The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

For the second trial, we had the privilege of an escort by carriage to the starting location. Diya pressed her forehead to the window, counting each tree we passed under her breath. Mehti handled stress the same way he seemed to handle everything: in excess. He maintained a steady stream of chatter about the dancers from yesterday’s festivals, then dove into a detailed description about the basturma he’d eaten wrapped around a roasted chicken.

Mehti tossed his feet up between us, huffing when Diya shoved them off the bench. “The children in our town tell stories about Dar al Mansi. A boy offered to trade me his rock when we were in school if I stepped inside its bounds.”

“Did you?” Diya asked grudgingly. Mehti was entertaining in his own odd way, and I enjoyed the distraction from listening to the carriage wheels rumble.

“It was a very nice rock.” He sniffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

“The other boys were impressed.”

“What does it matter?” Diya returned to the window. “Dar al Mansi is only dangerous during the Alcalah. The captured creatures stay in Nizahlan prisons the rest of the time.”

Unlike Ayume Forest, Dar al Mansi lacked any corruption at its core.

Called “home of the forgotten” after the village buried within it, Dar al Mansi was a new addition to the Alcalah. Preparing for this trial caused Arin no small amount of tension.

Two years after the Blood Summit, groups of Jasadis fleeing Rawain’s siege stumbled across the lonely Omalian village. On Arin’s map, Dar al Mansi was linked to Omal proper in a warped hourglass shape. Dar al Mansi sat at the bottom, shrouded in Essam Woods, and Omal at the top.

The village was already abandoned when the Jasadis happened upon it, left to the wilderness by its previous occupants. The sketches Arin gave me at

the start of training had one image of the Jasadis living happily, disturbing no one, their magic reviving the land around them. The next charcoal sketch showed Nizahl and Omal forces creeping through Essam, surrounding the village from every side.

The Jasadis in Dar al Mansi sensed the encroachment and pooled their magic to draw Essam Woods into the village. Trees sprouted inside homes, munban nests replaced shop floors, and muddy soil rippled over the rocky terrain. Their magic drained from such a surge of power, the Jasadis were helpless to defend themselves. Scholars believed they ordered Essam Woods to cover their village in hopes of confusing the soldiers. I had studied the sketches Arin gave me for hours; the Jasadis knew their fate when they spent their magic. It was acceptable to them. Allowing Nizahl and Omal to destroy a second home was not.

A grove of trees over a wooded hillside kept Dar al Mansi separated from the other Omal towns. Any creatures the Champions failed to exterminate would be left to the soldiers.

“What are the three trophies you want?” Mehti asked. “The last Alcalah, a Champion emerged with the head of a nisnas, a feather from Al Anqa’a, and a viroli’s tail. I want to try to slice a piece off a zulal, if they have one.”

“I want a trophy from the three easiest things to kill,” Diya said. “As though crossing the village alive is not its own challenge. A zulal? You are going to anger a worm wider than Hirun and tall as Essam’s trees in hopes that the audience will cheer louder when you emerge? We’re only required to bring three pieces of evidence of our kills, and that is all I will do.”

“Where is your sportsmanship?” Mehti pouted. “The battle vigor of Orban’s Awala should be reflected in her Champion.”

The carriage bounced, rocking from side to side. Diya looked down her nose at Mehti—quite the achievement, considering she was half his size.

“This trial celebrates your demented Awala, not mine. Dania did not keep

company with savage creatures.”

“What do you call the khawaga, then?”

I traced the handle of the carriage door. I dreaded the second trial most of all. It was harder to ignore the reality of my betrayal while walking through a graveyard of my people as Nizahl’s Champion.

“The Omalian patrol is waiting in Essam Woods to slay any creatures escaping Dar al Mansi,” I said, silencing the pair. I hadn’t spoken since the

carriage left the palace grounds. “I wonder if the soldiers would attack us.”

“Why on earth would they? We aren’t monsters,” Mehti said, appalled.

Neither were the Jasadis, I almost said.

“What makes us any different? We are entering this village to kill and maim. In the measure of monster or man, what tips the scales?”

Mehti only looked further scandalized at the question. Diya’s lips pursed. Contemplative.

