Aisha frowned. She’d expected Imad to possess the cursed collar. Instead, he’d taken out the merchant’s much less impressive compass. She assumed he meant to use it to track down Omar—a rather underwhelming use for a so-called powerful relic. “I doubt it. I thought he was going to pull out that relic from the dune, but either he doesn’t know of its power or the merchant lost it somewhere.”
They had just turned a corner when she heard it: a scream so shrill it pierced her eardrums. For a few moments, Aisha was too shaken to reach for her blade. The prince stepped forward during her moment of hesitation. He started walking. Faster and faster, until he was running.
“Prince!” She chased after him. “What are you doing!”
But the prince had apparently lost all sense of reason and was darting mindlessly toward the chamber where the scream had come from. The treasure chamber, no doubt.
It was a trap; it had to be. And the stupid prince was heading right into it.
Aisha gave chase. The world swam before her eye as she ran, but she ignored her exhaustion. Prince Mazen had saved her life, and she was hell-bent on repaying the favor.
Aisha did not mourn the past, and she did not overthink the future. But the present—that was something she could shape for the better with her blade.
And she would not run from it.
45
MAZEN
Mazen turned the corner and blanched at the sight before him. At the end of the hall was a doorway that led into a room filled with mountains of gold. The treasure chamber. And coming from that chamber: the scream. Mazen had never heard an agony so loud, so bare.
The Midnight Merchant. Panic gripped his heart.
The scream came again, a sob-riddled wail that sent shivers up his spine.
He pulled his shadow around him and paused at the open doors. The chamber was whole: no gaps, no natural light. There was only the firelight from the sconces. Imad and the merchant were barely illuminated by the hazy glow.
Loulie lay unmoving on the floor, the stars on her robes lost beneath a constellation of blood splatters. Imad circled her like a vulture in Omar’s body, twirling a knife in his fingers.
Mazen surged forward. He had no plan. He had no time.
He didn’t see the ghouls until it was too late. Until they were shrieking and rushing toward him. He kept running, even as the human men shifted and Imad searched the emptiness for him. Mazen crashed into him before he could attack the merchant, slapping the knife out of his hand. It was all he managed before he was jumped from behind. He tumbled, and the shadow cloak collapsed to the floor.
One man reached for it while another pinned him to the ground. “Won’t come off,” he said to Imad.
“Search the perimeter for bint Louas.” When he looked at Mazen, his gaze—Omar’s gaze—was terrifyingly blank. “So we meet again, Prince. You’ve made quite a mess of things.”
The fire behind Imad flickered and dimmed. The blood on the merchant’s clothing looked garish beneath its light. Mazen quivered. “What have you done to her?”
“Anyone with eyes can see.” Imad reached out and grabbed him by his shirt. Mazen saw a dagger in his hand. It was a different weapon than the one he’d knocked away: a dagger with a gold letter embedded into the hilt. “I made the mistake of underestimating you once, Prince, but not again. If I must drag your brother here to avenge your corpse, so be it.”
He raised the knife. It flashed through the air faster than Mazen could scream. He felt the coldness of it against his skin and—
Nothing.
Slowly, he eased his eyes open.
The blade had been straight before, but now it was inexplicably crescent shaped, its point curved away from his throat. Mazen was still staring when Imad stabbed him again, and he saw the moment the blade hit his chest and bent.
Imad’s face paled. “What?”
The fire behind them wavered again. It turned a deep and ominous green.
Imad spun, clutching at something hidden beneath his cloak. Mazen saw a chain hanging from his neck, a glimmer of gold between his fingers. An amulet.
“Attend me,” Imad whispered as he grasped the amulet. His nervous gaze swept across the room. When he next spoke, the guttural syllables of the ghoul language came from his mouth. But the ghouls surrounding the perimeter did not respond. They were frozen, their heads tilted eerily, as if they were listening for something.
There was movement. Not from the fire, which danced wildly on the sconces as if possessed, but from the knife still in Imad’s hand. Mazen saw a pair of blazing eyes blink at him from the surface of the blade.
Behind them, the entrance doors slammed shut, and the fire in the room dimmed, sighed, and died, plunging them into darkness. The chamber went eerily silent.
And then an invisible force swept through the room like a whirlwind, pressing the air from Mazen’s lungs. Chaos unfurled in every direction. Mazen heard the slap of hurried footsteps, the hiss of murmured curses. He heard Imad, speaking into the discord with Omar’s voice. “What sorcery is this? Who—” The thief gasped. “No. No!”
Somewhere nearby, there came an inhuman howl. Mazen heard the chattering of ghouls in the darkness. Shuffling. Tearing. And then a scream.
Imad was mumbling what sounded like a fervent prayer beneath his breath. Mazen heard the thief stumble, and—something metal clattered to the floor.
Imad’s blade?
Mazen reached for it. In his grip it was no longer crescent shaped but, there—a pair of red eyes blinked at him from the faintly glowing surface. Well? said a voice in his mind. Are you just going to sit there? Mazen recognized the voice. The eyes. It was impossible and yet…
Not impossible. Jinn do not die like humans.
He squinted into the dark. “Al-Nazari? Lou—”
Fingers wrapped around his wrist from behind. Mazen whirled in a panic. He relaxed only when, in the dim light coming from the blade, he saw Loulie staring at him with glassy eyes. The moment she saw the knife, she clawed it out of his hands.
Mazen took in the blood on her scarves, her robe. She had never looked so small. So exhausted.
“We need to get out of here,” he said gently. “Can you move?”
A muscle feathered in her jaw. She shook her head.
Mazen glanced at her feet, but he was unable to see anything beneath the bloodied hem of her robe. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m going to pick you up, okay?”
The merchant said nothing as he curved an arm under her legs and set a hand on her back; she only pressed a palm to his chest as he rose. He wasn’t sure if he or she was trembling more as he turned and stumbled through the dark. The blade, as if to conceal them, had stopped emitting light, making it impossible to see anything—including the exit.
The darkness was impenetrable. Mazen barely managed a few steps before he froze, overwhelmed by the invisible chaos. He heard ghouls wailing, men yelling, swords screeching—
The merchant nudged him, then pressed something round into his hands. Mazen ran his fingers over glass, wood—a compass? He remembered the instrument in Imad’s hands. How in the world had Loulie taken it from him? Before he could ask, a strange thing happened.
The wood beneath his fingers began to warm, and a familiar song pounded through his head. The stars, they burn the night and guide the sheikh’s way…
The world faded. He was drowning. Chained to a boulder, falling beneath the water—
The memory abruptly dissipated.
My apologies. He stopped breathing when he heard the voice in his head. I thought you were someone else, said the Queen of Dunes. I confess, all human men look the same to me.
His mind spun. The voice definitely belonged to the Queen of Dunes, but—how? Had Imad stolen the collar from the merchant’s bag and brought it with him? The question was replaced with a more perplexing realization: for some reason, he suddenly knew how to navigate his way through the dark room. It was as if there were an arrow in his mind, pointing him toward the exit.