The leader loomed over me, fingers tense around her spear. “Hello, Amunet Khada.”
The younger girl cinched the rope tighter around my torso, pinning my arms to my sides. Behind her, men and women from their tribe stood. All armed. Some still in their hyena forms.
The younger girl passed the rope to a man while she pulled out a curved bowl and fitted it to the side of my neck as the leader twirled her spear. She stopped with the razor-sharp edge against my jugular. “Amunet Khada,” she boomed, “you stole from the Cirra Tribe. Now you must be bled.”
I stared back from beneath my lashes, eyes unflinching. I just needed a few more moments. Strength was returning to my limbs. Just a few more—
The leader sliced.
Pain flashed through me as blood gushed out of my neck and into the waiting bowl in a scene hauntingly similar to what I’d just witnessed with my maid. I struggled, but the man holding my rope didn’t falter. Keeping me firmly in place as the Cirra Tribe bled me out.
My heart was a deafening drum in my ear, slowing with each ounce of blood lost. Each blink lasted an eternity. I watched as the girl switched out one bowl for another. My blood glittered slightly—the remnants of the jinni’s magic in my veins. Nothing like the shine from my decoy’s qareen. Nowhere near as powerful as what that girl had stolen from me.
I laughed, blood bubbling out of my lips, dripping down my chin. Oh, that girl had made a very grave mistake. Did she really think she could steal from Shaya’s daughter—from Shaya himself—and get away with it? She might have my power now, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“When I get my power,” I wheezed, “I’m coming for your people first.”
“You won’t live that long,” the girl replied.
I grinned. I didn’t have to see myself to know that grin looked deranged, demonic, showcasing the darkness nestled inside me.
She blanched.
There was a distinctthunk, and then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.
For a moment, I didn’t understand what had happened. But then the rope fell from my arms and familiar dark brown eyes were in front of me, and a cloth was pressed to my throat. “Hold this.”
My tongue felt too big, words clumsy as I murmured, “Jasim?”
He grabbed my limp hand and forced it to my neck. “Keep pressure on it.” Then he spun away, scimitar raised, as the leader snarled and lunged at him. Hyenas cackled, too, and pounced.
It was all happening too fast for my blurred vision to make sense of. Jasim’s black curls fanned around him as he spun. Metal clanged. The smell of copper filled the clearing. People in face coverings hit the ground and didn’t get back up.
The cloth under my fingers grew warm and sticky. I was still bleeding. It wasn’t slowing. But my heart was expanding, relief and hope compounding on each other as I gazed at Jasim in blank shock. “You… came back?”
He grunted as he threw a hyena off him, sparing me a single glance. “You were right. My expectations of you weren’t fair.” He slashed again, blood spattered. “I don’t want you to be anyone else. I’m sorry I made you think—” Jasim ducked before he caught a blade to the face. His foot shot out and knocked the tribesman into another, both of them crashing to the ground. “But I will never leave you. Be who you are, and I… I will be better. I love you, Amunet.”
Dizzy with blood loss, adrenaline buzzing through my veins from terror, I smiled. He was here. He hadn’t left me. Which meant…
It wasn’t too late. I could be the girl he thought I was. I’d caught a glimpse of her in my qareen. It wouldn’t be easy, but… but I’d try. And he would see the selfish side of me, the dark side aligned with the God of Death, and not shrink away. He’d already caught a glimpse of her, too. We would both get better. We’d grow, together.Together.
That light feeling in my chest grew and grew until I thought I would burst with the elation. “Jasim, I love—”
Shrieking filled the trees. Not a pained scream, not an animal’s call, either. The Cirra Tribe whirled in its direction, alarmed.
And then an arrow shot out of the brush and burst through Jasim’s throat.
The world went silent.
My ears closed up. My breaths echoed in my head.
I stared. At the protruding arrow, dripping red. At the wide-eyed shock on Jasim’s face.
Then I screamed. My chest rattled with it, my throat strained. I watched helplessly as Jasim’s knees buckled and hit the ground. Blood poured out of his throat, his mouth.
No, I thought, screeched, begged.No!
His eyes sought mine, those reassuring brown eyes that I’d turned to so many times, that had always been there when my mind got too loud, when I needed a lifeline to cling to, that hadjust fucking come back. Those eyes that even now, as he choked on a breath, bestowed me withthe look. I scrambled toward him, sluggish and uncoordinated. My fingers clawed at the earth as I tried to drag myself closer, my nails broke, and dull pain pricked me. It was nothing compared to the agony welling up inside me.