The carriage juddered to a halt. “Omal Champion, descend!” the driver called. Unlike Ayume, we were dropped off at different starting points for the second trial. Mehti puffed his chest, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

“A good hunt is just what I need to revive me from this bore of a conversation. For Kapastra!” He bounded from the carriage, rapping his fist against the side of the carriage. Diya and I watched him excitedly sift through the weapons provided for him.

“Choice,” Diya said. At my quizzical frown, she crossed her arms over her chest. “The ability to choose is what tips the scales. Monsters have no choice in their evil, but humans choose it deliberately. My parents chose to sell my younger sister to the khawaga. They convinced themselves they had no choice; how could they leave their prosperous town for a village overrun by vagrants? They traded my gentle sister for a taller roof and nicer walls.

The khawaga returned my sister in pieces. I punished my mother and father for each part of her I buried.”

“Forty-three stab wounds each,” I remembered. “I hope they lived long enough to feel every single one.”

Diya smiled faintly. “I can make choices, too.”

The carriage rumbled to a stop. “Orban Champion, descend!”

Diya paused at the door. “Do try not to die. I would hate to listen to Mehti yammer on a third time.”

I fluttered my lashes. “Why, Diya. Is this your formal offer of friendship?”

She considered the distance between herself and the ground. “Die, then.”

She leapt.

I shook with laughter. I ignored the driver’s grumbling and stuck my head out the window as the carriage forged on. “But I accept!”

The driver snapped the reins, and Diya disappeared between the trees. I tipped my chin up, searching for the sun in the cloudy skies. I’d missed the

feel of it in the tunnels more than I realized.

“Nizahl Champion, descend!”

Taking a deep breath, I jumped from the carriage. The driver did not spare me a glance, urging the horses in the opposite direction of Dar al Mansi. A layer of dew covered the weapons left at the bottom of the tree.

Omalian winters were not an ideal setting for a trial that depended on the acuity of sight and sound.

A pale fog hovered around us. Thin shafts of sunlight peeked from the gray sky. I listened for movement and encountered silence too complete to be natural.

I evaluated the weapons. Arin’s instructions were clear. Two weapons I could tuck into my clothing and one I would carry. I chose a rounded dagger with its scabbard, tucking it between my breasts. I had wrapped a tight undergarment around my breasts and ribs for this precise purpose.

Poor Wes turned the color of a plum during training when I refused to tuck the dagger into my waist and reached into my tunic instead. I slid the second, shorter blade into my boot.

I chewed my bottom lip, deliberating between the axe and the spear. I practiced almost exclusively with the spear. Its weight would be familiar, and it was Arin’s weapon of choice.

I ran my nail along the sharp line of the axe. Too much comfort in battle was its own danger.

A piercing shriek rang from above me. I threw myself to the ground, curling below the nearest tree. Through the blanket of skeletal branches, I watched with breathless awe as Al Anqa’a was released over Dar al Mansi.

Wings the size of a carriage unfurled. The limited light reflected off glass feathers fading into the colors of a sunset, a gradient of magnificent oranges and pinks blending along its wings, ending with gray-tipped feathers.

Talons long as a man and sharper than any sword curved forward.

Al Anqa’a was the only creature they did not kill at the conclusion of the trial. They had clipped its wings to ensure it could fly only in a low loop, and its beady eyes scanned the village below for movement. I exhaled when it flapped its wings, circling to the left. I darted between the trees, leery of any open space. Once Al Anqa’a fixed on its prey, there was no escaping its clutches.

Rounding a cluster of thistles, I came upon Dar al Mansi in all its eerie

glory. Thick green vines covered the earth like bulging veins, creeping up the sides of crumbling shops and over the rubble. Fully grown trees sprouted from low buildings, their bases pulverizing the outer walls. Human life reclaimed by the savage wood.

The space between trees lengthened from here, which meant I would need to keep pressed to the walls to stay hidden from Al Anqa’a.

I dashed from the tree to an overturned carriage in the middle of the road. My nausea grew with each step into Dar al Mansi. I could not tell whether my cuffs were reacting to the residue of magic left here, or if my stomach simply couldn’t handle the suffocating smell of decay.

Crouching behind the carriage’s wheel, I assessed the distance I would need to cover to reach the nearest shop. Al Anqa’a circled over the square. I curled into a tight ball.

