And at the center of everything, I saw Sorai. Or Mara, rather, our witch-queen in the flesh. Dazzling and regal and very much alive, the room around her billowing with waves of her undiluted scent.
She sat on a throne of glass and metal, her black hair still shining like a firelit river. Her dress was just as sleek and dark, flaring out into an oil-spill train that pooled all around the base of her chair. For once her arms were fully bare, and now I saw they were cluttered with diamond piercings, connected by lines of ink into complex constellations. Somehow I immediately understood, now that Dunja had told us the truth—the shape of the spell itself was pierced and inked into her skin, so it could run freely through her. As if she were a lightning rod.
I would have bet anything that she had exactly as many diamonds as there were daughters sacrificed.
Her hands rested on the scruffs of two lionesses sprawled beside her, and as I watched they glimmered in and out, human to animal, as if beneath a strobe light. Her honor guard, maybe. From the first nine tiers Dunja had mentioned, whatever that meant. And all around her dais, tiny bonfires burned in bronze bowls, hissing and sparking, circling her with fire. I wondered what they were for, if they were purely ceremonial. Or if they reminded her of her younger days, those dim, prehistoric times when fire meant the difference between being safe and being devoured.
The entire room went silent as Shimora led us down the staircase that spiraled to the banquet room. I felt as if I could sense the weight of every pair of gray eyes on me, and now that I knew what I was looking for, the spectrum of emotion behind them was visible, the triumph and jealousy and pity. Many of these women still served Mara; maybe most. But some, I thought, did not.
We followed our grandmother toward the throne, the sea of beauties parting before us. “Kneel,” she murmured to us. We did, the floor cold beneath my gauzy skirts, the room so silent I could hear the metallic feathers of Malina’s dress scraping against the marble tiles. The seams between them bit into my knees, and it made me want to shift a little, rearrange my weight. But I could feel the stillness of Malina’s form beside me, and I wouldn’t run the risk of seeming any less composed than she was.
In front of us, Shimora fell into a curtsy so deep it brought her to her knees at Mara’s feet, bare beneath the hem of her dress. Mara laid her hands on Shimora’s shoulders to lift her up. I could see the shudder that traveled through our grandmother’s body at her touch, the involuntary arching of her back.
Tipping Shimora’s chin up with a curled finger, Mara leaned forward and brushed her lips in a chaste kiss.
“Do you present these daughters for the choosing, Shimora?” our blood-mother crooned. Her words were wrong in the most enchanting way, burred and dark and flat, like a fossil record of the language we spoke. Tonight she seemed more feral than ever, as if the occasion wouldn’t allow her to hide any more of her true nature, her real age. “In the absence of their mother, you are the closest of their blood kin. Would you stand now in Faisali’s stead?”
“Yes, Mother,” our grandmother said. “I present them to you.” I could hear how the love caught the breath in her throat, the tremor of the weakness in it. Then I momentarily lost the scornful thought as Mara’s eyes fell on me, and I swam inside the cool, fathomless sea of their gray until she shifted her gaze to Malina.
“Such beauty,” Mara murmured, its echo resounding again and again, as if the banquet hall had become much larger than it was—as if we knelt in front of her in that original plateau beneath an ancient sky, surrounded by the soar of mountains singing back her sound. “Like flowers grown in dark jungle depths. Look at this one’s hair, black and blue and even threads of red, like surging seas beneath the breaking dawn. Look how well she holds her wrists. And the other one, the fearless bones that shape her face, the fretwork of that collarbone, like a birdcage for her heart. Are you ready, daughters? Are you ready to gleam for us?”
I wished desperately I could reach for Malina’s hand, but I forced myself to not look at her as I nodded once.
Mara tapped one of her flawless nails on the armrest; once, twice, three times. Each click thundered through the hall like an avalanche, and that distortion around her gathered in density, like a dome of molten glass. She fairly reeked of power, and though she wavered like a mirage behind the thickening, I could see her glance up and to the right, as if someone invisible now stood by her shoulder.
Unseen but unmistakably there, the true holder of the stakes, the one who would claim one of us.
Death. The way she looked up at it was almost fond, like they were friends who’d kept each other company through the endless years.
Then she turned back to us.
“Azareen,” she boomed. “You who were born first to Faisali, who is lost to us. Rise and begin.”
For the first time, I shifted enough that I could look at Malina. Her eyes were closed, her face nearly serene and almost alien with the swooping patterns drawn with kohl winging away from her lids, her lips glittering and cheeks vivid with blush. Even just the cameo perfection of her profile nearly broke my heart.
She took her time raising her chin, and when her eyes finally opened it was with languor, slow blinks like an invitation—as if she had all the time in the world, and was preparing to invite someone to share it with her. She lifted one knee and then the other, rising to her feet with weightless grace, and when she spread her arms as if through water I remembered that she’d had something I’d never had—Naisha’s tutelage, years of being invisibly nudged toward beauty.
Then she began to sing, a slow, sweet summoning, with the underpinning power of that tremendous, angelic chorus she’d found within herself. Come find me, it said. I’m worth it. I was born for you.
As her voices crested and rolled in multitude, she moved along with the song; not dancing, exactly, but simply following its currents, stepping gracefully along the path of its flow, the metal feathers shimmering around her, the tops of her breasts and her fine shoulders glowing like silvered snow above the black bodice.
I’d heard my sister sing of true love, of Niko, but it hadn’t been like this.
This song was pure passion, and a kind of aloof sensuousness I’d never known Malina even possessed. It made me think of enchantment, of being mesmerized by a sylph. Of following her through a forest as she leaped ahead like a doe, wearing something wispy and trailing with lace and ribbons, glancing coyly back over her shoulder above the froth of her hair. It made me think of her resting in a stream with her arms above her head and her back against smooth stones, water soaking through her wedding nightgown until it clung to her skin, near sheer.
Her cherry lips glistening and parted as if she’d drunk fresh from the sweet stream. As if her mouth would taste of it.