I shook my head, but there was nowhere to go. My father wasblocking the door, and the bodies… the bodies prevented me from running to the edge of the balcony. “I accept you into my mind, my body, my soul…”
“And vow to be yours until my dying breath.”
“No, Baba,” I sobbed. “I don’t want—”
He spun me around, fingers still clamped around my shoulders, and stared down at me with a fury that almost made his Khada-green eyes glow, his pearly white teeth as bright as a full moon within his black beard as he bared them at me.“Say. It.”
I flinched back in fear. In a voice so small, I couldn’t hear it over the rushing of my pulse, I whimpered, “And vow to be yours until my dying breath.”
An icy breeze shot through the gaps in the balustrade. It wrapped around me in a funnel of cold so intense, it burned. It stole my breath as shudders spread over me. Though I knew it was useless, I tried to run.
My father’s fingers were claws in my shoulders as he forced me to face the pile of bodies.
And the darkness that climbed over them.
My breaths shuddered in and out as I watched it crest the small hill of bodies. Like an inky plume of black smoke. It had no eyes, yet I felt as if it was looking right at me.
I screamed and struggled against the king’s grip. But he wouldn’t let go.
Cold unfurled from that darkness, emanated from it. I couldn’t feel my toes, my fingers.
“Stop fighting,” my father said in my ear. The harshness was gone. The words sounded like a plea. “You have to stop fighting, Amunet.”
But I couldn’t. I tried to dislodge his grip, screaming and screaming and screaming, even as the darkness slithered closer. Every hair on my body stood on end, my heart in a full-out sprint. But it didn’t matter how hard I resisted; I couldn’t break free.
I watched in horror as the smoke reached my feet and began to crawl up my legs, bare beneath my nightgown. Ice seeped into me, freezing my blood, my bones, choking off my screams. My father’s hands finally fell away, but the darkness held me frozen as it ate its way up my body.
It reached my mouth, which was still gaping open in a frozen shriek, and plunged inside.
I couldn’t see the balcony anymore. Couldn’t see anything at all. All around me was the darkness. It strangled me, stole my breath, my words, my tears. It funneled inside me until there wasn’t room formeanymore, until I was being crushed inside my own body.
No air, no space, only the cold, the dark, and a dull scratching at the back of my skull.
Help! Help! Hel—
A hand covered my mouth.
My eyes burst open.
Jasim’s dark eyes stared back at me, his fingers tight over my mouth. Sunlight shone through the leaves of the cypress tree Jasim had stitched me up under.
A scream clung to the back of my throat, mind stuck halfway between the nightmare and this world. I scrambled to find things in the present to ground myself in the here and now.
But then I realized Jasim’s body was on top of mine, covering me. And those dark eyes were wide, boring into mine. Imploring me to understand—
A low growl rumbled.
My muscles locked up. Jasim’s heart thundered where his chest pressed into mine. Slowly, staying as still as I could, I turned my head to the left.
The creature that approached us kept its snout low to the ground, nostrils flaring. Its head looked like a leopard’s, complete with spotted fur and jagged teeth that dripped saliva, but its long body was fortified by a hide more akin to a crocodile’s. The pawsthat thumped closer with each second belonged on a lion, and the curling, venomous tail at its back was a scorpion’s. The growl that bubbled out of it was menacing and guttural.
A chimera.
I knew the solitary mismatched predators roamed the deserts far from the cities, but gods, I never thought I’d see one. The scream that had been stuck in my throat worked its way to my tongue.
Jasim’s hand tightened over my mouth, fingers biting into my flesh. My gaze jerked back to his. Though there was fear, his eyes were also filled with a command.Quiet.
I swallowed down the scream, felt it drop like a boulder into my stomach, and nodded.