A guttural smacking sound erupted from my left. Limping from what might have been an apothecary, the unmistakable shape of a nisnas emerged. I’d heard tales of the ghoulish creatures, yet they paled in comparison to the reality. A nisnas was what might have become of Timur if I had left him lying on Ayume’s forest floor, vulnerable to the forest’s sinister magic. One arm dragged behind the nisnas, longer than the rest of its misshapen body. Where the other arm should have been hung a translucent sack of blood, swishing with its slow crawl toward me. Half a leg bulged from the center of its torso, and the single yellow eye in its bulbous head blinked at me. Stubby fingers formed a spiked collar around its throat. Yellow skin grew over its mouth, leaving it incapable of anything beyond a stifled gurgling.

Wes’s description of the thing did it the most justice.

“A nisnas is what happens if you put a rotting mortal body into an iron bowl and smash it with a pestle,” he’d said.

The nisnas dragged itself forward with surprising speed. Al Anqa’a circled the square once, twice, disregarding the nisnas. I begged the bird to take its flight elsewhere before I had to choose between risking an open space or the nisnas. When the nisnas’s foul stench reached my nostrils, and I could see the shriveled skin of its face, Al Anqa’a swerved past the square with a rush of wind.

I hurled myself away just as the nisnas’s dangling arm whipped out from the side. Rolling to my feet, I swung the axe, cleaving its liquid arm sack. A

gurgling moan that might have been a scream erupted as blood and pus poured into the soil. The nisnas skittered toward me on pointed nubs of bone. The axe connected with the line of its swollen head, cutting through the fingers growing from its neck. Though only a strip of brown tendon kept its head attached, the nisnas did not slow. Its arm thrashed around my legs, sending me crashing to the ground.

“Get off me!” I grunted, hacking at the thing. I tried to conjure thoughts to provoke my magic. It seemed disinclined to participate.

Eventually, I chopped enough of the nisnas to wiggle from its grip. The pieces trembled on the ground, and right before my eyes, began to knit back together. I grabbed a wiggling finger and stuck it into one of the knots in my braid to hold it still.

Ichor trailed from the axe as I ran. The places on my clothes where the nisnas touched me were singed, the sludge coating its body eating through the thin fabric. I quickly stopped to scrub dirt on all the places the sludge had touched my skin.

I scuttled like a roach for the next mile, weaving between crumbling buildings and overgrown thickets. The shadow Al Anqa’a cast gave sufficient warning of its approach, and I made myself small every time it circled.

When it came around again, I ducked into an open doorway. The remnants of a family home crunched under me. An enormous tree towered in the center of the house, thriving in the ruin. An infant’s rattle dangled from a branch, and a matching crib lay smashed around the tree’s roots, which rippled over the floor like a stone dropped in still water.

What must Nizahl and the other kingdoms have done to Jasad for the villagers here to prefer this death to another invasion? What horrors had been inflicted upon Jasadis’ homes for consumption by the woods to be the merciful alternative? They hadn’t pooled their magic together to repel the soldiers, but to destroy their village on their own terms.

Glass crunched as I walked deeper into the monument of death. What did Jasad look like, if this was the aftermath in a random village?

Running was not a choice for them, Hanim said. Nizahl had led the charge against their land once already, and they would not be chased from another home.

I picked up a patch torn from a colorful quilt. They had embroidered the

kitmer’s agile, catlike body, its golden wings, even its feathered head.

Clinging to Jasad, even after it was long gone.

“I apologize for the mess,” said the man leaning against the tree. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

I dropped the patch. Surprise morphed to alarm, and I lifted the axe, checking for the nearest hole in the wall I could fit through. I cursed myself for wandering in so deep.

The man approaching me looked utterly unremarkable. He could have been a fast-talking merchant, a lecherous royal, a vagrant. His features were too bland, as though an artist had outlined the basics of a human man’s face and forgotten to fill in the rest.

“There’s no need for that,” he said amiably, gesturing at my axe. “Not with all the delicious magic you can use instead.”

I paused, and he chuckled at my expression. “Did you think I wouldn’t smell it? Oh, but I haven’t had a good taste of magic in so long. I have been searching for a morsel, and here a feast has presented itself to me.”

“What are you?” I held the axe between us as I maneuvered away.

“Hungry,” he said. “Starving, actually. You understand. I can feel your hunger, too.” He moved toward me, unperturbed when I slashed the axe in warning. He sighed. “I much preferred eating Lukubi magic, back when they had it. Jasadis are too much trouble.”

