“Can you feel it?” Amari’s voice drops to a whisper as she takes a step back. “Kaea said the scroll transforms div?ners into maji. When Binta touched it, all these lights burst from her hands!”
I turn up my palm, searching for the lavender glow of Reaper magic. Before the Raid, when a div?ner transformed, there was no guarantee what kind of maji that div?ner would be. Often div?ners inherited the magic of their parents, almost always deferring to the magic in their mother’s bloodline. With a kosidán father, I was sure I would become a Reaper like Mama. I longed for the day I would feel the magic of the dead in my bones, but right now all I can feel is an unnerving tingle in my veins.
I pick up the parchment with care, wary it’ll trigger something again. While I can make out a yellow painting of the sun on the weathered scroll, the rest of the symbols are unreadable, so ancient they look older than time itself.
“Don’t tell me you believe this.” Tzain lowers his voice. “Magic’s gone, Zél. It’s never coming back.”
I know he’s just trying to protect me. These are words he’s had to tell me before, wiping my tears, stifling his own. Words I’ve always listened to, but this time …
“Others who touched the scroll.” I turn to Amari. “They’re maji now? Their gifts returned?”
“Yes.” She nods, eagerly at first, but with time her enthusiasm fades. “Their magic came back … but Father’s men got to them.”
My blood chills as I stare at the scroll. Though Mama’s corpse flashes into my mind, it’s not her face I picture bloodied and beaten.
It’s mine.
But she didn’t have her magic, a small voice reminds me. She didn’t have a chance to fight.
And like that, I’m six years old again, curled behind the fire in our Ibadan home. Tzain wraps his arms around me and points me toward the wall, forever trying to shield me from the world’s pain.
Crimson splatters into the air as the guard beats Baba again and again. Mama screams for them to stop while two soldiers jerk the chain over her neck, so tight the majacite links draw blood from her skin.
She chokes as they drag her from the hut like an animal, kicking and thrashing.
Except this time, she would have magic.
This time, she could win.
I close my eyes and let myself imagine what could have been.
“Gb3 ariwo ikú!” Mama hisses through her teeth, given new life with my imagination. “Pa ipò dà. Jáde nínú 1j1 ara!”
The guards strangling her freeze, shaking violently as her incantation takes hold. They scream as she rips their spirits from their bodies, killing them with the wrath of a Reaper in full command of her gifts. Mama’s magic feeds off her rage. With the dark shadows twisting around her, she looks like Oya, the Goddess of Life and Death herself.
With a guttural cry, Mama tears the chain from her neck and wraps the black links around the remaining guard’s throat. With magic, she saves Baba’s warrior spirit.
With magic, she’s still alive.
“If what you say is true”—Tzain’s anger cuts into my imagination—“you can’t stay. They’re killing people for this. If they catch it with Zél—”
His voice cracks and my heart rips into so many pieces I don’t know if my chest will hold. I could screw everything up for the remainder of his days, yet Tzain would still die trying to keep me safe.
I need to protect him. It’s his turn to be saved.
“We have to go.” I roll the parchment and place it in my pack, moving so quickly I almost forget the silver-filled purse on the ground. “Real or not, we have to get back to Baba. Escape while we still can.”
Tzain swallows his frustration and mounts Nailah. I crawl on behind him when the princess speaks, shy like a child.
“W-what about me?”
“What about you?” I ask. My hatred for her family flares. Now that we have the scroll, I long to leave Amari stranded in the forest, let her starve or become a hyenaire’s prey.
“If you’re taking that stupid scroll, she has to come.” Tzain sighs. “Otherwise she’ll lead the guards straight to us.”
Amari’s face blanches when I turn back to her.
As if I’m the one she has to fear.
“Just get on.” I scoot forward on Nailah’s saddle.
As much as I want to leave her behind, we’re not done with each other yet.
CHAPTER EIGHT
INAN
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”
A thousand thoughts race through my mind. I try to latch onto the facts: magic in Or?sha; an ancient scroll; treason by Amari’s hand?
It’s not possible. Even if I could believe the magic, I can’t accept my sister’s involvement. Amari can barely speak up at a banquet. She lets Mother dictate her clothes. Amari’s never spent a day outside these walls, and now she’s fled Lagos with the only thing that can bring our empire down?
I think back, recalling the moment the fugitive girl crashed into me. When we collided, something sharp and hot crackled through my bones. A strange and powerful attack. In my shock, I didn’t peer under the fugitive’s hood. But if I had, would I really have seen my sister’s amber eyes peering back?
“No,” I whisper to myself. It’s outlandish. I have half a mind to commit Father to the royal physician. But it’s impossible to deny the look in his eyes. Crazed. Calculating. In eighteen years I’ve seen many things in his gaze. But never fear. Never terror.
“Before you were born, the maji were drunk with power, always plotting to overthrow our line,” Father explains. “Even with their insurgency, my father fought to be fair, but that fairness got him killed.”
Along with your older brother, I think silently. Your first wife, your firstborn son. There isn’t a noble in Or?sha who doesn’t know of the slaughter Father endured at the maji’s hands. A carnage that would one day be avenged by the Raid.
Out of instinct, I finger the tarnished pawn in my pocket, a stolen “gift” from Father. The sênet piece is the only survivor of Father’s childhood set, a game of strategy he used to play with me when I was young.
Though the cool metal usually anchors me, today it’s warm to the touch. It almost stings as it passes through my fingers, burning with Father’s impending truth.
“When I rose to the throne, I knew magic was the root of all our pain. It’s crushed empires before ours, and as long as it lives, it shall crush empires again.”
I nod, remembering Father’s rants from long before the Raid. The Britāun?s. The P?rlt?ganés. The Sp?ní Empire—all civilizations destroyed because those who had magic craved power, and those in charge didn’t do enough to stop them.
“When I discovered the raw alloy Bratonians used to subdue magic, I thought that would be enough. With majacite, they created prisons, and weapons, and chains. Following their tactics, I did the same. But even that wasn’t enough to tame those treacherous maggots. If our kingdom was ever going to survive, I knew I had to take magic away.”
What? I jerk forward, unable to trust my own ears. Magic is beyond us. How could Father attack an enemy like that?