A willowy girl with hair braided into two spheres at the back of her head stands at the entrance of the three-tiered monastery hewed to the ziggurat. Flora brackets form a fortressexactlylike I taught her. She shields the Khorinites as her power forcibly tears a path of hope for them.
I stare harder, heart plummeting.
No. She is at the pazktab. She’s to train in safety—
Unwillingly, a memory squirms through my thoughts.I will defend my familyhere, andthere, until my last breath.
What a fool I am. She meantKhor.
And then I am tearing through the dirt, running faster than I ever have. Anything to bring me closer. If only I could reach—
‘Arezu!’I cry.
She ushers staggering villagers away, her pazktab tunic in tatters. At my voice, she whirls, loose strands of hair flying like raven feathers. But she does not spot me at that distance. Instead, her eyes bulge in terror at the swarm of ghûls.
She is alone. On that cracked threshold, she is left to their mercy.
‘Arezu, run!’ I scream.
But the girl has always encompassed a resolve unmatched by anyone other than herself. She places her trembling palm on the monastery steps despite facing the jinn-folk. Her lips move desperately. Irecognisethis; Itoldher this. She begs Heaven for the peak of power in exchange for an oath of martyrdom. Her arms widen. The ground splits, ancient roots bursting in what can only be the Third-Stratum of summoning -impossible for a girl her age. The ghûls, attracted to her purity, pounce.
The air splits. The world glows.
I’m thrown against a hut from the sheer power emanating from her affinity. But I roll to all fours, then I’m running again. Nur swells, the energy coiling then erupting. My seventy-seven bonds vanquish the first row of ghûls despite the distance, but they reform.
Arezu raises her arms again and again, commanding the roots to stab the creatures, but it’s not enough. She is only one girl against dozens. Her shaking limbs slacken. I scream her name. In that split moment, the wind carries a word that will haunt me for eternity:‘Master?’
Then they are on her. Arezu’s head cracks against the stone, dozens of ghûls swallowing her from view.
And then she’s gone.
I throw myself at the ghûls, my affinity erupting. ‘Kill me!Kill me instead!’
I am met only with Arezu’s cries as I pass through the horde. They do not die, no matter how much nur I unleash. But the curse of power, I know, is that when it is needed most, it fails you. My Divine-gifted affinity is cursed, it’s wretched, it’s an omen disguised as a blessing. It’s nothing against forces that usurp natural order.
Desperately, I thrust my khanjar deep into my shoulder before holding out the dripping blood, begging for the ghûls to gorge on me, but it accomplishesnothing.
I do not stop fighting, I battle until my arms tremble, I lose all the martial forms and swing wildly. I kill them a hundred times over. I send a true prayer for the first time in months, I beg the Divine to save her until my throat aches.
But war in his cruelty does not care. He taunts me with each tear of her flesh.
At last, when my knife thrusts into the last one and it crumples, my sight latches on the broken thing below me. Her pupils are blownand her scalp is torn apart. A pool of blood streams beneath her body and there is not one wound butso manythat I do not know where to press my hands and staunch the bleeding.
The wind howls and the clouds sob. Her bloodied lips part as if to whimper words.
I drop to my knees.‘No.’I try to breathe but pain squeezes my lungs.‘Arezu?’My voice tears between the pleas.
She cannot see me. Her eyes gaze heavenward, a flower searching for light. But there is no light in this bleak land. And when she is gone, I don’t think there will be any left.
‘Please, my Creator,’ I choke out. ‘Save her.’
Tears roll down her cheeks against the blood flecking her skin. Her hands reach up, clawing fervidly at the air as if aching to hold someone, to feel warmth as death breathes into her, swallowing words into wheezes.
She cannot see me; she cannot hear me. She thinks she is alone. This child is dying.And she is utterly alone.
Her trembles cease.
‘Arezu!’ Frantically, I shake her. ‘You cannot die!’ I shriek. ‘We promised to be warriors, to spit upon our opponents andfight. We promised,’ I sob.