“I do not have any magic for you to eat. Whatever you are smelling is from this room.” I glanced at the door. A few more steps. Fighting in an enclosed home with a tree plunging through the middle was not a recipe for success.

“Nonsense. Your magic is ripe. Fragrant.” He inhaled deeply. “Much better than anything these pitiful fools ever possessed.”

I was being goaded. Fully aware of this, I let my temper flare anyway.

“For a hungry man, you seem to have energy for quite the abundance of stupidity.”

His features vanished for a second, as though his face had blinked from existence. When they returned, he wore a sneer. “I glutted myself on Jasad as it burned. Nothing compares to the flavor of magic used in desperation. I sated myself on the ruins of the kingdom, and no one bothered to stop me.”

He took another step toward me. “I fed on the Jasad Heir’s magic before it left her cooling body. Hers was bitter, left behind a terrible taste. Like

Niphran herself.”

My hold on the axe wavered. “Y-you killed her?”

“Me? Darling, my kind could not even enter Jasad until the fortress collapsed. Poor Niphran was already slain in her lonely little tower when I arrived.”

“Be quiet!” I shouted. The door pressed against my back, yet I could not make my legs carry me away. “You will not malign the Jasad Heir in this village.”

“But this is Dar al Mansi, isn’t it?” he purred. “And who was more forgotten than Niphran?”

My cuffs were burning vises, magic pulsing to the tune of my rage. His nostrils flared, reptilian gaze widening. “Oh,” he murmured, and licked his lips.

I had had my fill of his chattering. The axe caught him in the stomach, slicing a thick gash across his belly. It should have emptied his innards onto the floor. He didn’t even flinch.

“I would have liked to feed on the Malik and Malika. Even Niphran’s little bastard daughter. Instead, I had to settle for the likes of these.” He waved at the destroyed home. “Such a shame, that the weakest kingdom retained magic the longest.”

My magic roared, and my arms moved with preternatural speed in cleaving the axe into his throat. I yanked it from the clench of sinew and muscle.

The man’s features melted as his body began to warp. Hairy, elongated bovine legs replaced human ones, and six long, curved spider limbs erupted from his stretching torso. Three heads burst from his expanding neck, then joined together with a head at the top and two at the bottom.

“Dulhath.” The one creature even Hanim had not dared summon. I dodged the pointed tips of its many spider legs and brought my foot down on the nearest tip. It cracked, and the dulhath’s shriek pierced my ears. I hacked the limb swooping from the right.

Another leg swiped my feet out from under me. The world spun, and I knocked my head against the tree. Blinding pain exploded in my temple as a pile of shattered glass broke my fall. Viscous sludge dripped from teeth sharper than knives, gnashing in my face. I flipped to my feet, tearing open the sleeves of my tunic on the glass.

The dulhath surged toward me. I raised my hand, finally relenting to the battering demand of my magic. It wailed as its heads began to unwind from each other, white goo strung between each slab of head as it moved. I snapped my fingers, and the heads tore in separate directions, ripping its massive body into three.

I severed the bottom of a spidery leg and roped it around my thigh with a strip of the abandoned quilt. I sneered at the dulhath’s quivering heads, tossing the infant’s rattle onto where I hoped its face was.

“The only weak thing to die in this house is you.”

After checking the gloomy sky for Al Anqa’a, I sprinted at full speed past the bracket of shops, leaping over craters teeming with munban nests and tarnished pots. At the looming silhouette of Al Anqa’a, I rushed through the narrow crevice separating a butcher’s shop from a cluster of sapling trees. I glanced over my shoulder as I rounded the edge.

A springy wall slammed me to the ground, sending my axe flying. I squinted, adjusting my sight in the shade. A strangled cry slipped from my lips before I could stop myself.

A zulal undulated around Mehti’s body. Only his head was visible from the massive worm’s winding embrace. Death clouded eyes that hours ago had danced with mischief. The zulal throbbed around the Omal Champion, suckling the moisture from his body in its deadly coil. When the worm finished, it would leave behind his desiccated, shriveled carcass and slither away to lie in wait for its next meal.

My axe had fallen partially under the zulal. I crawled toward it, extending my fingers as far as they could go. When the handle eluded me, I crawled a little closer.

