Chapter Fifty-Eight Samira
FIFTY-EIGHT SAMIRA
The sun had only just started to paint the sky in shades of violet. Dry heat hadn’t settled its weight on my skin yet. I drew a deep breath, taking a moment to enjoy the fresh air, and let my lids flutter open.
Keir’s face was tipped down, nose nearly brushing mine, his soft breaths dancing across my lips with each exhale. He looked at peace while he slept. The skin beneath the faded kohl on his forehead was smooth, his eyelashes curving gently against his strong cheekbones.
My head was pillowed by his bicep while his other arm had wrapped entirely around me, holding me tightly against him so that I could feel every dip and curve of his strong body. But none of that was the reason for the ribbon of surprise that twined around me.
It was the fact that my arm was wrapped around him, too.
My hand had found its way under his tunic, palm on the bare skin between his shoulder blades.
My fingers pressed into his smooth, warm flesh, muscles shifting with each breath he took, and I had the distinct impression I’d been clinging to him.
People moved in their sleep—and it had been a cold night. It was innocent, meaningless. All I had to do was sit up, then Keir would wake, and we could return to this nightmare.
But I didn’t sit up. I didn’t move at all.
I continued to lie there in the sand with my hand on Keir’s back and my head on his arm.
Instead of lurching away, I studied him.
His slightly crooked nose that suggested it had been broken at one point, his full lips underlined by his blue runes, the scruff of facial hair that had grown alongside those blue lines.
I wondered what Keir’s runes meant. They were clearly symbols, and they never crossed over each other, as if they were spelling something out. I followed the column of his throat with my eyes to where the runes disappeared within the V of his tunic, feeling the absurd urge to trace them.
And then Keir’s eyes opened, instantly finding mine, and I stopped breathing.
It was like the sun emerging from behind a cloud. Bright, sudden. A zing ripped through my blood. I waited for him to say something cruel or to shove me away.
But he simply stared at me, gaze heavy-lidded with sleep.
I could see his thoughts stringing themselves together, taking inventory of our position, of my position, wondering how long I’d been awake.
And still he didn’t move, glittering eyes locked on mine.
With each silent moment that passed, my skin grew warmer, my pulse grew faster.
Keir’s eyes dipped to my lips, and my heart stopped.
For a moment, I thought of a different morning, waking up in a different man’s arms. The moment of indecision, of panic. I felt none of that now. My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and Keir tracked the movement. I held my breath.
All at once, the heat in his gaze cooled and he sat up. My arm fell out of his tunic with a dull thud. “We should get back to searching for Rade,” he said without looking at me.
Fire burst in my cheeks as embarrassment speared through me. “Right.” I hardly had time to get the word out before Keir was on his feet.
As we drew closer to that mountain, that strange pull in my chest became stronger. But I bit my chapped lip and forced myself to keep moving at the same pace. It was a physical effort not to break into a run.
And then, there it was, the source of the glint. Still far, but finally visible: a golden roof on top of a crumbling temple, nearly identical to the one I’d woken up in. We both walked faster.
It loomed over us just as the last one had.
An ancient ruin made of columns broken halfway to a ceiling that had long ago collapsed to the floor.
The winding staircase was fully intact, wrapping like a snake around fierce statues of Shaya.
The Underworld god stood proudly, slitted eyes gazing out at the horizon. The Temple of Shaya.
Empty. Abandoned, just like Ketet’s. No city, no Rade, no one at all to help us.
“Fuck,” Keir mumbled.
A sad laugh bubbled out of me. We’d crossed the Wastelands.
We’d actually done it. And now we were going to die.
I’d led us days in the wrong direction, probably sealing Rade’s death in the process, because…
I’d seen something shiny. Saying it to myself now sounded so idiotic, humiliation burned my cheeks and ripped another hysterical laugh out of me.
“What about this is funny?” Keir demanded.
I pointed at the ancient structure, stomach cramping as I laughed harder. I fell to my knees, tears spilling over my cheeks.
It was greed that brought you here. It is greed that will seek you out. Greed destroys, greed burns.
The Seer was right. I could have ended this all before stepping into the Mirror Realm, before I dragged Keir in with me.
It was greed. My own damned greed, wanting to know what it was like to be Amunet—more importantly, to not be Samira—if just for a little while.
At every turn, I’d been selfish and horrible and—gods, I’d made all of Kaldfold think I was their salvation.
