I stumbled back when his weary gaze met mine.
Dawoud, head of Niyar’s staff, the man who would sneak me cakes from the kitchen, who spent his rare free moments listening to me babble about my day, who taught me the best way to climb a fig tree, stood in Dar al Mansi.
Tears filled his eyes. He recognized me, too.
If they had spilled me into a ravine of filth, burned the sins of fifty lifetimes into my skin, I could not have felt dirtier than I did right then.
“Are you real?” I demanded. My grip on the dagger shook.
“Essiya,” he whispered, and the sound that left my mouth was not human.
Dawoud rushed to me, the instinct to comfort defeating his physical deterioration. I wilted away from him.
“How are you here?” I choked out. “How are you alive?” The most terrible of notions occurred to me, and bile burned in my throat. “Tell me you are not with them, Dawoud. Tell me the Mufsids or Urabi have not sent you.”
“Of course not!” An echo of his former self rang in his affronted tone. “I have not crossed paths with either group in a year.”
“Then how?”
Dawoud sighed. “I was captured in Orban three months ago by a group of Nizahl soldiers. Rawain’s High Counselor knew the role I held in Jasad, and he found innovative methods to pull information from me.”
The realization swept over me like ice rain. I clapped my hand over my mouth, whirling away from Dawoud as my stomach heaved. He was Supreme Rawain’s prisoner. They released him into Essam Woods, toward Dar al Mansi, despite knowing he was a Jasadi.
I was right all along. Vaun planted the seeds of doubt in Supreme Rawain’s head. I let the guards persuade me that Rawain would not trust another over his son. And in most matters, Rawain wouldn’t.
But Jasadis were not most matters.
Dawoud’s brow pinched, resurrecting the ghost of a once-brilliant analyst. “If you don’t kill me, the Supreme will think you are a Jasadi,” Dawoud said. “I wonder how he knew to send me. I’m not the only prisoner.”
When I stood there dumbly, Dawoud’s voice gentled. “I thought of you every night. When I heard what had happened, what they’d done, I couldn’t think of anything but you. The argument we’d had over your dress; would that be our last? You were so angry with me, stomping your little feet and hiding in your tree.”
“I didn’t like the gold ruffles.” I couldn’t breathe.
“I thought, not Essiya. Not her, too. Anyone else.”
Grief burned in my chest. “I’m sorry, Dawoud. I’m so sorry.”
He was never meant to see me like this.
“They called you Sylvia,” he said. “The guards. They said you are the Nizahl Champion.”
The shame blistering through me burned hotter than Vaida’s seal, searing more than a hand thrust into crackling flames. He said it plainly, not a hint of judgment in his voice, but the words whipped me to tatters.
Sylvia. Nizahl’s Champion, Hanim murmured. That was your choice.
“I had to. It was the reasonable—it was the logical choice,” I babbled, fully aware of the concern gathering on Dawoud’s face. What must I look like, mumbling to myself, covered in dust and gore, bearing trophies from monsters? Niphran’s daughter besieged with a new madness. “I couldn’t help them! I cannot. I have nothing to offer. Look around us. How could I have stopped this? I didn’t know you were alive—how could I have known?”
You could possess all the magic in the world, and you would still give Jasad your back, Hanim said. I fisted my hands in my hair, shaking my head like a dog trying to unseat a persistent fly.
Before Dawoud could respond to my ravings, a shriek shook the earth. Too late, I registered the long shadow over us. Al Anqa’a dove, and I hurled myself into Dawoud as its claws curled over the place where he had stood.
“Here, take this.” I shoved the dagger’s handle into his hand, pulling out the one in my boot as I leapt to my feet. “Go, stay close to the buildings!”
Dawoud glanced at the dagger, uncomprehending. “You think I am going to leave you to fight alone?”
Al Anqa’a screeched, and I fervently hoped the crowds waiting beyond Dar al Mansi could hear it. That they knew Dar al Mansi, for all that it was forgotten, would never stop demanding to be heard.
I flipped the dagger, keeping Al Anqa’a fixed on me as it folded its wings to dive again. “I am more than capable of fighting alone.”
Glass wings chimed with the wind as Al Anqa’a swept toward me. I dropped in a long slide as it approached, pointing my dagger up. I braced my arms, keeping the dagger firm and high. Al Anqa’a wailed as the dagger pierced its featherless underside, and its talons caught me in the shoulder and swung. I crashed into the side of a crumbling house.
Al Anqa’a shook itself, and the dagger fell to the ground. Its beady gaze narrowed. I pushed myself from the crevice of rubble. A sharp claw pierced my calf, dragging me out of the narrow alley. I tried to grab hold of an anchor, tearing out roots and scrabbling at boulders.
Al Anqa’a unhinged its beak, its wings unfolding over me. A breathtaking tableau of color unspooled, more brilliant than every dawn and dusk I’d witnessed.
I writhed under its unyielding talons, trailing blood behind me.
Suddenly, Al Anqa’a bellowed again, releasing me to arch into the air. Behind it stood Dawoud, his hands raised and his lips moving. His eyes glowed gold and silver. Al Anqa’a teetered in the sky, a powerful gust of wind from its wings sending Dawoud stumbling.
“Dawoud, stop!” I cried out. He would need every ounce of magic he had to escape the patrol surrounding Dar al Mansi. He couldn’t waste it all on Al Anqa’a.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, gathering in its deep grooves. “Essiya, end this,” Dawoud said. I limped to my dagger and wiped it against my thigh. “You know what Rawain wants.”
It was my turn to stare uncomprehendingly. “I am not going to kill you,” I snarled.
The sensible part of me knew failing Rawain’s test would mean an end to all my plans. An end to Arin’s designs. But I had lasted this long by recognizing the burdens I could bear, and killing Dawoud was not among them.
Al Anqa’a knocked a wall from a shop, sending bricks blasting around us. Dawoud’s magic couldn’t hold it much longer. My cuffs tightened, swelling with my fear.
He couldn’t hold it, but I could.
I stared at my cuffs as they grew tighter than they ever had.
Al Anqa’a swiped at Dawoud, missing him by inches. I threw my arms into the air, my cuffs throbbing as my magic hurtled into Al Anqa’a. The creature screamed, its sunset glass wings clinking. An opaque mist blanketed the sky.
Dawoud regarded the shrieking bird with no small amount of awe. But when he glanced at me, shock swept over his features. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
I frowned, blinking rapidly. My arms quaked with the strain of holding Al Anqa’a away.