The zulal abruptly stopped rippling around Mehti’s corpse. Damn it to the tombs! Abandoning the axe, I sprinted away as the top half of the white worm unraveled with a wet sucking noise. I did not glance back to see if it was slithering after me. I pulled out the dagger hidden in my tunic, its lightness an unpleasant contrast to the axe’s satisfying heft.

When Al Anqa’a finished its next circuit, I pushed off the building. Not far ahead, the trees reverted to their natural clusters as Dar al Mansi ended and Essam Woods began. From there, it would be a fifteen-minute hike to where the masses waited to greet the returning Champions.

I weaved through a flower garden, the bottom of my boot collecting mud

and moldering petals. By the time I reached the border, I hadn’t encountered another creature. The prospect of doubling back for the zulal and looking into Mehti’s sallow face appalled my common sense. There had to be another creature this close to the border, right?

A rustle from the right spun me around. I lifted the dagger, flexing my arm in preparation. One clean strike, and I would be done with the second trial forever. A man stumbled from over the tree line, disheveled and limping. My fingers tensed on the handle. Another dulhath?

The man lifted his chin, giving our surroundings a glazed glance.

I didn’t recognize him at first.

The years hadn’t treated him gently. The strong brown arms that swung me out of trees and lifted me onto his shoulders were withered. Lines burrowed in his proud forehead, and it seemed to take everything at his disposal to raise his head.

I stumbled back when his weary gaze met mine.

Dawoud, head of Niyar’s staff, the man who would sneak me cakes from the kitchen, who spent his rare free moments listening to me babble about my day, who taught me the best way to climb a fig tree, stood in Dar al Mansi.

Tears filled his eyes. He recognized me, too.

If they had spilled me into a ravine of filth, burned the sins of fifty lifetimes into my skin, I could not have felt dirtier than I did right then.

“Are you real?” I demanded. My grip on the dagger shook.

“Essiya,” he whispered, and the sound that left my mouth was not human.

Dawoud rushed to me, the instinct to comfort defeating his physical deterioration. I wilted away from him.

“How are you here?” I choked out. “How are you alive?” The most terrible of notions occurred to me, and bile burned in my throat. “Tell me you are not with them, Dawoud. Tell me the Mufsids or Urabi have not sent you.”

“Of course not!” An echo of his former self rang in his affronted tone. “I have not crossed paths with either group in a year.”

“Then how?”

Dawoud sighed. “I was captured in Orban three months ago by a group of Nizahl soldiers. Rawain’s High Counselor knew the role I held in Jasad,

and he found innovative methods to pull information from me.”

The realization swept over me like ice rain. I clapped my hand over my mouth, whirling away from Dawoud as my stomach heaved. He was Supreme Rawain’s prisoner. They released him into Essam Woods, toward Dar al Mansi, despite knowing he was a Jasadi.

I was right all along. Vaun planted the seeds of doubt in Supreme Rawain’s head. I let the guards persuade me that Rawain would not trust another over his son. And in most matters, Rawain wouldn’t.

But Jasadis were not most matters.

Dawoud’s brow pinched, resurrecting the ghost of a once-brilliant analyst. “If you don’t kill me, the Supreme will think you are a Jasadi,”

Dawoud said. “I wonder how he knew to send me. I’m not the only prisoner.”

When I stood there dumbly, Dawoud’s voice gentled. “I thought of you every night. When I heard what had happened, what they’d done, I couldn’t think of anything but you. The argument we’d had over your dress; would that be our last? You were so angry with me, stomping your little feet and hiding in your tree.”

“I didn’t like the gold ruffles.” I couldn’t breathe.

“I thought, not Essiya. Not her, too. Anyone else.”

Grief burned in my chest. “I’m sorry, Dawoud. I’m so sorry.”

He was never meant to see me like this.

“They called you Sylvia,” he said. “The guards. They said you are the Nizahl Champion.”

The shame blistering through me burned hotter than Vaida’s seal, searing more than a hand thrust into crackling flames. He said it plainly, not a hint of judgment in his voice, but the words whipped me to tatters.

Sylvia. Nizahl’s Champion, Hanim murmured. That was your choice.

“I had to. It was the reasonable—it was the logical choice,” I babbled, fully aware of the concern gathering on Dawoud’s face. What must I look like, mumbling to myself, covered in dust and gore, bearing trophies from monsters? Niphran’s daughter besieged with a new madness. “I couldn’t help them! I cannot. I have nothing to offer. Look around us. How could I have stopped this? I didn’t know you were alive—how could I have known?”

