Chapter 53 Sirsha #2
“Ah—before I do that,” Quil said, seeming to truly consider her request, “can you talk to Div? Tell her that I know how to free her from that horrible place, the Owa Khel. We”—he nodded to Karinna and Cero—“we know a way. There’s—there’s hope for her—”
“Lies,” Sirsha said. “It wasn’t hope that kept me alive after my family threw me out, Quil! It wasn’t hope I felt after I was beaten and abused by men I’d never done anything to! It was spite. Spite kept me alive then and it will keep me alive now.”
Sirsha sneered. She felt nothing for this boy. For any of them. She was hungry. And she would feed. And the jinn would finally feel the pain they had inflicted upon her.
She advanced on the jinn, the gnawing in her belly unbearable. If she could only eat their magic, the pain would go away. Oh, she craved it. She needed it.
A voice echoed in her mind. Distant and barely audible: I, Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar, name Sirsha Westering as my Adah, half my soul. I give my heart unto her keeping, a gift with no compare.
She paused, for she recalled those words. They meant something to her. A moment later a memory drifted to the forefront of her mind. She sat beside a fire, and there were warm hands on her skin. Quil, with his bright cat eyes, his touch gentle, softening the hard shell she’d wrapped around herself.
No, Div’s voice said. No, that is not you.
Another memory arose: a dark inn, and the press of her body against Quil’s, his hands tight on her waist. His hair soft between her fingers, and the way he looked at her, like she was a sunrise on some distant moon, something he would only ever see once.
More memories flooded her, a quiet tide. Quil drawing a blade, putting it to R’zwana’s throat. Touch a single inch of her skin and see what happens.
Arelia smiling at Sirsha. We like you. A lot.
And Loli Temba, blond-haired and stern-faced, wearing green, smoothing back Sirsha’s hair when she was still a child. It is not your fault. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it is. If they do, do not believe them.
Loli again, worn to nothing, surviving off stolen hearts and ancient magic. You must know her.
“I know you now.” Sirsha turned inward to Div. “I know you. I am you.”
Yes, Div said. Let us feed, Sirsha. Let us show them who we are.
But Sirsha did not wish to feed. She knew who she was. And she was not simply hunger and pain. She was the woman in the memories. Memories Quil had awoken. She was the feelings those memories evoked: loved, safe, cherished.
She was Sirsha Westering. Loli had cared for her and Arelia and Sufiyan had befriended her. She was a tracker and a daughter of Jaduna, no matter what her family said. She was beloved of Quil, even without the Adah coin. And she was the one who understood Div. Perhaps the only one.
Div’s magic, the magic of a thousand jinn children, flowed through her, the explosive rush of a waterfall.
She understood then that what she’d seen of Div had been a fraction of who the jinn children were.
They could break the world if they wished.
Collectively, their power was vast. But breaking the world wouldn’t fix anything.
Div, she said. I want to help you. I know you now. And you know me, too. Let me see you.
Div coalesced beside her, external once more, still in the body of the red-haired child. Behind her, the jinn fell from the walls. They did not move, perhaps because of fear. Or shame.
“Who pays when a child suffers?” Sirsha spoke to Div, but also to the jinn.
She spoke to Quil, suffused with magic and watching her sadly as he saw the full horror of what had happened to the jinn children.
She spoke to Cero, as broken as Sirsha herself, perhaps.
And to Karinna, who held on to the dead child in her arms like the fate of the world depended on it.
“No one pays,” Quil said. “The perpetrator accepts a child’s suffering as an acceptable sacrifice. Perhaps it is for war. For country. For pride. It doesn’t matter. Children pay the price for adult hubris. Children like you, Sirsha. Like the jinn.”
“Like all of us,” Cero said quietly.
“Div”—Sirsha turned to the creature—“there is no comfort in this knowledge. I wish there was a consequence for the humans who killed you, but there isn’t. And that is a terrible sorrow.”
“We are still bound,” Div said, but her shoulders were slumped, as if her violence had finally been drained away. “Our spirits are still locked away in the Owa Khel. Our magic is tethered to this cave and through it, to the Ikfa. It is everywhere. We cannot break free.”
“It was life that made the Loha,” Karinna said. “And death that poisoned it. It was death that tethered your magic to this cave and your spirits to the Owa Khel.” She held tight to the boy in her arms. “And it is life that will free you. This—this is my brother. Ruh. He was Div’s first victim.”
“You cannot bring back the dead,” Umber said. “Even if you could, one pathetic human life is nothing compared to the magnitude of hundreds of jinn spirits.”
Karinna was on her feet and in Umber’s face in an instant. “First of all,” she said, “my brother’s life isn’t pathetic. And maybe you can’t bring someone back to life. But he can.”
She jerked a thumb at Cero even as Quil and Sirsha looked on in astonishment.
“He brought back a cat and a human,” Karinna said. “I’m the human. And we weren’t a little dead. We were very dead.”
“There is magic that allows for one heart to replace another,” Sirsha said, for she’d witnessed Loli ripping out the heart of a sheep and placing it in her own body. “I’ve seen it.”
Another of the jinn hissed, disgusted. “Death magic,” he said. “The lowest form. A heart stolen is only more death. You must offer life. A heart given freely and in sacrifice in order to undo this horror, release our children’s spirits, and transform the Ikfa back into Loha.”
“I take it that none of you are willing,” Quil said dryly, looking from jinn to jinn. “I will do it. For Ruh.”
“The hells you will,” Karinna said. “It must be me—I owe it to him. I didn’t—I didn’t protect him.”
Cero drew himself up. “Ruh has been speaking to me for months. Perhaps this is why. It must be me.”
A growl from the darkness. A blade at Sirsha’s throat as a cutting wind wound around her body, binding her tight.
“You can all die for all I care,” said Aiz bet-Dafra, lurking in the shadows for who knew how long. “But first, you will give me my Loha.”