In a small voice, I offered a pathetic and inadequate “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry,” he repeated dully, just like he had our first nightin the Wastelands. “We’re going to die in here while my people die out there, and you’re sorry.”
Tears I could not afford to lose bubbled over my lids. “There’s still the Gods-Chosen.” A weak consolation, a platitude that tasted false on my tongue.
He looked at me once more, and I watched the fire go out in his eyes, replaced with a tired sort of sadness. “We all have scars,” he said, repeating what he’d told me after I’d shown him myXin the watchtower, the first time he’d really begged me. “I would have understood yours. If you had just told me.”
“You would have killed me.”
“No, Samira. I wouldn’t have. I never could have. Isn’t that obvious by now?”
Somehow, that assurance, said so sadly, so ruefully, made my heart crack wider. Confusion and despair constricted my lungs, strangling me beyond words.
Keir pressed his hands into the sand to sit up—and paused. “Is this metal?”
Sucking in my tears, I sat up, too, and dusted sand away to reveal a pristine surface with a reflection so pure, I could see my own stunned, sunburned face staring back at me. A seam cut through it, splitting the metal sheet in two. I swiped more sand away to reveal curling shapes on either side of the groove. Handles.
We were sitting on two massive doors.
I staggered upright, eyes widening as I took in the enormous double doors made of solid gold. They created the floor beneath us.
Keir quickly stood, too, wincing as the movement pulled at his wound. “What is this?”
“I don’t know.” But that cord around my sternum returned, gave a powerful yank toward the doors. Beneath them. “They want me to go down there.”
“Who, the jinn?”
“I don’t know.” I braced my feet against the metal floor andtugged at the opposite handle with all my might, straining under the weight.
Keir’s hands appeared beside mine. I stilled. “I got it,” he said tightly.
The tension between us was thick. My heart shrank. I let go of the handle and stepped back. Keir gritted his teeth and pulled.
The door lifted slowly. Marble stairs descended beneath it, farther into the earth.
Veins bulged in Keir’s neck, his arms shook. “My sword,” he ground out. “Use it to prop it open.”
I grabbed the sword from where it had landed a few feet away and positioned it under the door, against the corner. “Okay.”
He lowered the door cautiously until it settled against the sword hilt. The blade scraped a few inches until it wedged fully into the corner. “Will it hold?” I asked skeptically.
“It’ll have to. It’s all we have.”
Another tug at my sternum, and I ducked under the door. Thank the gods it didn’t squash me like a bug. Keir followed, brandishing his serrated dagger, the only weapon he had left.
The marble stairway curved partway down, making it impossible to see what might be at the bottom. I descended as fast as my feet would carry me, the pull intensifying with every step. I rounded the curve, and gasped.
Before me spread a gleaming metropolis of gold buildings, each one more exquisite than the last. Bright green trees of all kinds lined the gold-paved streets. Palm trees, evergreens, birch, pine, ginkgo. Trees that shouldn’t be able to exist alongside each other—shouldn’t be able to exist dozens of feet below the earth—and above, not the dark curve of a cavern ceiling but, impossibly, the sky. And the sun. Not sweltering and cruel, as I knew it, but giving off a soft, pleasant warmth. A breeze teased the ends of my hair, the wisps that had come free of the braids, and cooled the sweat on my brow.
“What is this place?” Keir breathed.
The city was angled so that all the roads and all the buildings looked toward an imposing gold citadel with a domed roof and stained glass windows. It loomed over the entire area, demanding attention with its high columns and imposing god statues. Even from here, I could recognize Ketet’s laurel crown and waving braids.
There was only one place this could be.
“The Buried City,” I whispered.
The city King Zaid had braved the Wastelands for. That I had seen in my fortune from Zarqa. That was meant to be paradise on earth. We’d found it.