You could possess all the magic in the world, and you would still give

Jasad your back, Hanim said. I fisted my hands in my hair, shaking my head like a dog trying to unseat a persistent fly.

Before Dawoud could respond to my ravings, a shriek shook the earth.

Too late, I registered the long shadow over us. Al Anqa’a dove, and I hurled myself into Dawoud as its claws curled over the place where he had stood.

“Here, take this.” I shoved the dagger’s handle into his hand, pulling out the one in my boot as I leapt to my feet. “Go, stay close to the buildings!”

Dawoud glanced at the dagger, uncomprehending. “You think I am going to leave you to fight alone?”

Al Anqa’a screeched, and I fervently hoped the crowds waiting beyond Dar al Mansi could hear it. That they knew Dar al Mansi, for all that it was forgotten, would never stop demanding to be heard.

I flipped the dagger, keeping Al Anqa’a fixed on me as it folded its wings to dive again. “I am more than capable of fighting alone.”

Glass wings chimed with the wind as Al Anqa’a swept toward me. I dropped in a long slide as it approached, pointing my dagger up. I braced my arms, keeping the dagger firm and high. Al Anqa’a wailed as the dagger pierced its featherless underside, and its talons caught me in the shoulder and swung. I crashed into the side of a crumbling house.

Al Anqa’a shook itself, and the dagger fell to the ground. Its beady gaze narrowed. I pushed myself from the crevice of rubble. A sharp claw pierced my calf, dragging me out of the narrow alley. I tried to grab hold of an anchor, tearing out roots and scrabbling at boulders.

Al Anqa’a unhinged its beak, its wings unfolding over me. A breathtaking tableau of color unspooled, more brilliant than every dawn and dusk I’d witnessed.

I writhed under its unyielding talons, trailing blood behind me.

Suddenly, Al Anqa’a bellowed again, releasing me to arch into the air.

Behind it stood Dawoud, his hands raised and his lips moving. His eyes glowed gold and silver. Al Anqa’a teetered in the sky, a powerful gust of wind from its wings sending Dawoud stumbling.

“Dawoud, stop!” I cried out. He would need every ounce of magic he had to escape the patrol surrounding Dar al Mansi. He couldn’t waste it all on Al Anqa’a.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, gathering in its deep grooves. “Essiya, end this,” Dawoud said. I limped to my dagger and wiped it against my

thigh. “You know what Rawain wants.”

It was my turn to stare uncomprehendingly. “I am not going to kill you,”

I snarled.

The sensible part of me knew failing Rawain’s test would mean an end to all my plans. An end to Arin’s designs. But I had lasted this long by recognizing the burdens I could bear, and killing Dawoud was not among them.

Al Anqa’a knocked a wall from a shop, sending bricks blasting around us. Dawoud’s magic couldn’t hold it much longer. My cuffs tightened,

swelling with my fear.

He couldn’t hold it, but I could.

I stared at my cuffs as they grew tighter than they ever had.

Al Anqa’a swiped at Dawoud, missing him by inches. I threw my arms into the air, my cuffs throbbing as my magic hurtled into Al Anqa’a. The creature screamed, its sunset glass wings clinking. An opaque mist blanketed the sky.

Dawoud regarded the shrieking bird with no small amount of awe. But when he glanced at me, shock swept over his features. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

I frowned, blinking rapidly. My arms quaked with the strain of holding Al Anqa’a away.

“They’re—they have not changed. Not a hint of gold or silver.” He peered closer. “Where is the magic in your darling kitmer eyes?”

“The cuffs,” I spat. “My magic flows through the cuffs, not my body.

Dawoud, you have to run. Please. I cannot hold it much longer, and the patrol will be closing in on Dar al Mansi.”

Dawoud went deathly white. He staggered away, looking at my wrists with more terror than he spared Al Anqa’a. Had the effects of expending so much magic caught up with him?

“How can they still be there? How?” he gasped. “Oh, my dear Essiya, oh no. What has happened to you?”

You have the potential and power to be worse than any who have come before you.

“Dawoud,” I set my feet as Al Anqa’a bashed itself against the barrier. I slid backward with each blow to my magic. “Did I ever burn your favorite quilt?”

