“Inan!”
I snap back to reality. A cold tide rushes over my boots.
The beach. I squeeze the pawn. You’re still on the beach.
“What happened?” Kaea asks. “You were moaning.…”
I whip around, looking for the girl. She has to be behind this. She’s using her wretched magic to fill my head with sounds.
“Inan—”
“We should interrogate them.” I ignore the concern in Kaea’s eyes. “If one of the villagers knew where they were headed, another might have information, too.”
Kaea hesitates and purses her lips. She probably wants to pry. But her duty as admiral comes first. It always will.
We walk over to the surviving villagers. I focus on the tide to ignore their shrieks, but the screaming only grows louder as we draw near.
Seven…, I count in my head. Eight … nine …
I am the son of Or?sha’s greatest ruler.
I am their future king.
“Silence!”
My voice booms into the night with a power that doesn’t feel like my own. Even Kaea gives me a surprised glance as the cries quiet into nothingness.
“We’re looking for Zélie Adebola. She has stolen something valuable from the crown. We were told she’s heading south, and now we need to know why.”
I scan the dark faces of those who refuse to meet my eyes, searching for any sign of the truth. Their fear soaks into the air like humidity. It seeps into my own skin.
“—gods, please—”
“—if he kills me—”
“—in the gods’ names did she steal—”
My heart slams against my chest as their voices attack in flickers, broken thoughts that threaten to overwhelm me. More turquoise clouds rise into the air. Like wasps, they dart toward me. I start to fall back into the blackness of my mind—
“Answer him!”
Thank the skies. Kaea’s bark pulls me back.
I blink and grip the pommel of my sword. The smooth metal grounds me in reality. With time, their fear fades. But the unnerving sensation remains.…
“I said, answer him!” Kaea growls. “Do not make me repeat myself.”
The villagers keep their gazes to the ground.
In their silence, Kaea lunges.
Screams erupt as she grabs an elderly woman by her gray hair. Kaea drags the moaning woman through the sand.
“Admiral—” My voice chokes when Kaea unsheathes her sword. She places the blade against the woman’s wrinkled neck. A single drop of blood falls onto the ground.
“You want to stay silent?” Kaea hisses. “Stay silent and you die!”
“We don’t know anything!” a young girl cries out. Everyone on the beach freezes.
The girl’s hands are trembling. She shoves them into the sand.
“We can tell you about her brother and father. We can tell you of her skill with a staff. But not a soul in Ilorin knows where she’s gone or why.”
I give Kaea a stern look; she drops the woman like a rag doll. I trudge through the wet sand until I reach the girl.
Her shaking intensifies as I approach, but I can’t tell if it’s her fear or the cold of the night tides licking her knees. All she wears is a soaked nightgown, ripped and frayed around her being.
“What’s your name?”
Standing this close to her, I see how her oak-brown skin stands out against the darker chestnut and mahogany hues of the villagers. Perhaps there’s some nobility in her blood. A father who played in the mud.
When she doesn’t answer, I bend down, keeping my voice low. “The faster you answer, the faster we leave.”
“Yemi,” she chokes out. Her hands grip the sand as she speaks. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but only if you leave us alone.”
I nod. A simple concession. Duty or not, I don’t want to see more bodies.
I can’t bear to hear more screams.
I reach down and untie the rope binding her wrists. She flinches at my touch. “Give us the information we need and I promise your people will be safe.”
“Safe?”
Yemi meets my eyes with a hatred that impales me like a sword. Though her mouth never opens, her voice rings in my skull.
“Safe ended a long time ago.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ZéLIE
MY EYES ACHE from hours of silent tears by the time we halt Nailah to rest. It takes all of five seconds for her and Tzain to pass out on the moss-covered ground, escaping our fractured reality for the safety of sleep.
Amari inspects the ground, shivering in the forest cold. She eventually lays her cloak down and sleeps on top of it, too regal to grace the earth with her bare head. I stare at her, remembering how close I dragged her to the flames.
The memory feels distant now, like someone else held all that hate.
Now only cool anger simmers, anger I shouldn’t bother feeling. I’d bet five hundred silver pieces she won’t last another day.
I wrap myself in my cloak and nestle into Nailah, relishing the sensation of the soft fur against my skin. Through the shadowed leaves, the star-filled sky reignites the magic of Mama Agba’s vision in my mind.
“It’s back,” I whisper to myself. With the insanity of the day, that fact is still hardest to believe. We can reclaim our magic.
We can thrive again.
“Oya…”
I whisper the name of the Goddess of Life and Death, my sister deity who has granted me magic’s gift. As a child, I called to her so often you’d think she slept in my cot, but now that I search for the words of a prayer, I don’t know what to say.
“Bá mi s0r0,” I attempt, but it lacks all the conviction and power Mama Agba’s chant had. She believed in her connection to Orúnmila so much she could conjure a premonition. Right now, I just want to believe that someone is up there.
“Ràn mí l3w3,” I pray instead. Help me. Those words feel so much realer, so much more like my own. “Mama Agba says you’ve chosen me. Baba agrees, but I … I’m scared. This is too important. I don’t want to screw it up.”
Saying it out loud makes the fear tangible, a new weight hanging in the air. I couldn’t even protect Baba. How am I supposed to save the maji?
But as the fear breathes, I get the smallest sense of comfort. The idea that Oya could be here, right by my side. Gods only know there’s no way I can get through this without her.
“Just help me,” I repeat once more. “Ràn mí l3w3. Please. And keep Baba safe. No matter what happens, just let him and Mama Agba be okay.”
Not knowing what else to say, I bow my head. Though stiff, I almost feel like I can see my prayers drifting to the sky. I hold on to the brief moment of contentment it grants me, forcing it above the pain, the fear, the grief. I hold it until it cradles me in its arms, rocking me to sleep.
*
WHEN I WAKE, something feels off. Unnatural. Not quite right.
I rise, expecting to find Nailah’s sleeping mass, but she’s nowhere to be seen. The forest is gone, no trees, no moss. Instead, I sit in a field of towering reeds whistling with the burst of wind in the air.