’s bowls. They had mobilized every resource they had to help Kai. Nothing had worked. Hiro had never felt so helpless.

  Hiro sat with Hanae on one side, Ryu on the other. Hiro stroked the thick fur of Ryu’s golden mane absentmindedly, his seishen’s solid presence comforting him. Hanae had matched Hiro’s vigil at Kai’s side with her own, refusing to leave her daughter. She had seemed annoyed by Hiro’s presence at first but had grudgingly come to accept that he had as much a claim to Kai’s bedside as she.

  “Have you tried praying?” Hanae asked softly, startling him. She hadn’t spoken in hours. He thought she might have dozed off.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Though I don’t think I have enough faith in Taiyo to make much of a difference.”

  “Isn’t that the rub,” Hanae said. “You have to have faith in your faith. Hard thing sometimes.”

  “Have you prayed?” he asked.

  “I’ve thought about it a hundred times, but somehow it doesn’t feel right. She keeps screaming about Tsuki… It’s like she’s being tortured by her. Maybe it’s superstitious, but I don’t want to attract any more divine attention.”

  Kai whimpered again, moaning Tsuki’s name.

  “Whatever she’s dreaming, it doesn’t seem pleasant,” he admitted. “Is it always this bad?”

  Kai had admitted to him that she often had trouble sleeping, even had nightmares on occasion, but she had brushed it off as stress and worry.

  “No,” Hanae said, frowning. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Do you really think…the gods caused this? That Tsuki is trying to destroy our alliance?”

  Hanae looked at him thoughtfully, her perfectly-smooth doll’s face disguising her age and wisdom. “Yes,” she finally said.

  “Yes?” he repeated, his heart sinking.

  “I think it’s time we face it. This summer is not natural. Neither is this disease. The sooner we face reality, the sooner we can figure out how to fight.”

  “How do we fight a war against the gods?” Hiro wondered, more to himself than Hanae.

  “I don’t know,” Hanae admitted. “But we’d better figure out fast. Because the opening blows have been thrown. And they’re not holding back.”

  It was as if the goddess herself heard Hanae’s words.

  Kai spasmed in her bed, beginning to shake and convulse. A nurse with thick gloves hurried to Kai’s side, trying to hold her down against the worst of her convulsions.

  Hiro and Hanae stood, watching helplessly. Hiro grasped the ring in his pocket, squeezing it so tightly that he thought he might crush the metal.

  Quitsu too started to shake, his furry body twitching angrily.

  Hiro and Hanae looked at each other sharply. That was new.

  Hiro grasped desperately for a solution in his mind. Think. Think. Kai would have known what to do. She would have figured it out. She didn’t give a damn about protecting herself, but she would never forgive him if he let anything happen to Quitsu. He thought of her face on the battlefield after Quitsu had been struck by lightning. Wild and fearsome, like an animal. She had saved Quitsu though, had brought the spark of life back into his body after it had gone.

  “Idiot!” he hissed, smacking himself on the forehead. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”

  “What?” Hanae asked, startled by his outburst.

  “Just keep her alive! I have to go get something!”

  Hiro sprinted through the corridors and courtyards of the citadel, out the hospital ward and across to the queen’s tower. How could he have been so blind? When Quitsu had lay dying, he and Kai had used the solar crown to blend their moon and sunburning into something new, a white-hot power unlike any he had experienced. Maybe the same could save Kai. Since that day, they had tested the power a few times, explored the bounds of their link. They couldn’t burn the white light just by linking the two of them. They needed some sort of conduit, like the crown.

  He dashed into the queen’s tower and around a corner, screeching to a halt to head up the stairs to Kai’s chamber. He almost ran headfirst into Emi coming out of another room in the hallway.

  “Get to the hospital ward,” he instructed Emi, grasping her by the shoulders.

  “What? Why?” she asked, her dark eyes wide against the scarred half of her face.

  “No time to explain,” he said. “Hurry!” He dashed past her, taking the stairs up to Kai’s chamber two by two. He burst through the door and skidded to a stop before Kai’s armoire. He threw open the dark wood double doors and opened the drawer that he knew contained the lunar crown. Kai had given the solar crown back to his father, King Ozora, as a sign of good faith after their peace accord had been signed. But the lunar crown had the same mysterious ability to access both sun and moonlight. It should work.

  Crown in hand, Hiro ran back to the hospital ward, trying not to think of what a long shot this plan was. He hoped the crown was charged… Kai had explained that it needed a full day and night outside to fill with sun and moonlight. She must have charged it, he thought. Kai was practical like that, methodical. She thought of details he never would.

  As he made it back through the doors of the hospital ward, Hanae turned to meet his gaze, her bottom lip quivering. Emi’s face was ashen and her eyes brimmed with tears.

  Kai’s convulsions had grown more violent. Sweat poured down her face, drenching her clothing and her silver hair. She looked possessed.

  “They say she isn’t going to make it,” Emi said.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Hiro said, grabbing Emi’s hand and pulling her forward.

