Because she’d know exactly where I am. She’d be keeping me occupied, so that she could—what? Claim Antium or Delphinium? No—we’ve already confirmed that there are no armies lurking, waiting to attack.

The sky brightens, the sun still tucked behind thick clouds, and a heavy snow falls. The orchards I pass through are bare, but this is winter’s last vicious assault before bowing to spring. Soon, the trees will bud. Within a month, they will bloom, and winter’s chill will be a memory.

The bells toll seven. The snow falls thicker. I must return. Hear what Musa has to say. Give the order to move out before the river freezes.

But I keep walking. Because I do not yet have my answer. The orchards are long past and I move now into the open land beyond the capital, some instinct drawing me farther from the city.

“Shrike,” Harper says. “We should—

“I’m missing something,” I say. “And I’m not going back until I know what it is. I will not let her fool me, Harper. Never again.”

Now I move urgently, and an old feeling steals over me—the desire to heal. To help.

“Harper.” I unsheathe my blades. “Someone’s out here.”

Against the unending stretch of white, something moves. No. Many things—and at speed.

“What in the ten burning hells?” Harper says.

“Wraiths,” I say. “A half dozen. Chasing down—”

But I cannot make sense of the shimmer they are chasing. I only know that if it’s running from the wraiths, then we share a common enemy.

“You have to behead them,” I tell Harper, but he’s already charged forward, his scim flashing as he slices through one of the wraiths. It screams, and the sound is followed by another.

Then they are upon me, their spectral hands reaching out. One closes its fingers on my throat, and cold lances into me.

“Not today,” I snarl at it before wrenching away and slicing off its head. The last two rush me, but they are sloppy—panicked. Their screams still linger in my ears when I turn to the shimmer in the air, which is not a shimmer at all, but a cloud of glittering sand, roughly man-shaped and clearly in distress.

“Peace, Blood Shrike,” the efrit whispers, and though I feel as though I must heal it, I realize that I cannot sing for it. Sand efrits hate songs.

“I bring a message,” it says. “From Laia of Serra. A message Keris did not wish you to hear.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Laia said you should ask this question of me: What were Marcus Farrar’s last words?”

Laia is the only person with whom I shared that detail, one night a few months ago, when neither of us could sleep.

“Very well,” I say. “What were Marcus Farrar’s last words?”

“‘Please, Shrike.’ Satisfied?” At my nod, the efrit goes on. “The Nightbringer sought to draw the Soul Catcher’s army to Marinn. Instead, the Soul Catcher moves his forces toward the City of the Jinn, in the Waiting Place. There, they hope to lure the Nightbringer and finish him for good. But—but—” The efrit’s breathing grows labored. It has seconds, if that. “They cannot do it alone.”

“I can’t possibly march an army—”

“Laia of Serra said something else.” The efrit’s sand grows dull, its light fading. “Strive even unto your own end, else all is lost—”

The efrit’s words trail off. Between one breath and the next, he is gone, his sand form disappearing in the wind.

Thank the skies Harper tends toward silence, because it gives me a moment to piece it all together. The Commandant left the south open because she wanted me to attack. Because if I’m focused on Silas, I cannot help the one person who can destroy her master.

“Shrike,” Harper finally says. “We need to leave. It’s getting colder. The river will freeze, and we won’t be able to sail south.”

“Let it freeze,” I tell him. “Today, we do not sail. Today, we march.”

Part IV

The Sher Jinnaat

LI: The Nightbringer

For years, I raged. Villages burned. Caravans disappeared. Families murdered. But in the end, there were too many humans. I annihilated thousands, yet when I turned, I would find hundreds more.

Vengeance would take years. Centuries. And I could not do it alone. I needed to prey on humanity’s worst traits. Tribalism. Prejudice. Greed. And while I pitted them against each other, I needed to reconstitute the Star, a far more difficult task. For it had shattered, its pieces scattered to the winds. Each piece had to be hunted down. Each returned to me in love.

The first human I ever loved was a Scholar. Husani of Nava—what would later become Navium. She wore the shard of the Star as a necklace, fashioned by her late husband. Her child died of a fever when she had only just learned to speak. So I came to her as an orphan, red-haired and brown-eyed, grappling with my own pain. She called me her son and named me Roshan.

Light.

My presence filled a hole within her. She loved me instantly.

It took me longer to love her. Though I lived in the body of a human child, my mind was my own, and I could not forget what her kind had done to mine. But she soothed my nightmares and tended my wounds. She attacked my face with kisses, and hugged me so much that I began to crave the comfort of her arms.

Soon after coming to her, I learned to respect her. And in time, I loved her.

She gave me the necklace after I told her I was leaving home to seek my fortune. All my love goes with you, beloved son. Those were her words when she set the necklace around my neck, tears in her eyes.

In that moment, I wanted to transform. To scream at her that I was beloved, once, but that all who loved me were gone. That her kind had not just stolen my people, but my name.

The only parent I had ever had was Mauth, and his love for me was rooted in the duty he laid upon my shoulders. Husani offered me the love of a mother: fierce where Mauth was sober, pure where Mauth was calculated.

And how did I, the one she loved the best, repay her? How did I thank the human who gave me everything, who taught me more of love in a few short years than I had learned in all my millennia?

I abandoned her. After taking her necklace, I left. I did not return.

When she died a few years later, she died nirbara—forsaken. She left this earth with her adopted son’s name on her lips, not knowing where he had gone, or whether he lived, or what she had done to deserve his silence.

I mourned her then. I mourn her still.