She felt Ahmed grip her arm. Felt him lift her up.
“No more.” His voice was heavy with grief. “Goodbye, jinn killer.”
He pressed the blade to her throat.
31
MAZEN
Mazen was still thinking about his shadow when he stepped through the gates to Ahmed bin Walid’s residence. The guards did not bother leading him to the diwan. Doubtless, they trusted the high prince to find his way there on his own.
Paranoia tightened his lungs as he walked through the empty courtyard. He could not stop his gaze from wandering to his shadow. It looked like a normal shadow, but every time he nudged it with his foot, it caught against his boot.
How is this possible? He considered the question as he wove through the evergreen garden. Even in the dark, the courtyard was beautiful. And… different?
The trees seemed closer, as if they had moved to block his path, and the howl of the wind was strangely mournful. The moonlight filtering through the canopies was an eerie silver, and he found himself ducking through the trees to avoid it. He felt like he was being watched.
He shook the thought away as he approached the diwan steps. As his legs slowed and his eyes drooped and the world blurred. He had only just become aware of his sluggishness when a song—a soft, terrible song he recognized—speared through his mind.
Mazen staggered. He did not realize he’d collapsed until he felt the softness of his shadow beneath his fingertips. He became aware of a second sound, a thrumming in his arm, his feet… all around him? He paled.
My shadow has a heartbeat. His stomach knotted with fear.
Before he could pull his hand away, he felt blood dribbling down her lips as she coughed. “How…?” She gasped as the knife was pulled from her shoulder. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she turned, hand over her gaping wound. She was stunned by the apparition before her.
“Impossible.” She stepped back. “You… I killed you!”
He had to be a mirage. A hallucination. He could not possibly be alive, not after she had suffocated his heart with magic. Not when she had watched the life fade from his eyes. Not when every human in the diwan had seen him collapse, lifeless.
And yet—the hunter stood before her with his terrible black knife, grinning.
“You, kill the King of the Forty Thieves? What a conceited notion.”
“No!” She stepped back. If she perished here, there would be no stopping him from making her into his slave. He would kill her, just as he had killed her beloved, and then he would steal her magic. Her eyes shifted to the shadows—what might be her final escape.
But there was no running from the hunter. In moments, he was upon her, sinking his cursed dagger into her heart, and…
He was barely breathing as the vision of the shadow jinn faded. The world—his world—returned in all its starlit chaos. He could make out sounds from the present, the most recognizable of which was a voice. He had spent enough time despising its lulling cadence to know it by heart, even if it was uncharacteristically soft.
Ahmed. Mazen stumbled toward the stairs. Dark spots danced before his eyes, threatening to pull him back into a memory that was not his. Desperate, he reached for his rings. Heat shot through his fingers. It burned like hell, but—it was enough to root him in the moment, to remind him of the uncharacteristic softness of Ahmed’s voice. The Ahmed he knew did not speak in conspiratorial whispers. The Ahmed he knew did not abide silence; he shattered it.
“How many jinn have you killed?” the wali said in his strange, stiff voice. Beneath his cadence was another voice, so soft it was barely audible. “All so you could steal our magic and paint your world with our blood?”
Mazen stepped into the diwan.
Ahmed’s guests lay on the floor, staring unresponsively at their surroundings. It appeared as if they had been in the middle of a feast, for food and drink lay scattered across the floor, staining the rich carpet and tile. Ahmed stood at the center of the mess, holding the merchant up by the collar of her robe. She was limp as a rag doll in his grasp.
“No more.” The wali raised his hand. Mazen saw a flash of silver. “Goodbye, jinn killer.”
Mazen did not think. He moved.
One moment he was standing unseen at the diwan entrance, and the next, he’d tackled Ahmed to the ground. Ahmed lay stunned for a few moments, face paling as he took in Mazen’s—Omar’s—sudden appearance. “You,” he choked.
Mazen’s eyes flitted to the scarf hanging loosely on the wali’s neck, to the band of golden bones no longer concealed beneath it. He reached for the grimacing skulls.
But before Mazen could grab the collar, Ahmed seized his wrist and wrenched it sharply to the side. Icy pain rippled through Mazen’s arm. He bit back a yell as the wali threw him off. For a heartbeat, he lay stunned on the floor, overwhelmed by the pain shooting through his bones. But then the adrenaline kicked in, and he was able to push himself up.
It was just in time to watch a groggy-looking hunter approach Ahmed with a blade in hand. “Foul creature!” the hunter cried. “Leave the wali be!”
Ahmed reached for one of his daggers as the man rushed toward him. Their blades met with an ear-piercing screech. The standstill lasted a heartbeat, two. Then Ahmed slid past the hunter’s guard. The man lost his balance, and Ahmed used the opening to aim a hard kick at his legs. This time, the hunter toppled, and the wali fell on him with the dagger.
Mazen had been audience to mock battles before. He had watched palace soldiers cut flesh and draw blood as they outmaneuvered each other. But there were no artful tactics in this struggle. There was only life-ending defeat as Ahmed carved a crescent into the hunter’s neck. The dying man’s scream faded to a choked gurgle and then into a horrible, broken wheeze as Ahmed rose to his feet. When he turned, his robe was drenched with blood.
Mazen did not hear his own scream over the uproar that followed, but he felt it tear through his chest as he scrambled away from the gore. A yell on the other side of the diwan drew his attention, and he looked up to see another hunter—a grizzled man with scars on his face—come at the wali with a sword. Ahmed slid past his reach and plunged a dagger into the back of his neck as he swept past.
The hunter toppled with a gasp, red bubbling at his lips.
Immediately after, a pair of hunters came at Ahmed from either side of the diwan in a pincer movement. The wali sidestepped one man and lunged to catch the other’s wrist midstab. There was a moment of shock as the hunter tried to free himself. But he was too slow.
Ahmed threw him into his fellow, and the two collapsed in a heap. The wali stepped hard on one man’s back, eliciting a crack so loud it could be heard over the yelling, and then he leaned down and, in one swift motion, slid a dagger out from his sleeve and plunged it into the other man’s throat.
Mazen watched the massacre unfold like a stunned spectator, barely breathing as Ahmed cut down hunter after hunter. He watched bones snap, bodies break, blood splatter, and all he could do was blink back panicked tears. If Ahmed turned on him, he would not be able to run.
But the wali had eyes only for the men who faced him like warriors. The next opponent he confronted was the youngest Mazen had seen yet: a boy with determination sparking in his round, frightened eyes. The boy and Ahmed faced each other over a corpse.
The boy struck first. Ahmed parried. Their blades connected, slid, and clashed in midair.
There was a moment—Mazen’s heart beat with frantic hope—when the boy managed to catch Ahmed off guard and push him away. Ahmed stumbled as the boy raised his blade.
The corpse beneath them shuddered.
Mazen shot to his feet and yelled, “Watch out!”
Too late.