  Hiro held up the crown to Emi. “We’re going to link and make the white light. Like Kai and I did at the Battle at the Gate. She saved Quitsu with it. Maybe…maybe we can recreate its healing effect.”

  Emi nodded, grasping one side of the crown with both hands. “It’s worth a try.”

  Hiro opened his qi, that part of his spirit that connected him to the sunlight and allowed him to burn its power into heat and light. He pulled in sunlight that was pooling through the hospital ward windows, filling his qi with it. Through the power of the crown, he linked with Emi, connecting his qi to her own. Yes. It was working in the same way it had for him and Kai so many months ago. Through his link with Emi, he could see the quicksilver moonlight stored in the crown beckoning him, pooling in a doorway opened by Emi’s spirit.

  Hiro wasn’t a strong healer, but he kne
w how burner healers worked. He had learned the rudiments of the art, how healers used heat to destroy infection, to mend wounds, to encourage the body’s own healing process. Hiro began to explore Kai’s physical body with tendrils of magic, looking for the sickness within her. Though her body was fevered, he couldn’t pinpoint the disease. Was he missing it? Where was the illness?

  But Hiro knew that there was more to a person, to a burner, than the physical body. He looked at Quitsu, Kai’s spirit animal, sick and dying beside her. Perhaps the illness wasn’t just physical.

  Hiro directed his and Emi’s energy to join with Kai’s own, to explore her qi, to lend it their strength. As soon as his energy touched Kai’s, he recoiled in shock. He and Emi exchanged a wide-eyed look. Kai’s qi was much changed from the silvery fresh spirit he would have expected, that he had felt when he had linked with her in the past. Now, it was a mottled, withered, dry thing that he hardly recognized. No wonder they were losing her. Losing Quitsu. Would the white light be able to fix such a disease of the spirit? He didn’t know.

  Hiro pushed these thoughts aside and turned to the task at hand, weaving his sunlight through the crown’s moonlight. The energy combined in an explosion of pure white light, arcing from Hiro, Emi, and the crown to Kai. He squinted against the glare, ignoring the brilliance, instead focusing his efforts on pushing heat and energy into Kai’s qi, willing it to heal.

  And it did.

  Through their link, he could feel Emi’s elation mirroring his own. Wherever the white light touched, Kai’s spirit seemed to regenerate, cleansed and new. Her thrashing died down until she lay still on the bed.

  Hiro and Emi continued as long as they could, bathing Kai’s body and spirit in the radiant light. Finally, there was no more to give; the crown had run out of moonlight. They broke their link and Emi sighed heavily, stumbling slightly against his shoulder. He put his arm around her to hold her up. His own legs felt like rubber, and his head pounded. But Kai looked as good as new. Her color had returned, and her breathing was deep and even.

  “We did it,” he said.

  “Thank the goddess,” Emi said.

  No sooner had the words left Emi’s lips than Kai began quivering again. Her skin, having returned to a normal even tan color, began to fade, turning a sickly shade of gray once again. She spasmed like a rag doll and then fell still.

  “No!” Hiro exclaimed, running to Kai’s bedside. Quarantine be damned. He hovered his ear over her mouth, feeling for a whisper of breath. There was none.

  “She’s not breathing,” he choked out.

  “No!” Hanae cried. “Try the crown again!”

  “It’s empty,” he said, the words sticking in his throat.

  Hanae rushed in, pushing Hiro out of the way. His body felt like lead, but he stood to give her access to Kai.

  Hanae checked Kai’s vitals and began pumping on her chest with gloved hands, trying to send air back into her lungs.

  Hiro couldn’t tear his eyes away from Kai’s still form, lying limp on the sweat-soaked sheets. Just twenty-four hours ago she had been filled with life, her hazel eyes sparkling as she teased him about his aim with a bow. And now they were losing her. This couldn’t be.

  This dream was new.

  At first, Kai’s dreams had been filled with feverish nightmares. Sometimes she had found herself walking through the spirit world with its unnatural night and bright full moon, crossing paths with strange seishen and oddly-dressed burners. They looked at her with frowns and suspicion, as if she did not belong, and she shrank from them, fleeing into the dark.

  Other times she had been stalked by dark shadows, twisted remnants of animals and men, and she had shamelessly hidden, praying that those swiveling ears, those slavering snouts, did not register her presence.

  In the worst dreams, she had seen Tsuki—the strange unnaturally large figure that Queen Airi and General Geisa had summoned in the citadel temple. Her voice, deep enough to drown in and sharp as the headsman’s axe, echoed through Kai’s mind. Tsuki was everywhere. She’d come through Kai’s window, she’d come through a ray of moonlight pooling in a citadel courtyard, she’d risen through the still water of the lake in the Akashi Mountains where Kai once had seen her mother.

  There was no hiding from Tsuki when she came, no cowering in the bushes. Kai had tried. Tsuki saw her, despite that strange blur where a face should be. Always, she said the same thing.

