“People will die this way,” he said, in a voice she did not recognize. Too hollow, too old. “The slow way may see so many, many people dead. We may fail them all.”
“I know,” she said. “And yet the slow way, perhaps, the world heals. Perhaps the slow way is the only way. The Maha broke the world. To heal the wound he made will take… time. And knowledge shared. And hope, even in the dark.”
He tried to turn from her, to blot her words out. She gripped his face.
“You’ve searched so long for the Maha’s ash. You listen to the Hidden Ones. You listen to your mother’s ghost. Now, please, listen to me,” she said softly, her fingertips points of light against his cheekbones. “You told me I have you. You gave yourself to me, Zahir. And I tell you now, if you walk this path you will not be mine anymore, and you will not be your own. You will be his creature, just as you feared, and I…”
She swallowed. It was hard. Hard to speak truthfully. Hard not to fear the effigy of ash behind her.
“You will think I am being selfish,” she whispered. “But I see another path, Zahir, for the first time. And it may not be the wisest route, or the swiftest. But it is nothispath. You asked me once if I could even dream another world. I couldn’t then. But when I think of prayers and rites and the slow way through the dark, Ican.”
He stopped holding her. Instead he raised a hand to his face, and pressed it over her own fingers. Light and glass, and the gentleness of his eyes.
“Arwa,” he said softly. “Let me go.”
She shook her head, wordless now.
“Please,” he said again. “Let me go.”
She had no words left. She’d tried everything she could.
She released him.
He stood once more before the Maha. He stood in ink that unfurled like silk around him. Their blood roots, wound together, held them bound. She watched him. Waited.
“I am the Maha’s heir,” he said finally. “So my father named me, binding me to the tale, whether I liked it or not. Iamthe Maha’s heir, and I cannot change that, but I…”
He faltered. He looked at the Maha. With hatred, with yearning. With knowledge of a fate he could not run from.
“I can decide what that means,” he said. His voice was thin, raw with feeling. “Because I am Bahar’s son too. Because I am myself. I know people will listen to the Maha’s heir. If he tells them,Pray and the nightmares will fade and leave you unharmed, they will pray. And if the Maha’s heir has the support of the Hidden Ones… his message will spread, with certainty.”
He turned to her.
“It will be a hard path. Parviz will hound me. He will want me dead, and one day he’ll no doubt succeed. But perhaps by the time he murders me, people will know how to worship the nightmares. That would be—enough.”
If he tries to murder you, I will gut him first, thought Arwa.
“The Amrithi-blooded will know the Rite of the Cage,” she said, with a tilt of her chin. “It belongs to them, after all. I’ll ensure it reaches their hands. We will save the world. And I promise you, Zahir: Your brother will never sit easy upon his throne.”
“No,” said Zahir grimly. “That, at least, I can make sure of. My father’s gift of a title gives me power enough for that, with or without the Maha’s ash. He has made an enemy of the Maha’s heir. He’ll never own the tale again.”
“You’ll do this with me, then,” Arwa blurted out. She curled her hands into fists, hopeful and terrified in equal measure. “You’ll walk away from the Maha’s ash. You’ll choose another path.”
“Yes,” he said. She saw the way the choice shattered something within him—and made him whole. His gaze was full of light. He straightened his shoulders, as if some invisible burden had been raised from them, as if he could breathe. “Yes. I’ll walk a new path with you.”
She could have wept then. Instead she clasped her hands over her face, overwhelmed, and felt his forehead once more against her own, his voice whispering her name with utter softness. He pried her fingers away and kissed her.
It was—strange—to kiss without flesh. She felt the tingle of her lips, her body alive with it, but here in the realm of ash she was only light and glass, clear and pure, and she felt him like blood and life through the roots that bound them.
“We should leave here,” he said.
“Yes,” she murmured, relieved. “Let’s go.”
He turned to stare at the Maha’s ash once more—the perfect shadow of it—before he let the blood roots take them home.
She returned to her flesh, gave a rattling gasp—and immediately spat out the sand she’d somehow swallowed while unconscious. She rose up onto her elbows. The fire was still burning strong. Beyond it, she saw Zahir raise his head.
Then she heard a voice—a scream that echoed through the air, high and sharp.
