Layla tilted her head. “Does that mean if we dove deep enough, we could visit the jinn’s world like they visit ours?”
Her mother smiled wryly. “The jinn have magic, dearest one. Magic to help them break through a tide of endless sand. We do not have that same power; we would stop breathing before we reached the bottom.” Layla startled when her mother set a hand on her shoulder. “We are wanderers, but even we must never venture into the Sandsea. It is too dangerous.” She raised a brow. “You hear me, Sweet Fire? Do not ever walk into the Sandsea.”
Layla turned away to hide her flush. It wasn’t that she’d actually been considering it. Just that she was… curious. She cleared her throat. “You told me once the Sandsea was made from jinn fire?”
Her mother’s gaze turned wistful. “The Sandsea is a rip in the world, made from a fire so fierce it has never stopped burning. That kind of magic—you must stay away from it. Do you understand, Sweet Fire?”
Loulie did not understand.
She did not understand why the Sandsea had suddenly swallowed the ruins and why it had not yet killed her. Everywhere she looked, there was sand. And yet that sand was more a tunnel than an ocean, a churning eddy of red and gold that spun around her like a tornado.
She fell, and it was like falling into the sun.
Is this what the Sandsea has been all along? A tunnel to the center of the world?
But then, finally, the end came.
She hit the ground hard enough to have the breath knocked from her lungs. Slowly, she forced herself to sit up. She spotted the prince first. He was on his knees a few feet away from her, digging the compass out of the sand. She had recovered it in the darkened treasure chamber when Imad threw it away during the scare—she was glad it had made it down here with them.
She glanced around, noticing they were surrounded on all sides by walls of falling sand. Then she turned her gaze upward. And beheld the gigantic hole above them. Sand fell from its edges, dusting her lashes. She could just barely make out the crumbling ruins, which meant that they were… beneath them now? How was that possible?
“Midnight Merchant?” The prince was batting sand from his eyes.
She waved him over. The prince rose, glanced up. His mouth fell open. “Oh,” he said weakly. And then his eyes went wide and he whirled toward her. “Aisha?” The name was a plea.
She swallowed, shook her head. She’d seen Aisha die, just as she’d seen Qadir die.
Qadir. She froze. The knife! She looked around for it desperately.
But there was only sand. The ground was sand, the walls were sand, and there was nothing else, no one else. No, no, no! She was a damned fool. She had given Aisha the knife, and now it was gone. But no—she had lost Qadir once; she refused to lose him again.
Distantly, she heard the prince yelling her name. His voice was laced with panic. She did not understand why until she followed his horrified gaze to the hole. That was when she saw the nameless terror—a shadowy being coated in blue fire—falling through the opening. The thing rushed toward them so suddenly Loulie had no time to react. One moment the world was warm and golden. The next, it was hot and red and burning. If falling into the Sandsea had been like falling into the sun, then this was like walking headfirst into an inferno.
The sliver of metal at her throat grew unbearably hot. When she touched the metal, she felt fire. Fire caressing her skin and warming her palms.
Fire she recognized.
Invisible fingers pressed down on her own. There was a final flare of heat and then—freedom. The shackle crumbled to ash and fell from her neck. Loulie gasped, looked up, and beheld a wall of flames.
The fire faded from blue to gold to red to black and then into the shape of a man. A man so faded he was nearly nonexistent. The whorls on his skin ran together like water, and his ruby-red eyes were so bright they were devoid of irises.
Familiar yet unfamiliar. Loulie was in too much shock to say his name.
The phantom reached down to pick her up. Being held by him was like being held by smoke. There was a soft pressure at her head, a gentle heat soaking her skin. But mostly, there was relief. A relief that coursed through her veins and screamed safe.
“You.” The prince stepped back, clutching the compass. “How?”
The fiery apparition ignored him and flicked a wrist at one of the walls of sand. It parted like a curtain, burning away into crackling embers and opening up into a tunnel. The phantom glanced down at her, pressed a blade into her hands. Qadir’s knife. His red eyes blinked at her from the surface.
“Qadir.” She gripped the blade.
He was back; he was back.
“Compass,” Qadir rasped in a parchment-thin voice. He pointed to the tunnel and looked at Mazen expectantly.
The prince stepped back. “How are you here? How are we here? What kind of magic…”
The walls of sand shuddered. Loulie looked up just in time to see sand come crashing through the hole above them. It was nearly upon them when Qadir lifted his hand and conjured a shield of flame. The sand dissipated into sparks upon impact, but it was coming hard and fast, and the pressure was breaking the shield. “Go!” he roared.
The prince bolted toward the tunnel. Qadir followed. He was smoke and wind and moved so fast Loulie felt as if she were flying. He kept one hand outstretched toward the sand, parting it with heat as they ran. Loulie heard the hiss of sand as it crashed behind them, filling the tunnel.
She pressed her tearstained face into his shoulder. “I’m here,” he said softly. If she concentrated hard enough, she could almost pretend he was not smoke, that he was flesh and blood and that he was here. Truly here.
“What a pathetic way to die,” she said.
“You’re not going to die.”
“The arrow won’t stop changing direction!” Mazen called up ahead.
“We’re almost there,” Qadir called back, his voice so soft Loulie barely heard it over the tumultuous roar of the sand behind them. She turned her head, and blinked as light assaulted her senses, as the sand sloped upward toward a hole glowing with sunlight. A hole that led outside.
“You see? Almost there.” His voice was faint. He was faint. She could barely feel his hands anymore.
“Don’t leave me.” She clung to him fiercely. “You’re not allowed to leave me.”
She could feel the light pressing into her eyes now, could feel the kiss of the wind against her skin as they wove their way through sinking ruins and ran up a hill of falling sand, climbing higher and higher until—
A scream tore through the air. Loulie looked up and saw the prince, nothing but a shadow haloed in blinding light. She saw him collapse to his knees and slide down the slope, gripping his arm. She became aware of the second shadow only when a knife whistled past her ear and cut through Qadir’s smoky form. The jinn’s arms gave way, and she was suddenly falling, coughing sand as she tumbled down the slope.
“You. It was you we were looking for.” She recognized Omar’s voice. And when she looked up and saw him pointing uphill at Qadir’s misty body with madness in his eyes, she recognized that too. She remembered the chains. The collar. The knife against her throat.
Not Omar.
The laugh that left Imad’s throat was a broken thing. “You lied to me, merchant.” He hobbled toward her, dragging a clearly broken leg behind him. His skin was marred with odd black splatters that shone like blood. “Your compass is not the relic we were ordered to find. The king’s relic we searched for—it didn’t exist. And your jinn…” His breathing was a wet rasp. “Is more than just a jinn, isn’t he?”
Loulie, look at me.
Loulie stared at the thief, uncomprehending.
LOULIE. The dagger in her hands grew hot with fire. She looked down and saw Qadir’s narrowed eyes. Do you still want your vengeance? His voice echoed in her mind even as his mute, shadowy form slid down the hill toward her.
Imad’s laughter was so loud and wild it made his body shake. “It’s no wonder he lives! Do you know what he is, girl?”