He wouldn’t embarrass Nizahl by arresting his own Champion. Not for a few common thieves. Supreme Rawain was no different than Hanim. One thing joined them together years before my birth. One immutable, depraved need, and it was what I called upon now.
I allowed myself to look up at Arin. Like a dying woman at an oasis, I drank my fill of the beautiful Heir. Horror twisted across his features. As hard as he tried to plan every conceivable outcome, even the Nizahl Heir could not prepare for the hidden shadows of a broken mind—nor what might happen if light was turned upon them.
In the measure of monster or man, what tips the scales?
I rose to my feet. “You knew me before I was your Champion.” My voice rang loud and clear. My magic howled for release. There was no tightness. No pain.
If it was power he wanted, it was power he would get.
“We met across a sacred oak table many years ago. At a site of peace and prosperity. You knew me by another name. Look closely, Rawain. Don’t you remember me?” I leaned over the table between me and the Supreme. “I certainly remember you.”
I gazed into pale, reptilian eyes, and I winked.
Shock swept Supreme Rawain’s expression clean. “Niphran’s daughter.” His grip on the scepter convulsed. “It cannot be. You’re dead.”
My smile brightened. “Not anymore.”
“Guards!” Rawain bellowed. He leveled the crystalline head of his scepter at my chest as soldiers poured into the ballroom. Sefa and Marek were forgotten in the fray. “An abomination masquerading as our Champion. You will pay for what you’ve done, Sylvia of Mahair.”
I tutted. “Let me refresh your memory.” My wrists ached with the pressure on my cuffs. “My name is Essiya. Malika of Jasad.”
Arin saw them first. “Cuffs,” he said, in a dawn of wonder.
The cuffs glowed, alight with molten magic. Except, this time, it didn’t stop. This time, the glow flooded every corner.
You should beware symbols of power, Diya had said. Like the power of a true name suppressed for too long.
Essiya went beyond queen, beyond Jasad. Essiya was a symbol, and she had taken a life of her own. Who we are is where we come from. Who we were.
My silver cuffs clattered to the floor. Iridescent cracks raced across my body, the glowing streaks breaking open over my skin. I saw my reflection in Queen Hanan’s chalice just as silver and gold rolled over my eyes.
“Retreat!” Arin roared. He shoved his father away from me and twisted, throwing his arm over his head.
My magic ruptured in a tidal wave of gold and silver. Screams filled the ballroom as the ceiling exploded. My magic whipped the raining glass in every direction. The guests stampeded through the archway, knocking the Nizahl crest into the wall. A kitmer took shape in the center of the ballroom. The feline rose from its haunches, gold feathered head glimmering. Golden wings fanned out, crashing into the walls penning it in. Its roar shook the ground as the roof caved around its head.
Lanterns smashed between me and the rest of the royals, the flames catching on the spilled tablecloths. Dust floated from the falling stones, swirling lazily above the chaos.
I stumbled past the kitmer’s paws to where Sefa and Marek hid behind a shaking pillar. The guards converged around the royals, scuttling them from the ballroom rapidly collapsing around us.
“Run!” I shouted. Stones crashed into the tables. “I cannot control it!”
Sylvia— Sefa mouthed. She squinted, struggling against the wind’s tide. Dust sprayed into her hair, seconds before a boulder tumbled from the wall to our right. She reached for me.
I snapped my fingers. Sefa and Marek disappeared, and the boulder smashed into her vacated spot.
The kitmer’s wings broke against the Citadel’s walls, and I laughed, spinning in the destruction.
This was freedom. I finally understood why Rawain tried so hard to wipe magic from the lands. Imagine never knowing this kind of euphoria. Never feeling magic streaming through you, whistling through the air at your command. A purity of power, purging away the hurt and mischief of mortality.
I understood why my grandparents would kill for this.
Something sharp lodged into my shoulder. Then another and another. Arrows flew through the storming kitmer and into me, dozens of them, covering my body in pinpricks of pain. The wind shrieked, and the platform flattened under the collapsing ceiling.
Normal arrows could not fly in these conditions.
I stumbled into a table and yanked an arrow out from my thigh. The tip dissolved into sepia specks.
Sim siya. A Jasadi paralyzing agent. I seized, crumpling onto the spilled pomegranate rubies. Fog descended over my mind.
A circle formed around me. Hands linked over my body, and voices chanted in melodic Resar. Though my vision swam, I could distinguish one face above the rest.
“I know you,” I slurred. The man at the Meridian Pass. Efra.
The Urabi had found their moment to strike.
The woman next to the grim Efra smiled. “This will only hurt for a moment, Mawlati.”
The chanting accelerated as the wing of the Citadel imploded. The kitmer soared above the destruction, wings painting the night sky in the blazing colors of Jasad. A renewal. A deadly vow.
My hand had fallen over my heart. I counted the slowing beats as the Urabi’s chants grew louder and the world lost its colors.
One, two. I was alive. Three, four. I would never be safe again.
Somewhere, Arin would be reeling at my betrayal. His eyes would go icy and unforgiving, and a scar to match the one on his jaw would gouge into his soul. Perhaps he’d hunt me as he hunted Soraya.
Five, six. “I choose her,” he’d said.
In a different life, I thought, I would have chosen you, too.
The hands separated, and we disappeared.
EPILOGUE
ARIN
In the following madness, Arin of Nizahl stood still in a sea of movement.
The guests teemed on the Citadel’s lawn. Soldiers steered carriages stacked with barrels of water to the burning wing and ran inside.
“She died. I thought she died,” Queen Hanan repeated. The Queen of Omal sank into an unseemly heap on the ground. Felix hovered over her, trying to pull his grandmother to her feet. “Emre’s daughter is alive?”
Accusations flew between the royals. She had stayed under each of their roofs, eaten at their tables. “Find her!” Rawain slammed his scepter into the earth. “Close the gates! Send sentries into the woods!”
Arin knew he should speak. He should tell his father the soldiers would find nothing on the Citadel’s grounds. Instruct them to barricade the roads instead. If the news reached Nizahl’s upper towns, it would spread through the kingdom in days. Panic would catch like dry kindling, and the lower villages would begin hoarding food and hiding children eligible for conscription.
But there was a different chaos breaking loose inside the Heir. Gaining speed, preparing to detonate. He searched for control in the seething mass, but it evaded him.
The Nizahl Heir did not know what would come out of his mouth if he tried to speak. Though the fire raged in the Citadel’s wing, expelling soldiers covered in soot and ash, Arin was the greatest threat to the people around him.