By the time he stumbled into the doors, the magic was making his blood hum. He was dizzy as the merchant took the compass back from him and reached for the door—and then drew away with a soundless gasp as the blade in her hand brightened, revealing one of Imad’s men, standing guard.
He blinked, discombobulated, in the hazy light. “You think you can get past me, Prince?” The man raised his weapon. It was at that exact moment the doors behind him burst open. The killer was knocked off his feet and stabbed in the back. Aisha stood behind him, clutching the sword driven through his chest.
Her wide-eyed gaze met Mazen’s. “What are you doing? Run!”
Loulie’s grip on him tightened as he ducked out of the room and rushed after Aisha, back into the halls blessedly lit by torches. He turned back only once, to witness Imad’s companions giving chase. The moment he and Aisha turned the corner, she stopped him and said, “You’re not moving fast enough. Give me your shadow.”
Mazen frowned. “I can’t just give you my shadow—”
“You can peel it off the wall, can’t you?” She gestured impatiently. “Hand it over.”
Mazen reached for the shadow. He pried it from the wall and, shoving aside his hesitation, threw it at Aisha. He was shocked when she actually disappeared. She seemed just as surprised, though her reaction was short lived, fading as she shifted the shadow cloak onto her shoulder. She held out a hand to the merchant. “I’ll take your dagger as well.” Loulie’s glare turned murderous. She shook her head.
“If I’m going to buy you time, I need a weapon. Give me the dagger.” Aisha reached for the weapon. Mazen yelped when it burst into flame in Loulie’s hand.
Aisha pulled her hand away. “Shit.”
Loulie stared at the fire, blinking rapidly. For a few moments she was still, her gaze unfocused as she looked at the blade. But then she seemed to come back to herself. She shoved the dagger at Aisha without comment. The thief gasped when she wrapped her fingers around the hilt. “It has a voice?” She paused, face paling. “Wait, is this—”
“Yes.” Mazen backed up a step. “It’s Qadir. Don’t lose him.”
Aisha nodded, pulled the shadow over her head, and disappeared. Mazen heard the soft patter of her footsteps and then the surprised yells of men falling to an invisible wraith.
He resumed fleeing. For the first time since escaping the chamber, he glanced at the compass. The mental arrow in his mind had disappeared when Loulie put the compass on her lap, but he could still read the compass in her cupped hands. The twitching arrow guided them down a flight of stairs, pointing decisively ahead. He remembered what Imad had said about its power.
“This—is this a king’s relic?” He glanced down at the merchant.
Loulie shrugged. Mazen paused, realizing she had yet to speak. He glanced at her throat. At the shackle and the chain hanging from it.
His heart clenched at the sight. “The reason you can’t speak…”
She touched a finger to the band.
“And can’t walk…”
She pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Imad. Mazen swallowed his anger. He focused on following the compass, on moving through the ruined corridors, pushing in flimsy wooden doors with his foot, and—
Why was the relic leading him deeper into the ruins?
He stopped, noticing for the first time the way the walls pressed in on them. The gaps and holes he’d become so accustomed to were absent. They had reached a dead end.
“Al-Nazari,” he said softly. His voice was barely a croak. “Where are we?”
But the merchant looked just as confused. She shook her head, face pale.
“I should have gone out the way I came in. But the Sandsea…” He fell back against the wall, despair and exhaustion washing over him. The merchant tugged on his sleeve, a silent question in her eyes. He realized she didn’t know that they were surrounded by the Sandsea. That if there was an escape, he didn’t know where it was.
He looked frantically around them, but there were no doors, no passages. No escape.
His gaze fell to the floor. And snagged on his shadow. Mazen blinked. If his shadow had returned, then Aisha…
“End of the line, Prince.”
Mazen whirled to see Imad standing behind him, still in Omar’s body and flanked by human men. One had Aisha pinned to his chest and held a knife to her throat. Though she struggled against him, his grip was unshakable. The blade at her neck was beaded with red. Mazen stared in horror. He glanced between the men, searching for an opening, for…
He paused, realizing who—what—was missing. “Where are your ghouls?” he said weakly.
Imad stepped forward and pulled open his cloak. Mazen flinched back, but the underside of the cloak was empty. The amulet he had been wearing was gone. “Running amok.” The thief’s voice took on a shrill edge. “Your jinn rendered my relic useless. She took control of my ghouls and clouded my mind with her terrible song.”
A memory flashed through Mazen’s mind of the Queen of Dunes’ song. He recalled the fissure that had opened in his mind to let in memories that were not his. Where had she come from? How was she here?
Imad took another step forward. Mazen saw silver glint between his fingers. Throwing knives. “Now, because of your jinn, I must resort to torture the old-fashioned way.” He raised a hand, snapped his fingers. “Kill her.”
Mazen was too busy gripping Loulie, too busy fearing for her life, to notice the killer behind Aisha shift. He did not notice the gleam of his knife until it was too late.
Until it tore a gash into Aisha’s throat.
There was no scream. No cry.
Just Aisha’s single-eyed gaze, boring into him desperately. And then nothing. The spark of panic faded, and Aisha bint Louas collapsed.
The world tilted.
Mazen was aware of his heartbeat. Of breathing in and in and in. Of a scream, beating wildly in his chest. Of the merchant, biting her fist so hard blood trickled down her knuckles.
“Your brother took everything from me.” Imad was close enough to stab him, close enough to kill him. “Now I shall take everything from him.”
Mazen couldn’t stop looking at Aisha. At her impossibly still body.
Get up, he thought desperately. Get up!
But Aisha didn’t move.
She had been so confident, so powerful. An unfaltering force of nature. If she could not survive, how could he?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. To Aisha. To the merchant.
Again, the world shook. Mazen stumbled on his feet as the walls shuddered. He no longer had enough strength to hold the merchant, to stand—not even enough to see right. He blinked.
The world righted itself.
Then, again, it shook. Tilted.
And cracked.
There was a sound—Mazen recognized it as the sigh of cascading sand.
Imad turned. Mazen followed his gaze to the web of cracks breaking across the surface of the ancient walls. They spread and stretched like veins, pulsing, thrumming, until the walls burst and a torrent of sand crashed through the room in the form of a gigantic wave.
Mazen stumbled back as Imad was swallowed.
The world disappeared, replaced by a hazy veil of black.
And then there was sand in his eyes and nose and throat, and the merchant was no longer in his arms, and Gods, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, help…
He was sinking, sinking, sinking. Until—
The sand beneath him gave way, and Mazen fell into nothingness.
46
LOULIE
Layla could not stop staring at the stretch of sparkling, flowing sand. This was her first time seeing the Sandsea up close. It took her breath away.
“Majestic, isn’t it?” She whirled to see her mother riding beside her on one of the tribe’s camels.
Layla glanced back at the shifting gold-red tides. “It looks like the ocean.” Some people said the sea was infinite, that it had no bottom. Was the Sandsea the same way?
“The jinn live there,” her mother said. “So far down only the strongest can climb out.”