Meryamun adjusted his grip on the mace.
I’m not going to make it!Fighting men jostled her from every side, blocking the way.
Ankhu watched the scene in amazement, seemingly unaware of the blow about to fall upon him. Then his eyes met Rae’s, and his lips formed her name.
“Father!”Rae screamed.
Fury rose within her, steaming up from her belly and into her extremities, filling her with reckless abandon. It was the same fury that Omari always urged her to resist. The same fury that had led her to join the Horizon as a way to channel her emotions. Ever since she’d come to the palace, she’d done everything she could to make herself as small as possible, suppressing her true self for fear of exposing her intentions. She’d felt constrained, her emotions begging for release.
What if Omari had been wrong? What if that rage wasn’t a weakness, but her greatest strength?
She remembered the tahtib match with Asim. That unforgettable moment of intense, focused energy, like channeling a swath of sunlight into a concentrated beam of blinding radiance.
Let go, a voice inside her whispered, a voice that sounded a lot like Neff’s.Let go and embrace your destiny.
Wind gusted through the courtyard, and Rae’s golden scale armor chimed with a haunting melody.
She let go.
“You will not hurt him!”Rae cried and struck the head of the scepter against the ground with breathtaking force. Upon impact, a deep fissure cracked the earth and raced toward the king, throwing men off their feet as it went. Meryamun saw it coming, but too late. The fissure erupted beneath him. He tripped and fell, the mace slipping from his hand.
Rae sprinted toward her father, the path before her now clear.
Also thrown off-balance by the quaking around him, Ankhu teetered on the edge of the pit.
Rae slid across the ground and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him from the brink. “I’ve got you!” Rae said in a rush. “I’ve got you!”
They lay together in the dirt. Rae didn’t want to let go.
“Rae,” Ankhu said, his voice full of wonder. “What did you—howdid you—?”
“Perhaps the gods are listening after all,” Rae replied, sitting up to untie the bindings on his arms. Her body crackled with energy, and she felt more herself than she ever had before. She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, only that it feltright. “Come on. We have to get you and the others to safety.”
Rae surveyed the situation. Meryamun had scrambled behind the platform in the shadow of the citadel and was surrounded by palace guards. Meanwhile, arrows rained down from the battlements, and even as Rae watched, two more rebels went down. She could already count six Horizon dead on the ground.
They were losing.
Despite successfully rescuing her father, none of them would survive if they didn’t find a way to turn the tide. And soon.
“Buto! Watch out!” she shouted as she saw one of the archers take aim.
It was too loud. He couldn’t hear her.
Buto took the arrow full in the chest and dropped.
“Buto!”
Ankhu said, “Rae, the prisoners can’t defend themselves if they’re bound. Help me free them, quickly!”
Trembling with shock, Rae tore her eyes from Buto’s body and tried to focus on the knots in the ropes as men screamed and died around her.
“We need the priestess,” she said, glancing up at the platformwhere Neff still cowered beside the guard. “We need her help or else we’re all going to die here.” She considered mounting the platform herself to free Neff, but she was hesitant to leave her father and the other prisoners undefended.
Rae scanned the area for the curly-haired weaver. “Tam, I need you!”
31Neff
Neff had never seen a person die before. She’d been at her grandfather’s bedside the night he passed, but that was different. In the fortress, she witnessed Meryamun crush a man’s skull. She heard the wet crack as the stone mace connected with the prisoner’s head, saw the blood spatter through the thin hood. The gruesome sight reminded her of the day she’d cried tears of blood.
