“Go,” a woman panted. Tall, beautiful, and elegant in a way that only a woman who’d been queen for thirty years could be. Not the Zalaam queen in her helm and that horrible black crown. This was Queen Aleela, mother of Kamaal and Mihrunnisa, wife and widow of King Bakshi Saber.
She wasn’t dressed in the finery she wore the last time I saw her; her gown was absent the glimmering, luminous fabric from Morysen’s souks, instead woven of solid black and reinforced at the shoulders, chest, and neck by purple leather armour. The queen was dressed for battle, and the fierceness of her expression reflected that brutality.
“Go,”she repeated in a harsh whisper, and everything snapped back into focus.
She twisted her hand, driving the bejewelled dagger deeper into the back of Kanuri’s neck. That was why she’d released me, why she’d dropped the knife. The queen—ourqueen—had driven a knife through her neck. And when I faltered, struggling to process that, Adeela nimbly unlatched the necklace from Kanuri’s throat with a single hand. The practised, effortless movement of a royal.
“Get the fuck off—” Kanuri hissed, but Adeela twisted the knife deeper, choking off her words. In shock, I watched her face go slack. All the colour drained from her skin, leaving her sallow and grey in moments. The medallion was no longer around her neck…
“Find Nabil,” Adeela commanded, soft but every inch a queen. She threw the amulet to the ground down the steps, and it skidded across the room. Where it could never bring Kanuri back. “I’ll protect the gate and make sure she stays dead.”
She certainly looked dead. Kanuri looked several decades older than she had minutes ago. “How?” I asked, staring at the Queen of Ithanys. “How are you here?”
“You said anyone who wished to fight should come here.” She met my eyes, and though they held a spark of life and anger, there was something bone tired about the woman. “I’m ready to fight.”
How many years had she suffered, married to Bakshi? Had he always had that medallion, always had Zalaam evil running through him? My paranoia insisted she could be the same, and this might all be a trick, but she’d killed Kanuri. She saved my life. And Nabil was on the other side of that gate. I couldn’t leave him.
“Be careful,” was all I said before I rushed up the final few steps and took a tight breath, diving into the mirror, into Cirestia.
But when its magic danced over my skin, when I was sucked through the glass onto the other side, it wasn’t the pearly bridges and lilac clouds of Riverren.
The sky was true black, the light that filtered through its heavy clouds a listless grey, and around me spread a rocky wasteland full of monsters all lined up in rows.
An army, far larger and worse than anything that attacked us in Ithanys now. We wouldn’t survive it.Nothingwould survive it.
CHAPTER 50
AMEIRAH
The terrain of the forsaken land where the gate spat me out was as dark as those glittering black stones of the Zalaam queen’s crown. A premonitory feeling trickled down my spine, an understanding just out of reach.
I immediately dropped down behind the shiny black stone of an outcropping. There was no window behind me, no mirror or glass, only the polished surface of a flat mountain face. It served as well as any reflection, I supposed.
Every jagged peak around me was made of the same glossy, jet-like rock, and when I put my hand against it as I leaned forward to get a better look at the army in their endless rows, I found the stone was slick. I wrinkled my nose at the oily stain left on my glove, as if the stone here oozed grease. It would explain the foul miasma that assaulted my senses every time I took a breath.
My heart all but tore out of my chest when a hand fell on my shoulder, and I whipped around, dagger aimed outward,. Airpunched from my stomach when my eyes met a familiar hard brown gaze. Hand pressed to my chest as I willed my heart to calm, I glared at Nabil, not daring to speak even though he’d scared the shit out of me.
He crouched beside me, shielded by the glossy black stone, and we both watched the motionless rows of soldiers. They looked exactly like Xiaoyu’s sketches—their skin dark with mottled grey markings, faces expressionless, and they stood eerily still. Lifeless, awaiting the touch of god to breathe motion into them. I didn’t even try to count; there were so many I stood no chance of estimating a number. But the fact they waited here, by the gate, in their perfectly formed lines, made my blood cold.
When the order came, would they march up the mountains and through the gate behind us?
Nabil put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “This is where they came from. Those soldiers, and the dark magic that turned our fae, our wyverns. They’re not even from our world.”
That was the thought that had sat half-formed in the back of my mind since the moment I saw the army, felt the churn of oppressive magic in the air, and inhaled that stench. Zalaam magic—this place was full of it. Because this was whereshecame from. The queen wasn’t from Ithanys, wasn’t even from Wyvara. Rage churned in my gut, sparking my magic back to life, and I had to curl my hands into fists to contain it.
All the people she’d killed, the homes she’d flattened to dust, and she wasn’t evenfromthere. I knew she craved power, wanted all of us under her command, and that she’d conquer any city in her path to power, but I’d underestimated her. Underestimated all of them. They weren’t simply conquerors, but invaders.
The first Zalaam war, all those years ago… she must have walked through the gate, found our world, and decided to claimit for herself. My fury grew, until my fists shook, until I tasted embers with every breath.
“We can’t let this army into Ithanys,” I breathed to Nabil, barely loud enough to be heard. I didn’t dare raise my voice any further.
His eyes were so wide, the whites dominated the brown. “What the fuck are we supposed to do against an army this large?”
I chewed the inside of my lip, staring at the endless rows of soldiers. Even now, back in our home, Varidian and our legion fought to push back the tide of soldiers who flowed from the river. If this new army crossed into our world, they’d crush any chance of survival, let alone freedom.
And I had to wonder if the queen would be content with simply subjugating all of us, or if her goal was to destroy everything thatmadeIthanys, reduce the world to rubble, and build a new empire from the ashes.
“Ameirah,” Nabil whispered in reproach.
