Chapter 24 Sirsha #2
A chill ran up Sirsha’s spine. Longing and loathing warred in Div’s voice, a combination that should mean something. But before Sirsha could puzzle it out, Ma gathered her magic. She nodded to the other Jaduna.
The Raanis and R’zwana began to chant in Ancient Jadne. Sirsha only understood words here and there. Death. Betrayal. Bound. Expel. But the words garbled in her ears. They were twisted, like a hyena trying to speak human.
“This binding is unusual.” Div sniffed the air. “Ah, she’s woven love into it. The love of a mother for her child. Fascinating—it is like armor for the binding. She thinks I cannot touch it.” Div licked her lips, as if anticipating a meal.
Sirsha thrashed, desperate to warn her mother again. But speaking grew difficult. Whatever the hells they were chanting wore away at Sirsha’s strength, like someone had knocked her over the head.
Her vision darkened at the edges, and the chanting grew louder. Numbness claimed her arms, then her fingertips. Her eyes fluttered closed. All she could feel was something cold at her throat.
The Adah coin. She hadn’t even remembered it until now; her mother must have veiled it at some point, so Sirsha couldn’t feel Quil, even if he could still feel her.
Sirsha thought she would choke on her regret. She had only wanted to keep him safe. Now she would never see him again, never fall into his arms, never smell his warm skin, never feel his lips on her body in the gentle night.
Sirsha would have slipped into darkness then, but pain brought her back, exploding through her body like an infernal Kegari bomb going off in her chest. Her eyes snapped open.
An ashen cloud emerged from her skin, hovering over her.
In that cloud, Sirsha saw screaming faces and grasping hands.
She heard cries of terror and pleas for help.
It was Div’s true form, bound to Sirsha with a thick cord the color of a bleached worm.
Ma was drawing Div out of Sirsha like a poison—and not realizing that the body left behind would be ravaged in the process.
“Stop,” Sirsha gasped. “Stop—Ma—please. It hurts—” Sirsha’s heart slowed—her body could not handle this.
Her mother faltered, her eyes meeting Sirsha’s. They were not as they had been when she’d cast Sirsha out years ago, cold and merciless. Her mother, it was clear, had suffered during the years Sirsha was gone. Raani Sh’ban was haunted.
“Ma!” R’zwana shouted. “You must continue! You almost have it!”
“No,” Ma whispered, and her magic faltered. “It will kill her.”
“You knew this, Sh’ban,” N’shal said. “You must continue! It cannot exist in this world.”
“And you call these traitorous hags your people, Sirsha?” Div spoke, her voice many-layered and wrathful. “They will kill you to get to me.”
R’zwana and N’shal jerked their heads up in shock. Div was letting them hear her.
Only Ma stood firm. Her magic shivered the room, silver threads bursting from her hands and encircling the cloud. The Raani’s power was complex, flowing like a river, but Sirsha could feel Div crouched in anticipation.
The cloud stretched and writhed before it sank to the floor and solidified into the figure of a child. Div. She leered and twisted her hand. Ma’s magic began to flow to Div.
“The bond between mother and child is forged by blood,” Div said in a horrible mimicry of Ma.
The creature’s unearthly laughter echoed in the Darakt.
“Indeed, Raani. But I know of such bonds.” She twisted the strands of the binding around her hand and cast them at Ma, wrapping Ma in her own magic, using it against her.
Div. No. Sirsha screamed the words in her head. I order you, no.
But the creature could not read Sirsha’s mind, and Ma moaned, fully at Div’s mercy. Ma’s arms flopped helpless at her sides as she stared into the dead eyes of a being she couldn’t hope to understand.
Speak, damn you, Sirsha. Move your mouth and speak.
“No!” she finally roared. “Div—stop! It is my will!”
Div froze. The flow of magic stilled.
“Why should I heed you, little witch?” Div said. “Your mother pours her magic into me. She gave herself to me. And so I shall devour her.”
“You shall not.”
Div seethed, face ugly with irritation. “You have not the will to stop me.”
“You will not hurt her,” Sirsha said, and she thought of Quil, saving her neck months ago when R’zwana had captured her. He’d walked into the Jaduna safe house in Jibaut, back straight, voice firm, his manner utterly unyielding.
He made it look so easy. She was bound like a stretched elk skin, and so exhausted she could hardly see straight.
But, by the skies, she had her will. Perhaps only shreds of it, yet it was something. She’d been pulling at one of her ropes for long minutes now. Her hand was nearly free.
“You will release her,” Sirsha said. “You will not hurt anyone else.”
“They were all going to watch you die!” Div growled. “They were going to sacrifice you! If I hadn’t eaten her magic, your own mother would have killed you, even as she tried to use love to save you. She sought to bind me knowing it would kill you.”
“That’s not true, S’rsha,” Ma gasped. Sirsha’s heart ached at the sound of the honorific glottal stop, S’rsha instead of Sirsha.
“Release my mother,” Sirsha said. She finally worked one hand free and, in a flash, ripped R’zwana’s dagger from her belt and pointed it at her own throat.
“This is the price,” Sirsha said to Div. “Me for her.”
“I can find another body,” Div scoffed, but her voice shook and Sirsha could sense the lie.
“Release my moth—ah!”
R’zwana lunged and wrested the knife away from Sirsha. She swung her arm back, teeth bared as she aimed the blade at Sirsha’s heart. “I will do what the Raani could not,” she said.
The words shouldn’t have meant anything, for R’z had threatened Sirsha before. But this time was different. Her big sister, who was supposed to be her friend and protector, was about to shove a blade through her heart.
In that moment, faced with the hate in R’zwana’s eyes, all Sirsha wanted was for her sister to hurt. Some dark wrath unfurled within, as swift as a summer pestilence.
“Div!” Sirsha gasped. “Stop her!”
The pressure in Sirsha’s mind swelled. A flash of movement, an explosion of blood, and a scream. It was Ma screaming, her keen echoing off the high ceiling of the Darakt. Going on and on and on, even as blood misted to the earth.
Sirsha tried to make a sound but could not. For before her, R’zwana stood, sightless, a hole gouged in her chest where her heart used to be. She swayed and fell to the floor.
Dead.