But out of fire were you born, out of water were you found. To both must you return before all is razed to the ground.
The sun’s fire was over my head.
I held the water-filled boots in my hands and turned them upside down, cackling at the splat of water against the hot sand. There you go, another prophecy fulfilled. I snorted.
“What are you doing?” Keir stared at the boots with horror. “Amunet, have you totally lost your mind?”
I wiped tears from my cheeks and gasped through the laughter, “I’m not Amunet.”
“What?”
“My name is Samira.” Another grin split my face. “I’m not the queen. I’m her slave.” And then I was lost to a fit of giggles that racked my whole frame.
Keir stared at me, lips parted, and the image was so comical, I keeled over, forehead to the ground as laughter rocked me.
His feet slammed into the sand with enough fury to shake the earth. He grabbed me by the arms, hauled me to my feet, seethed, “What do you mean? Where is the real Gods-Chosen?”
But I didn’t care about his fury or his righteousness or what he’d say to Rade—because we were never going to find Rade. We were never going to get out of the Wastelands. My time was done. Served. Lies or truth, none of it mattered anymore. This was the end.
So I finally confessed, “When you invaded, Amunet asked me to take her place so she could escape. She thought you would kill her, and we couldn’t let you kill the Gods-Chosen.”
Keir’s brows bunched together over his wide eyes. “She escap—”
Sand shot up like a geyser around us. It knocked us both off our feet and sent us sprawling in the sand. I grunted at the impact. But when I glanced back, my heart stopped beating in my chest.
The sand rose up and packed together to form the shape of two male bodies and one female.
Faces emerged around eyes of fire. Pointed ears solidified on the sides of their heads.
Fire blazed in the impression of hair, flickering in an unseen wind.
The one in the middle grinned, the sand gaping into a black void in his face.
Jinn.
“Lost, little humans?” The grinning jinni’s voice was rough, like a wheel over gravel.
Keir scrambled up to his feet and drew his sword and dagger. I stood, too, and stared with wide eyes.
The female jinni to the right chuckled at the weapons and sidled closer. She reached out a sandy arm and slammed her hand down directly on Keir’s sword. The blade went right through the sand. The jinni pulled her hand back easily, not a scratch to be seen. “Put your blade away, Shifter.”
Keir didn’t. Choosing the illusion of safety. “What do you want?”
“You need help,” said the jinni on the left.
“We’re fine.”
“You will die out here.”
Keir didn’t respond to that, a muscle in his jaw popping. We both knew it was true. We’d already lasted longer than King Zaid. We had a couple of days left at the most.
The grinning jinni drifted to the side to peer at me over Keir’s shoulder. “We can save you, child. Would you like us to save you?”
My instinct was to immediately reject the offer, like Keir had done.
Jinn were dangerous. I knew that. But they also had power.
And I did not. I wasn’t a Gods-Chosen; I couldn’t save Ashorah.
But maybe I could at least save Keir and Rade.
They didn’t deserve to die. And if I could do something about that, I had to.
“Can you save all of us?” I asked. Keir whipped around. I avoided his look.
The jinni’s grin spread wider. “Of course.”
“What is your price?”
“Amunet,” Keir hissed, too preoccupied to remember that wasn’t my name.
The female jinni moved toward me through the sand like a serpent, leaving a trail behind her, until she was standing beside my shoulder. “We won’t ask for anything great.”
“Our price is simple,” agreed the male on the left, coming to my other side.
The grinning jinni said, “We just want what’s in your hand.”
I looked down at my empty hands and frowned. “I have nothing.”
“Not now,” he amended. “But later.”
“No,” Keir said instantly. “It’s too dangerous. Too open-ended.”
I agreed. But I tried to think of what I could possibly hold that would be of any value to the jinn. Food, maybe a weapon, clothes.
The amulet.
If Zarqa’s fortune was true, I would hold that at some point. I didn’t know what it was or what it did, but if that was what the jinn were after, I definitely shouldn’t give it to them. If I agreed to this, I wouldn’t be able to say no.
Unless…
Out of fire were you born… To both must you return.
Maybe this was part of Zarqa’s fortune. The jinn were beings of sand and fire. Maybe I was supposed to agree to this bargain.
“When?” I inquired. “When will you ask for this?”
The grinning jinni’s fiery hair blew toward me, and I flinched against the heat. “When you hold what we want.”
“I need more.”
“You won’t get it, child.”
The female jinni by my shoulder said, “This is our deal. Take it.”