  “This world belongs to us. The time of the burners is at an end.”

  And then she would devour Kai. She would grow huge and unhinge her jaw and Kai could only sit, frozen, and let it happen. Down, down, down into a suffocating darkness that she could not escape. A blackness that melted her into nothingness. And somehow Kai knew that this dream was more than a dream, that it was a vision of what was to come.

  Now, that void seemed but a memory. Kai squinted into bright sunlight as her eyes adjusted. She sat at a small table atop a castle built of warm sandstone. The castle continued below the crenellated walls that cradled the courtyard in which she sat, descending in ornate levels filled with fountains and gardens, cheerful squares, and sturdy structures. Beyond the outer castle walls stretched a vast city—a patchwork of homes and businesses decorated with colorful awnings and sparkling stained glass windows. In the far distance a lush green landscape bowed to the thin shining line of the sea.

  Here, there was only serenity—the feel of the sun on her face and the breeze tousling her hair, the fragrance of the flowering vine climbing the wall behind her, its blossoms buzzing with honeybees. Her tense muscles relaxed. She could be safe here for a while.

  “This is my favorite view in the whole world,” the man sitting next to her said.

  She looked at him, surprised by his presence, but also not. He had been there all along, hadn’t he?

  The man was perhaps forty years old with a pleasant profile—his honest brow and straight nose led to a neatly-trimmed beard, an unusual fashion in Miina. When he turned to her, his eyes puddled with the deep brown of loamy soil. Quitsu sat in his lap, curled up as unabashedly as a housecat. That sight jarred her back into reality.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Yoshai,” the man replied, gazing into distance. He stroked Quitsu’s silver fur. “Or I should say, its shadow.”

  She furrowed her brow, studying the man. He wore simple but well-made clothes—green pants, white shirt. His feet were bare on the warm stones of the courtyard. He seemed harmless enough, but yet…

  “Its shadow?” Kai asked. “What do you mean? And where is Yoshai? I’ve never heard of it.”

  He pursed his lips. “You mortals always ask so many questions. I only came because my light was so strong in you. I’ve never known a mortal to wield it before. And with you passing through… I was curious to meet you.”

  Kai blew a lock of hair off her forehead in frustration. His light? Passing through? What in the seishen’s name was he talking about? “Let’s start at the beginning. Where am I?”

  He heaved a sigh. “This city is called Yoshai. It is my holy city. But we’re in its shadow. I think you mortals call it…the spirit realm.”

  Kai’s mouth fell open in slack disbelief. Her head swiveled, surveying the city in new appreciation. The spirit world. How did she get here? Was she asleep? And what had he said…‘my holy city’?

  “Who are you?” Kai asked carefully.

  “I am all of this.” He swept a hand across the view before them. “That butterfly,” he pointed at a brilliant indigo creature flapping by on lazy wings. “You. That ocean. Or should I say, all of this is me.”

  “You’re…a god?” Kai asked, awe filling her. “The god of the earth? Like Tsuki and Taiyo are the gods of the moon and sun?”

  He stroked his chestnut beard as he considered that. “No, I don’t like that word. It’s not quite right. Tsuki and Taiyo are my creations as well.”

  “You created the sun and moon? The earth?” Her mind was struggling to take it all in.
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  He looked at her proudly, like a child holding up a painting to its parent. “Yes, I created it. Beautiful, isn’t it? I really outdid myself.”

  Kai couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm. “You did,” she agreed, turning her gaze back to the tapestry of color before her illuminated in buttery sunlight. “But why am I here? Not that I’m not pleased to meet you…but…what do you mean that I’m passing through?”

  “Oh,” he said, scratching Quitsu’s head, not meeting her gaze. “I thought you knew. You’re dying. Passing through…passing over. Beyond.”

  An icy chill snaked through Kai’s body despite the warmth of the morning. She remembered. The spotted fever. The dreams. Flashes of her mother and Hiro’s worried faces, Nanase, the citadel nurses. Pain, and fear…and for a moment, a warm glow bathing her in light and love.

  Hiro had used the crown. The lunar crown.

  “Your light. Are you talking about the white light? When sun and moonlight combine? That’s your power?”

  “It’s the raw stuff of creation. Like I said, I’ve never known a mortal to wield it. It should be too much for your limited heart and mind to behold, to understand.”

  She shook her head, too distracted to be offended. “They tried to save me with it. But it didn’t work. I’m dying anyway.”

  “That spotted fever is a nasty business. Corrupts your ties to me. It wouldn’t be enough for them to heal you with it. To eradicate the fever. You’d have to wield it—purify yourself from the inside.”

  “And I was too weak to,” Kai said. She was dying. Would die. The faces of her family, her subjects, flashed before her. What would happen to Miina? To her kingdom? Tears pricked her eyes. She wasn’t ready to go yet. To give up. To let darkness fall over the land.

  As despair filled her, she looked at the creator with an appraising eye. Surely, he could fix what was wrong with Miina. Perhaps she could give her kingdom one last gift before she went.