Chapter 17 #4
Something in his face cracked open—the sharp lines of his expression melting. His gaze turned distant, looking toward something only he could see.
“I never thought I’d meet someone who could pull me in so effortlessly, but the moment I met Jasila, I was… hooked.”
“It was like that right away?”
He nodded. “She was ruthless, sharp-tongued, and fierce as hell.” A real smile broke across his face.
“I saw past all of that—past the steel she wore like armour.” He lifted his face toward the sun, his eyes closing.
“For so long, I had forgotten what it felt like to be truly seen. To have someone look at you and know your soul.”
He had found something real, something that made him feel, and I had ripped him away from it.
“Tavrik—”
His expression softened when he turned to me, reading the devastation written across my face.
“I’m so sorry.” The words came out broken. “I’m sorry I took you away from her.”
Without a second thought, he wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into his side. He guided me forward, his grip steady and sure.
“Don’t be sorry.” He gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Before I met you, I was nothing. Just a man on the run. But you…” He paused. “You gave my life purpose again. You saved me in more ways than you know.”
More tears came hot and fast, burning tracks down my cheeks.
“I would do it all again in a heartbeat for you… for Theo.” Tavrik shot me a sideways grin. “But don’t tell him I said that.”
I met his eyes with fierce determination. “I will get you back to her.”
The words weren’t just a promise, they were a vow. One I would burn into fate itself if I had to.
I pressed my pinkie to my lips—the sacred gesture between Theo and me. And now, Tavrik too.
Something lit in his eyes—hope breaking through the sadness like light through the darkest clouds. He knew I’d doing anything it took to keep this promise.
“How come he gets to put his arm around you, but when I do it, you shove me off?”
Theo’s voice cut in from behind us. I had almost forgotten he was there.
I glanced over my shoulder, smirking. “Because Tavrik doesn’t annoy me.”
Theo scoffed, crossing his arms. “Cause Tavrik doesn’t annoy me,” he mimicked in a high-pitched, terrible imitation of my voice.
I spun on my heel.
Theo flinched, bracing for impact, but instead of hitting him, I threw my arms around his waist, squeezing him tight.
“I love you, Theo.”
His entire body went rigid. It took him a second to relax, his arms slowly embracing me.
I pulled away and turned to Tavrik, squeezing him in a fierce hold.
“I love you too. I could’ve never done this on my own. Thank you.”
As we kept walking, the sky had begun to darken, stars flickering to life. The moon rose over the horizon, spilling its pale glow across the land.
We were almost there. Almost home.
A cold, gnawing feeling, pressed deep within my bones, settling in my marrow like ice.
Something wasn’t right. It was like I was walking toward my own death.
The village lay draped in the hush of night. The streets, once alive with voices and flashing lanterns, now seemed smaller, unfamiliar.
Smooth clay walls lined our path, a stark difference to the jagged terrain that had become my new reality. The air smelled clean, untouched by the decay of magic that had saturated the Jinn realm.
Theo’s house stood among the others, dark and lifeless. Something about it felt emptier than the rest. I searched his face for a shred of recognition, but he didn’t even look at it.
His jaw was set, eyes fixed straight ahead.
The place that had once held his family now meant nothing.
I wanted to say something, to reach for him, but no words came. Instead, I kept my eyes locked ahead to the winding paths—to all the places we had once run wild.
The memories were distant, yet so clear.
I tugged on Theo’s arm, pointing toward the old oak standing tall in the village centre.
“Remember that tree?”
Smiling, he craned his head up to look up at its gnarled limbs stretching towards the sky.
I turned to Tavrik with the biggest grin on my face. “We used to climb it just to pelt rotten vegetables at people.”
Theo’s shoulders shook as he snorted. “You always blamed me when we got caught.”
He was absolutely right. I did blame him.
“Because you always made the most noise.”
I could still hear his cackling ringing in my head, could see the way he would almost fall because he was shaking so much.
Tavrik shook his head. “You two were little menaces.”
“I was a child.” Theo smirked, elbowing me in the rib. “She was the menace.”
No matter what we got caught doing, no matter who was to blame, Theo always took the fall. Not that he ever let me live it down.
The weight in my chest lifted. It felt easy. Effortless. Like we weren’t walking toward something terrible.
But that feeling wouldn’t last.
A part of me still wanted to go back. To the Jinn realm. To Dalkhan.
