“And they will be, once I’ve returned you to the palace.”
I sigh. “Notus.”
“What, Sarai?” He tosses up his hands, spears his fingers through the unruly locks of his windblown hair. A large family shoves their way past, followed by a small herd of goats. “I’m not taking you with me.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Despite the chaos unleashed, I remain composed. “You can leave me here.”
“If you think I’m going to leave you while I head to the gates, you’re out of your mind.”
“That is exactly what I’m asking you.” Someone jostles me in their haste to turn a corner. I tug Notus into a crumbling doorway, tucking myself against the length of his broad, muscled form.
He peers down at me. Gradually, as a red storm ebbs into calm, his expression smooths. “Asking,” he clarifies. “Not ordering.”
“Yes.” Because one requires trust. The other, obedience. I know which I value more from the god who has risked life and limb to save me from, well, myself.
Notus presses his thumb into my chin. “Why?”
One word should not possess the complication it does. But it holds a story that spans the entirety of my relatively short existence. I have lived a safe life, a sheltered life, a life that, in many ways, was never mine to live. I can do good, I think, before my time comes to an end.
“These are my people,” I explain. “They are my family. They are home. I would stop at nothing to protect my home, wouldn’t you?”
Notus frowns. As I suspected, he is not happy about this. But for once, he does not argue. For that, I am grateful.
My eyes drop to his mouth. We alone stand still in the tide that surges through the souk. “Be safe,” I whisper.
His eyes darken. “You, too.”
The last I see of the South Wind, he is cleaving the crowd in two with a brute wind. He runs, leaps, catching himself on an updraft, which carries him far, far into the distance, and deposits him in front of two darkwalkers. A swift cut of his blade, and their heads are severed.He then launches skyward, a cyclone of wind spiraling around his legs. It propels him toward the distant gates.
As for Ishmah’s citizens, they need a miracle. And by miracle, I mean the palace.
“Everyone to the palace!” I scream, shouldering my way through the crowd. “To the palace!” Again and again, I cry these words, this plea, until the cityfolk join in accompaniment, my solo transforming to a trio, an octet, an orchestra, its crescendo driving those fleeing up the hill.
Reaching beneath my dress, I yank at the small pendant hanging around my neck until the thin gold chain snaps. I place it into the hand of a young woman whose hazel eyes are ringed in white. “Show this to the guards,” I order, grip tightening. “Tell them Princess Sarai demands Ishmah’s citizens be sheltered inside.”
She nods and takes off.
My feet change direction before I’m fully aware of it. Toward Notus, toward the gates. The closer I get, the more deserted the streets become. More than once, I’m forced to leap over bodies strewn about the road. When I reach the gates, which have yet to be shut completely, numerous guards are attempting to shift what looks to be a jammed handle. I scan the area, panting, my dress sticking to every sweaty dip and swell. A wall of soldiers stretches across the entrance into the city, battling two darkwalkers attempting to pass. Notus is nowhere to be found.
“Your Highness?”
Two sentinels pause in their attempts at sealing the gate, mouths agape. This draws the attention of their superior, a captain with ink-blot freckles and a scowling mouth. “Does the king know you’re down here, Your Highness?” he demands.
My eyes narrow. “Perhaps you should focus less on my whereabouts and more on closing the gate.”
A nearby staircase leads up to the ramparts. I take the stairs two at a time until I reach the top. From my vantage point, I see the whole of Ishmah, its palace, that bright, diamond-hearted center from whichall roads lead. But to the south, more darkwalkers—shadowed forms blurred against the rising dunes. Their swiftness is horrifying. They eliminate half the distance in a handful of strides.
“Any progress with the gate?” I shout down.
A man strains to rotate the rusted handle. “Still jammed.” It emits a grating shriek.
My gaze leaps toward the approaching threat. Stride by stride, the distance between the darkwalkers and the capital lessens. Black tendrils stream from their mutated forms.
Suddenly, the captain knocks his subordinate aside, grasps the mechanism with both hands, and throws his entire weight against the handle. It shifts forward a hair before grinding to a halt.
I spin in place, searching for Notus. There—in the sky. He plunges toward the rooftops and vanishes momentarily. Two heartbeats later, he soars upward on a cloud of wind, sword held aloft, its blade coated black. From one palm hurtles a roaring gust, aimed at a trio of darkwalkers below. The South Wind is so fixated on defeating the beasts inside the walls that he remains blind to the threat beyond them. Only he can stop the flood, this roiling deluge of darkness and ruin.
Meanwhile, archers atop the ramparts shoot salt-tipped arrows into the darkwalkers advancing on the capital. One hits a soldier in the thigh. He collapses mid-run with a shout.