A peculiar look flashed over Usr Jasad’s head of staff. It was the look of someone who believed one wrong pull of the ropes would bring the sky crashing down. A look I recognized from my childhood. His thick brows furrowed. “I should have let you take it to the courtyard,” he said.

Soraya was right.

Mirrors. My memories were fragments, reflections of what I needed them to be to survive. Dawoud’s pained admission cracked open the day I burned his quilt. The shatter echoed into my body, ringing in my bones.

Essiya was no better than Sylvia. I had always been this broken. This selfish.

Sylvia was just a reflection of the worst parts of a girl I had buried.

In a burst of fury, Al Anqa’a surged past the barrier of my magic. Sparks fell like gold rain from the breached barrier. Its talons closed around my body, and I swore as my feet left the ground.

Its grip faltered when I kicked out. A single talon pierced the back of my tunic like a hook. I dangled downward, the fabric of my tunic slowly ripping. Al Anqa’a’s wings thrashed, struggling to lift us against my magic’s wall.

On the ground, Dawoud picked up the dagger. He stared at me, tears tracking down the face that had once been more beloved to me than my own mother’s.

Dawoud’s mouth moved, and I realized what he meant to do a split second before he plunged the dagger into his heart.

“No!” I screamed. Al Anqa’a cried out as the barrier broke in a sky- shaking tremor. Gold sparks shot through the air like falling stars. Dawoud crumpled, and I lifted my arms, sliding out of my tunic and crashing to the ground. The dagger had slid into Dawoud in the same place Soraya stabbed me. Al Anqa’a flapped to the east, abandoning prey that had become more trouble than it was worth.

“Your Gedo Niyar would be so proud of you,” Dawoud said when I skidded to my knees next to him. I pressed my trembling hands to his wound, and he groaned. “I should have believed them when they said you were alive. I didn’t dare to. The thought of you alone for so long, while we —” He coughed, red droplets splattering on his chin. “Your cuffs were never meant to last this long. No one is meant to be alone for so long.”

“Then don’t leave me.” Desperation turned the words into a plea.

Blood gushed between my fingers, and my cuffs heated as I called on every ounce of magic I had. My magic had to act somehow. Dawoud would not die in the dirt in Dar al Mansi. He would not be another Jasadi claimed by this village.

“I should have never stopped searching for you.” His hand came to rest over mine, his calloused palm cool over my knuckles. I flinched at the touch, and Dawoud’s sharp eyes narrowed. “What happened to you, Essiya?

Where were you?”

My magic tore uselessly around us. “Hanim,” I ground out. I would speak, if only to keep the stubborn man from doing so himself. “She kept me in Essam for five years.”

My goal to talk him into relaxation failed miserably, because he tried to lurch upward. Blood poured down his front. “Qayida Hanim?” The remaining color leached from his face, leaving him gray and aghast. “That miserable traitor. She took you? She—she ruined us all. Soraya, Essiya, do

you know about Soraya?”

“Dawoud, please, stay still,” I begged.

“Hanim brought her into the palace. Into our home. Hanim recommended her to your grandparents, because—” It seemed sheer spite kept Dawoud awake. His eyes rolled wildly. “They planned it all. But Hanim…” He shuddered in what might have been a laugh. “Soraya should have known better than to rely on the fidelity of traitors.”

“I don’t care about them,” I urged. “Lie still.”

Dawoud’s smiled with white lips. “My determined little Essiya,” he breathed. “To die knowing you are alive is all I could have wished for.”

I lost the battle against my heart. “Please stay. Please. I have so much to tell you. I apprenticed with a man named Rory. A chemist. I could hardly tolerate the subject with my tutors, remember? But he taught me about how to heal the body from the inside and out. He took me to a woman named Raya. She reminded me of you, except more rigid. I became her ward, and she treated me kindly.” My teeth were chattering, shaking along with the rest of my body. Dawoud’s breaths slowed beneath me. My magic’s assault

on Dar al Mansi evaporated.

Dawoud was dying.

Wiping the blood from my hands, I slid behind him, pulling his head into my lap. I combed my fingers through his hair, raking them into his

scalp the way he used to do for me after a nightmare. “I am here. I won’t go,” I said, and I repeated the words long after Dawoud’s chest stilled and his body went cold.

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