Prologue
Aisha would never forget the smell of her mother burning. The eerie hiss of fabric dissolving in the flames. The sweat trickling down her face and hairline as the fire intensified. Two blazing gold saucers that barely resembled her mother’s eyes.
She flinched when the queen flung her head back, eyes squeezing shut against the blinding heat. Then came the smell of singed hair. Aisha covered her nose and mouth in a vain attempt to block it. She didn’t have enough hands to cover her ears as well. Her mother’s screams were drowned out only by the strangled cries of her father, pinned to the ground by guards.
It took four men to keep him down.
They say the initial pain is the worst, before the flames burn the nerves. The victim dies from suffocation as the respiratory tract fails. But that’s not how her mother died. Someone merciful relieved her of her suffering, despite the overwhelming presence of holy warriors.
Aisha flinched a second time when an arrow struck the Queen of Avanid through the heart. Through blurry eyes, she saw her mother go limp, head tipping forwards. The collective gasp of the crowd had Aisha drawing a shaky breath and looking around. Her father had stopped fighting. Stopped shouting. Stopped moving altogether. His eyes were open but hollow. Dirt caked his lips, and blood coloured his teeth.
Her gaze travelled to her elder sister, Zara, white-faced and holding their one-year-old brother so tightly he was crying. Zara’s hand wrapped his small head, shielding his view, her own wide eyes reflecting the flames. The only reason Omar had travelled with them to Slevaborg was because he was still being nursed.
Who would nurse him now?
The holy warriors still had their swords drawn, blades bloody after slaughtering the guards who had fought until their dying breath to save their queen from this fate.
‘Mama,’ Lilah called, palms still pressed to her eyes.
Aisha looked down at her younger sister, whose shoulders rose and fell with each heaving sob. Thank the gods her two youngest sisters had remained in Avanid, spared the trauma of watching their mother die and their father’s heart shatter into a million pieces.
‘Mama.’
Lilah’s distress roused Aisha’s physical body. She drew her sister close, holding her tightly. ‘Shh’ was all she could manage to say. One small sound against a world on fire.
It’s what their mother might have said.
Zahvik stepped up onto the platform beside the fire, seemingly unaffected by the heat from the flames. He wore a white thobe with a deep hood that partially covered his face. Slevaborg’s sectarian. ‘Let this serve as warning to every covenweaver across the empire, whether she be a peasant or a queen: If you invite the devil to our lands, we will stamp him out.’
This was the first time Aisha had heard her mother referred to as a ‘covenweaver’. She had always referred to herself as a healer. Her knowledge of medicinal plants was unmatched. She saved lives. She had saved a life that very morning.
And it had cost her own.
‘Good intuition is the mark of a good healer,’ she had told Aisha earlier that day. ‘Ignore the labels used by others.’
They had labelled her a covenweaver.
‘Mama,’ Lilah cried into Aisha’s chest.
All Aisha could do was hold her tighter. What other comfort could a ten-year-old possibly offer an eight-year-old when her own limbs and mind were like jelly? They both needed their mother. The next best thing was their father, but he remained on the ground despite the warriors no longer holding him.
‘Baba, get up,’ Zara said, standing over him with a crying baby. ‘Get up!’
He didn’t get up. Or he couldn’t.
Thankfully, their carriage driver had been spared. He came forwards and helped the king to his feet. His hands shook violently, and his eyes darted nervously about, as if he were expecting someone to stop him.
When Zahvik stepped down from the platform and came towards them, the driver paled but kept hold of the king. Zahvik looked between the girls.
‘I am deeply sorry for your loss,’ he said with what sounded like genuine sympathy. ‘I pray you and your family heal and find comfort in the fact that the devil no longer resides in your home.’
King Bilal blinked, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and disappearing into his dusty beard.
Zara’s face twisted with anger. ‘You killed her!’ She might have lunged at the man if she had not been holding Omar.
The baby cried harder, startled by her raised voice.
Zahvik gestured to a nearby warrior, and a moment later, they were surrounded by armed men. The warriors pushed the carriage driver aside, took hold of the king, and began dragging him to the waiting carriage. The girls hurried after their father, Zara shrugging free of warrior hands each time they reached for her.
