Year of the Rat (Changeling Sisters #4)

Sneak Peek: Chapter 16: Shades of Deception

***Warning! Contains MAJOR Spoilers for the Changeling Sisters Series!

~Sun Bin~

One evening in the Yong household, the screech of a violin cut through my ears while we were preparing dinner. Wincing, I looked up from dicing onions to meet Nyssa's puzzled stare.

"What the—?"

We went up to my bedroom. There, sprawled in the middle of the floor, was my younger sister Heesu. Her pixie cut swayed around her ears as she focused on drawing the bow in another ungainly stroke across the violin strings. My violin.

"Yah, Yong Heesu!" I hissed.

She was so startled that she nearly dropped my expensive instrument. That only pissed me off more.

"How many times have I told you?" I stormed across the room and yanked it from her hands. "You are never to touch my violin. You can't even play well. Stick with singing. It's what you're good at."

Heesu's lower lip began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears. She was our ethereal mother, a singer, who could sit and look pretty but didn't have the talent for the bow.

"You were supposed to teach me tonight," she blubbered, and I rolled my eyes.

"Well, I don't have time. Appa's working late and Umma's...resting...so that leaves Nyssa and me to make sure you don't starve." Her crying annoyed me, and I shoved her in the direction of my silent partner. "Here, Nyssa. Can you take care of her? I'll finish dinner."

"Sure," Nyssa said in a horribly deep, monstrous voice that didn't belong to her. "I'll take care of her."

I whirled around. Nyssa flashed a terrible smile over my younger sister's head as black scales crept down her face. Then she snapped Heesu's neck.

***

The crack snapped my dream in two. I bolted awake, the horrible snapping sound reverberating through my mind.

It wasn't as bad as the soft thump that followed.

I tumbled off my cot and sank to my knees in the middle of the Rainbow Room. The silence was chilling. This secret chamber high in the recesses of Yong Enterprises was where I had spent many an afternoon after school, serenading injured spirits who had crossed over from Eve. The spirits would whisper in gratitude and then vanish into the sunset. Now the chamber's reflective crystals showed nothing but my trembling figure.

This was the most alienating feeling I had ever experienced: waking up to this dark, disconnected Seoul again and again, every...single...day. It was as if my world, a place that was meant to always be safe and secure, had just been torn open and horribly violated.

They didn't even leave us the sun.

Nothing could grow. The city would fester and fall apart, until its entire carcass rotted. This couldn't be real. It couldn't be true. Wars didn't happen here.

My throat clogged, and I felt tears creep down familiar paths from my swollen eyes. Wars were meant to happen elsewhere. Anywhere else...just not here.

But the attackers had come into my house. They had stabbed me and left me to bleed out from the cuts.

Nyssa and Eobshin blurred together in my mind until I couldn't distinguish one from the other. She looked over her shoulder, daring me to catch up with her, but when I took her hand, I hurt myself on her blood-soaked scales.

Who did you love? their faces teased, identical once more.

With a sudden shout, I threw my hand toward her, intending to channel a volley of icicle spears. Yet before I could release them, my hand trembled uncontrollably. Frost caked my arm up to my elbow, and then, just like that, the ice shattered.

Silly imugi. You can't hurt me, Eobshin breathed in my ear, smirking. I remained huddled on the floor.

"Sun."

My fraternal twin knelt beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder until the tremors stopped. Ankor didn't bother to ask about the dream. We both had them. If I just kept tearing down the walls of darkness, then I would one day find that place where everything was all right again.

"We're monsters, An," I whispered. "So tell me: how could I miss one that was right in front of me?"

"She was a goddess, Sun," he replied. "One of the makers of Eve itself. Nyssa would have warned us if she could."

I half-laughed, half-sobbed into my hands. "Don't you get it, Ankor? Nyssa never existed."

"I don't believe that," he said calmly. "I don't think you do, either."

"It doesn't matter what I think." I brushed tears from my face and turned away. "She isn't here. Zombies are, and a vampyre prince with his bloody winter wonderland army."

"She may not be here, but the Celestial Dragon is," Ankor insisted. I shook my head, but Ankor took my face in his hands and forced me to meet his steady gaze. "Sun, our father and Raina are missing, and our youngest sister is gone. You are the Celestial Dragon now. The only one can stop the Prince of Winter is the Queen."