Chapter Fifty-Nine Amunet
FIFTY-NINE AMUNET
My qareen claimed to have never seen the amulet before. But it had to be here somewhere. That was why Shaya had asked Athar to send me to this strange place. He wanted me to find it.
And I would. By the gods, I would.
I’d envisioned meeting Shaya countless times.
But it had always felt like a distant fancy.
It didn’t matter how powerful I’d be, I would never be as powerful as Ketet and Phadar and the lesser gods.
There was no hope of breaking the seal on the Underworld that their joint power had created.
So most of my dreams of meeting my real father had been contained to words on a breeze.
A disembodied presence that was comforting, constant, but not corporeal.
But with a key… with a key everything could change.
No more nightmares. No more petty politics. No more itch, no more voices, no more symptoms of any kind.
No more loneliness. No more doubt. Just a father’s love. Acceptance.
And all I needed was a fucking key.
I stepped out into the entrance hall to begin my search—
My power started thrashing wildly. A hound pulling at its leash. So much more insistent than when it had guided me to follow Athar.
I lifted my head.
The front door was open.
The double doors had both been shut before. But now sunlight streamed through, cutting a line across the entryway. My heart froze in my chest, thoughts emptying out.
To my qareen, I whispered, “I thought you said the citadel was empty.”
She cowered behind me. “It is.”
“Then who opened the door?”
She shook her head.
Voices.
My head whipped to the left. Across the entrance hall stood an archway. And out of that archway echoed voices.
“Let’s go back upstairs,” my qareen hissed. “Quick!”
I should listen to her. Just because Shaya had sent me here didn’t mean it was entirely safe. Whoever was through that archway had been lying in wait for hours.
But I needed to find that amulet. If there were people living here, they would know where it was, surely. A few sweet promises, and the amulet would be in my hands.
I took a step forward, and my qareen grabbed my arm. “We have to hide!”
Even with all the brawn she possessed from never having ended her training with the Khada Guard, she was a coward. I was not.
“Stay here,” I told her, and slipped free of her grip.
I would not hide from the echoes. I would meet them. And get what I needed, one way or another.