Then: pandemonium.
Another arrow shot past them. One, two—a volley of them, coming through a curtain of dirt. One whizzed past the merchant’s shoulder. Another grazed Mazen’s horse. It rose with a terrified whinny, and Mazen gasped as he dug his heels into its flanks. He was able to remain in the saddle only by holding tight to the reins.
He calmed his horse enough to steady his vision and look beyond the wall of dust. His heart stopped when he saw their assailants: an army of shambling white forms garbed in black, with sunken eye sockets shadowed beneath their hoods. If not for their unnaturally long, wiry limbs and empty eyes, they could have passed as human.
Mazen was torn between wanting to scream and wanting to cry.
“Where did they come from?” The merchant’s voice was barely a whisper.
Her bodyguard reached out, set his fingers on her wrist. “Loulie,” he said softly. “There are too many; we have to outrun them.”
The merchant glanced down at her compass. Even Mazen could tell it was useless, for the arrow was spinning in wild circles. Loulie shoved it into her pocket with a shaky sigh.
And then they fled.
But there was no escaping the ghouls. The air filled with wails and shrieks as the undead creatures fired on them from various directions. Mazen swerved in his saddle to avoid one arrow only to have another tear a hole through his pant leg. He couldn’t help the sound of distress that escaped his lips as he flattened himself against his horse. It took all his concentration to maneuver around the creatures stumbling into his way.
Loulie made no such effort. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her ride right over a ghoul without batting an eye. But the creature retaliated before it fell, sweeping its sword through the air and ripping the bottom of her cloak. Loulie cried out, and the sound caught the attention of her bodyguard. Qadir glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide with alarm. He relaxed only when Loulie waved a hand to reassure him of her safety.
But his eyes—there was something strange about them. They were eerily bright and… flickering?
Mazen gaped. No, they were sparking like fire.
Qadir’s gaze cut sharply to him. The bodyguard blinked, and just as abruptly as the strange fire had appeared, it disappeared. He turned away without comment.
Mazen stared at his back, troubled. He wondered if he was losing his mind.
But he did not linger on the strangeness of the sight for long. He couldn’t, not with the hordes of black-clad undead closing in on them. The pack had grown denser, the creatures’ bodies packed so tightly together they looked like a moving storm cloud. Mazen’s heart sank into his stomach when he realized they were surrounded.
“Ambush!” Aisha yelled at the same time Mazen thought, How will we survive this?
The thief clenched her hands into fists over her reins. “They’re too well organized for a normal horde.” She spoke loudly over the chaos. “Someone has to be controlling them.”
“Where?” The merchant’s voice cracked as she dodged an arrow. “Where is this mastermind you speak of? Because if we can’t find them, we’re good as dead. We’re—”
“Loulie.” Qadir’s voice was barely audible, but the resignation in it made Mazen wince. He watched as Qadir raised an arm. The bodyguard tapped his wrist, a slight motion that made his skin shimmer oddly beneath the sun.
The merchant stiffened in her saddle. “No.” Her response was so immediate, the terror on her face so palpable, that it made the last of Mazen’s nerves fray.
“What?” He glanced between them frantically. “What’s happening?”
But the bodyguard just looked past him to Loulie. “Trust me,” he said softly. Some silent message seemed to pass between them. Eventually, reluctantly, Loulie nodded.
“We keep riding to the center of the mob, then,” Qadir said.
Aisha stared at him. “Do you want to die?”
When neither Loulie nor Qadir responded, Aisha turned to Mazen. There was a desperation in her eyes he had never seen before. He knew she was waiting for him to object. But…
He had no power here. He never had.
“We’re out of ideas.” His throat was tight, and he could barely manage his next words. “Whatever this plan is, it’s better than nothing.”
“It’s not a plan,” Aisha snapped, but her voice lacked its usual heat. There was despair in every taut line of her body. “It’s suicide.”
Mazen opened his mouth. Then closed it. He didn’t have the heart to offer reassurances, not when he didn’t believe in them himself.
Aisha snapped her reins, pushing her horse harder, faster. “Stay behind me,” she called back. “If your gods are kind, maybe they’ll spare us.”
She turned away and shot after Loulie and Qadir, toward the center of the turmoil.
Mazen muttered a prayer beneath his breath and chased after her.
38
LOULIE
I trust you, Qadir.
The moment Qadir had touched the tattoos on his wrist, Loulie had known what he meant to do. There were far too many ghouls for them to defeat with blades and knives. So Qadir had suggested a different kind of weapon: magic. His magic. Fire that would save them, but one that would also condemn him.
He had begged her to trust him. And she would. She had entrusted her life to him many times; the least she could do was trust that he could protect his own. And she—she would protect him too. She wasn’t so weak she couldn’t watch his back like he watched hers.
“I trust you, Qadir.”
Loulie muttered the words on numb lips as the ghouls rushed toward them. As they loosed arrows and her vision blurred with tears. As Qadir fixed his gaze ahead and the tattoos snaking up his arms began to glow.
I trust you. I trust you. I trust you. The words pounded through her mind.
Qadir raised a hand. His fingertips sparked. The markings on his skin burned brighter and brighter, until they were shining so vividly they seemed to set his body on fire, and he became a blinding streak of gold and red.
Loulie had to avert her eyes. She forced herself to breathe. In and out. In and—
She heard something snap beneath her horse’s hooves. The sound was followed by an odd but familiar sigh—the hiss of shifting, falling sand.
Loulie looked down just in time to see the landscape beneath her yawn open. Shock muddied her mind as the sand fell away, revealing a trap that had not been there moments ago.
She opened her mouth—to scream, to cry for help—when something shoved her horse away from the chasm. Loulie whirled in her saddle. She saw Qadir riding over the gaping hole, hand outstretched, the light fading from his skin.
There was a moment of stillness. Qadir looked at her urgently. His lips parted.
And then he and his horse plummeted into the abyss.
Loulie was distantly aware of Qadir’s name leaving her mouth as a scream. Of sand crunching beneath her feet as she leapt from her panicked horse and sprinted toward the hole.
She could hear the prince and the thief dogging her steps. Yelling her name.
No.
She rushed to the pit.
No.
The chasm was filled with iron. Blades crisscrossed the walls, jutting toward the center like crooked teeth. On the tips of those blades: silver and crimson blood. Qadir’s horse, torn and bleeding to death. And at the bottom of the pit, impaled on a graveyard of broken iron, silver blood on his skin—
Qadir.
Loulie began to scream.
39
LOULIE
Once, Loulie had lived a nightmare.
Like a dreamer, she had eventually woken and buried it in her mind. But though she had become very good at forgetting, the memories still haunted her in her sleep. She would see her parents’ broken bodies. Would see her campsite going up in flames. She would smell blood and death and forget how to breathe.
And then Qadir would shake her awake. “You were making a face in your sleep. I thought it rude to keep staring.”
And just like that, the nightmare would dissipate. Because so long as she avoided belonging anywhere—belonging with anyone—she would never have to relive that heartbreak.