As quick as it began, the screaming stops. Nikla straightens, her body trembling.

“What—”

The door bursts open and her guards—including Eleiba—pour in.

“Keris will betray you before the end.” I dart past the princess, swiping up the scim. “If you survive it, if you need a true ally, get word to me in Delphinium. I’ll be waiting.”

With that, I offer her a low bow. Then I race for the shattered window and fling myself out.

VII: Laia

 

I am not alone. I know it even in unconsciousness. Even in this strange blue space where I have no body.

I am not alone, but the presence with me is not outside me. It is in me.

There is something—or someone—inside my mind.

I have always been here, a voice says. I have just been waiting.

“Waiting?” I say, and my words are thin in the vastness. “For what?”

For you to wake me up.

Now wake up.

Wake up.

“Wake up, Laia of Serra.”

It feels as though someone pours sand in my eyes as I drag them open. Lamplight stabs at me, and five women with kohl-lined eyes stare down at the bed upon which I lay. They wear heavily embroidered dresses that flare at the hips, their hair adorned with strands of golden coins that swoop across their foreheads.

Jaduna. The magic wielders—and allies of the royal family.

Oh skies. I sit up slowly, as if addled, but my mind races toward one thought: I need to get the hells out of here.

The room appears to be on the second or third floor of a Mariner villa, and is strewn with jewel-toned silk rugs and star-patterned screens. Through an arched window, the walls of the palace glow with the light of a thousand lanterns. Their beauty is blighted by the incessant pealing of alarm bells.

Feigning dizziness, I lie back down. Then I gather myself, spring off the bed, and lunge through a gap between the women. I am past them, nearly to the open door, just a few more feet—

It slams shut in my face. The Jaduna pull me back, and when I try to scream, my voice chokes off. I reach for my invisibility, but it is gone. The Nightbringer must still be in the city, because no matter how I grasp at it, it does not come.

The Jaduna set me down in a chair, their grip still tight. I do not attempt to break free. Not yet.

“You—you were following me,” I say.

“Be at ease, Laia of Serra.” I recognize the woman who speaks. She gave me a book once, outside the Great Library of Adisa as it burned down. “We do not wish to hurt you. We saved you from the Meher—”

“Silence, A’vni!” An older woman glares at A’vni before turning her dark gaze on me.

“Look at me, girl,” the old woman says, and though I do not wish to do her bidding, her voice compels me. What magic is this? Was she, too, touched by an efrit? As she forces my face toward her, I claw at the arms of my chair and kick out.

“Hold her!”

“D’arju—” A’vni protests, but D’arju waves her off and bores into my mind with her gaze. Her brown irises burn against the kohl rimming them. The fight oozes out of me. She’s hypnotized me and I cannot break her grip.

“We mean you no harm,” D’arju says. “If we did, we’d have left you for the Nightbringer.”

She is not expecting an answer, but I fight through her control and force out the words. “So he could watch Keris murder me slowly?”

“He’s not hunting you to kill you,” D’arju says. “He’s hunting you so he can crack you open and understand what lives inside you.”

I try not to let my alarm show. What lives inside me?

“An old magic, child.” D’arju answers my unspoken question. “Waiting for a thousand years for someone with the strength to wake it.” The woman smiles with a fierce joy that makes me trust her a touch more. “I thought it would be Mirra of Serra. Or Isadora Teluman or perhaps Ildize Mosi. But—”

“But even the ancient can be wrong,” A’vni says archly, and the other Jaduna chuckle. I expect D’arju to get angry, but she smiles. And something she said finally sinks in.

“You—you knew my mother?”

“Knew her! I trained her, or tried to. She never liked being told what to do. Ildize was more biddable, though that may have just been her Mariner civility. Isadora I never knew—but the power in that girl!” D’arju whistles. “A shame the Empire got to her before we did.”

My mind spins. “Power,” I say. “You mean the power efrits gave?”

D’arju snorts. “If your power came from an efrit then I’m a jinn. Silence, now. Let me work.”

The old woman drags my stare to hers again, and my mind seems to bend and strain—a slow, torturous pulling, as if some part of me was immersed in a thousand-year-old swamp and is finally clawing its way into the light. When it emerges, I find I have been nudged into a back room of my own head.

“Peace be upon thee, Rehmat.” D’arju’s voice trembles, and I know instantly that while she might be looking at me, she is not speaking to me. “Thy servants are here. Our vow is fulfilled.”

“Peace be upon thee, Jaduna. Thy duty is complete. I discharge thee from thy vow.”

The words come out of my mouth. It is my lips that move. But the low voice is not mine. I have never used the word thee in my life. Besides which, the voice sounds nothing like me. It is not human. It is more like what a sandstorm would sound like, if a sandstorm spoke archaic Serran.

“So this is our warrior,” Rehmat says, no longer so formal. “The final manifestation of your long-ago sacrifice.”

“It was no sacrifice to nest you within our people, great one,” D’arju says.

“A hundred Jaduna accepted my power into their very bones, child.” Rehmat’s deep growl brooks no disagreement. “It was a great sacrifice. You did not know how it would affect your children, or theirs. But it is done. I live now in thousands upon thousands.”

“I confess, great one,” D’arju says, “I did not think Laia of Serra would be the one to wake you. The Blood Shrike might have been a more fitting champion, or the Beekeeper. The smith Darin, perhaps.”

“Even Avitas Harper,” another of the Jaduna says. “Or the young demon killer Tas.”

“But they did not defy the Nightbringer. Laia did. Rejoice,” Rehmat says, “For the path is set. Now our young warrior must walk it. But if she is to defy the Meherya, I cannot live within her mind.”