And I would.
I would get my mother, and I would claw my way back to him if I had to.
Before long, my home loomed before us, unchanged yet so different. The cracked pot that Eli had fallen onto when I’d pushed him out my window was still there. Still broken, as if she never got around to replacing it.
I brushed my palm along the weathered surface of the front door. Theo and Tavrik stood tall at my back, grounding me.
“We made it,” I whispered.
Dread curled deep inside my chest as I pushed open the door, the creak of the hinges too loud in the silence of the night.
Everything felt wrong. It was too still. Too empty.
Dust blanketed every surface, an eerie contrast to the cleanliness and order my mother had always kept. Satchels of food sat abandoned, their contents long since spoiled. The fresh herbs she’d once cherished had rotted where they hung, their scent sickly and sour.
She’d stopped caring. Stopped trying.
Stopped believing I would come back.
I moved forward, driven by the need to find her. To hear her voice once more.
I reached for her door, my fingers hovering just above the handle. The stone in my other hand burned, and a violent hum thrummed in my bones.
I grabbed the handle, the metal shockingly cold, as if winter had claimed this one spot in the house.
I turned it.
The door swung open with a groan. My mother’s name left my lips in a barely audible whisper.
“Ummi?”
The sound of snapping bones filled the room. A sharp crack that would haunt my dreams forever.
I screamed, feral and inhuman. The cry bounced off the walls, coming back to me distorted as Zaheera let my mother’s lifeless body slip from her grasp.
She hit the ground with a sickening thud.
No.
I dropped to my knees, the impact jarring my bones. I scrambled to her side, my hands shaking violently. I reached for her, as if I could pull her back from the brink. The world fell away—nothing existed beyond my breaking heart.
Her eyes, once filled with love and laughter and a thousand stories told by firelight, were vacant. Empty. The rich green than had matched my own was now dull and fixed—staring at nothing.
Gone.
A keening cry ripped through me, the sound so broken it barely felt like my own. My hands hovered over her. Would touching her make this real? Would it cement this nightmare into something I couldn’t wake up from?
“Ummi,” I whispered, my voice splintering like glass. “Please wake up. I’m home now.”
I traced over the features I had memorised as a child.
The laugh lines around her mouth that deepened every time I made her smile. The crease between her brows that appeared when she worried about me. The slight bump on her nose from where she’d broken it as a girl, falling from the same tree Theo and I used to climb.
Her skin was already cooling, stealing the warmth I remembered from childhood—when I’d press my fevered forehead against her cool palm and she’d hum until I fell asleep.
I was supposed to save her. I was supposed to have had more time.
Tears blurred my vision, each drop carrying pieces of me as they fell onto her face. My body trembled as I clutched onto her with weak and useless arms.
I pressed my forehead against hers, breathing in her faint scent. My shoulders shook with silent, shattered sobs that tore my soul in half.
“I came back to you,” I choked. “I came back, Ummi. I’m here now. I’m home. Please don’t leave me. Please.”
Theo and Tavrik dropped to their knees beside me, their grief tangible in the air. Their hands on my shoulders felt distant, disconnected from my body. They tried to pull me away—tried to loosen my grip on the cooling corpse that had once been the centre of my world.
But I wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go.
Theo’s arms locked around me like iron bands, then he wrenched me from her body.
“NO! NO, LET ME GO!”
I thrashed wildly, pounding my fists against his chest. Tearing at his arms, his face, anything I could reach, with my nails.
“She’s not gone! She’s not—she can’t be—”
His own body shook as tears streamed down his face.
She had been like his mother too. The woman who kissed his scraped knees and scolded us for staying out past dark.
Who always set out an extra place at dinner because she knew he’d be there.
Who loved him like her own son when his parents couldn’t anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Elira,” his voice cracked. “I’m so sorry.”
Everything inside me caved in—folded under the pressure of a grief so vast it left nothing but ruin. I crumpled against him, my entire body going limp as if every bone had turned to dust.
I lifted my head slowly, a monumental effort. Through the blur of tears, Zaheera stood poised like a serpent, basking in the ruin she had created.
Her lips stretched into a slow, cruel smile and her ember eyes gleamed with wicked delight.
She had won.
Zaheera tapped her nails against her arm in a maddening rhythm.
She wanted me to break. To let the grief consume me until there was nothing left.
I wasn’t going to.
I was going to kill her.