MAGIC HISSED THROUGH Sajda Ali’s blood, stinging her skin as she swept her long black hair into a ponytail, careful to leave the sides low enough to cover most of her ears. She ignored the bite of the magic she’d inherited from the father she’d never met and tucked her black shirt into her black pants as the underground prison of Maqbara slowly came to life around her.
She’d overslept, a rare mistake that would have cost her dearly if the warden had been in residence, but the woman hadn’t returned yet from her trip to negotiate for a shipment of monstrous creatures from the remote desert villages that dotted the Samaal. Frustration hummed through Sajda. She might not be in trouble for oversleeping, but she’d missed most of her opportunity to work on the only thing that truly mattered to her: a way to escape.
After splashing water on her face, she rubbed some on the tiny raised scars that crisscrossed the skin beneath the cuffs she wore—a reminder of the times when the magic in her blood had fought the rune-inscribed iron that was meant to keep it at bay. Every year, the warden locked new cuffs on Sajda’s wrists, the freshly carved runes keeping the iron free from rust and trapping the magic in her slave’s blood. And every year Sajda dreamed of finding a single instant, a tiny sliver of time between one cuff falling to the floor and the other one snapping into place when she could use her magic to overpower the warden and gain her freedom. But the warden was too smart to unlock an old cuff before the new one was in place, and Sajda didn’t have the luxury of dreams that would never come true. She hurried from her room. There was still time to make progress on her plan if she moved quickly.
Besides, she didn’t want to be caught alone in the fifth floor corridor when the iron bars opened to let the prisoners out of their cells. The last time that happened had been disastrous. She was still nervous about the precarious lie she’d spun to keep the prisoners from suspecting what she really was. It was hard to explain how a sixteen-year-old girl had nearly broken a tall, muscular man in half for attacking her.
She could handle two or three prisoners attacking at a time. She couldn’t survive an onslaught from the entire prison, and she had no doubt that’s what she’d be facing if the inmates of Maqbara ever learned the truth.
Shutting her door firmly behind her, she locked it and then moved swiftly down the corridor. The prison was lit with the subtle glow of dawn breaking through the dusty skylights set far above the cells that were carved like a honeycomb out of the bedrock beneath Akram’s capital city. The faint thud of hoofbeats clipped along the packed dirt streets aboveground, sending puffs of dust spinning into the faint beams of sunlight like bits of gold, and eerie cries of hunger drifted out of the stalls that housed the prison’s current population of monstrous beasts.
Sajda held her head high as she followed the narrow passage that wound around the fifth level, in full view of the prisoners who were now awake and waiting for the iron bars at the mouth of their cells to rise. To one side, a railing separated the corridor from the vast empty space of the arena far below. The first four levels of the prison were nothing but platforms of seats encircling the combat ring. The cells began on the fifth level. Each of Maqbara’s fifteen levels hugged the outside wall and was joined to the rest of the prison by narrow sets of stairs cut into the stone every thirty cells.
The light streaming in through the skylights at the top of the prison changed from faint yellow to rosy gold. The sun was up in Akram, and the aristocracy would be getting ready for an afternoon of bloody entertainment at the arena, though to their credit most of them attended simply because Prince Fariq had made it clear that those who didn’t would fall out of royal favor and be sanctioned accordingly.
Sajda moved faster as the prisoners began beating their bars with their fists, their voices raised as she passed.
“There she is. Pretty girl. Maybe you should join me in my cell tonight.”
“It’s the warden’s slave. Think you’re better than me? Lift these bars and find out.”
“Better stop ignoring me, ehira, or you’ll be sorry.”
Fear was a jagged blade slicing through her, sending her magic churning. The skin beneath her rune-carved cuffs burned as the iron crippled her magic, leaving her with enough power to defend herself against a few humans but without the ability to do the one thing she’d longed for since the warden bought her from an auction block when she was just five years old: escape.
The prisoners’ voices rose, and Sajda moved rapidly toward the staircase. “They’re just words,” she whispered to herself. To her magic. They were words she’d become so accustomed to, she no longer heard them. Just the voices. The tones. The thin line between bravado and intent that would tell her if she needed to watch herself around one of the prisoners.
The fifth level was where the most dangerous prisoners were kept. These were the men and women who’d beaten their way up the rankings of the last few tournaments. Who’d survived every bloodbath with a body count in their wake. These were the top contenders for this year’s prize, though there were plenty of newer prisoners who were hungry to take their place.
None of it was Sajda’s problem. She simply had to keep the prison stocked with vicious beasts, run the tournaments that lined the warden’s and Prince Fariq’s pockets with coin, and stay alive.
Most of all, she had to stay alive.
Rounding the corner to the stairwell, she plunged down the steps until she reached the arena’s floor. Hurrying around its outskirts, she entered the double row of iron stalls that hugged the wall closest to the hall that led to the warden’s office.
Drawing in a slow, unsteady breath, Sajda ducked into the stalls, her body now blocked from view by the iron wall that kept the prisoners from seeing the predators they’d be facing in the ring. Howls and hisses filled the air as she moved quickly toward the last stall on the right.
“Hush,” she whispered. “You’ll get fed in a few minutes.”
Her words went unheeded, and she rolled her eyes. It was a testament to the amount of time she spent around monstrous things that she’d started talking to them as if they could somehow understand her.
The last stall on the right was currently empty, though that would change with the next delivery. Shoving a drift of hay aside with her boot, she grabbed the small ax she’d hidden there years ago.
Pausing for a moment, she held perfectly still and listened.
No footsteps. No clamor from the beasts as someone other than Sajda walked through the stalls.
She was alone.