Chapter Sixty-Two Samira
SIXTY-TWO SAMIRA
The Gods-Chosen stared at me, face frozen. “No?”
My heart hammered in my chest. I had never said no to Amunet. Never. Had never even dreamed of it. But my fingers were latched on to Keir’s serrated dagger and refused to let go.
It was me lying on the altar. I was looking down at myself. My gagged mouth, my glowing green runes, my lit-up eyes that weren’t brown but a bright, piercing orange. But there were no scars on my chest or back.
She looked just like me and nothing like me at all. There was so much on her body that my own was missing. But she was me. Whatever pull I’d felt had lured me here. It wanted me to find her. Wanted me to use this dagger. Not Amunet Khada. Me.
“Give me the dagger, girl,” Amunet repeated. “That is not a request.”
Girl. She couldn’t even bother to remember my name.
My qareen shook her head fervently and screamed into her gag.
That same disturbing feeling of looking at my reflection in a mirror came over me.
I gazed down at my qareen, fear making her otherworldly eyes bulge, her body trembling as she braced for impact.
Her bucking had ceased. She was no longer trying to get away.
No longer fighting. She just looked up at me pleadingly.
Passive. Resigned. Just as I’d been when Amunet had tossed me to the bears.
And she’d do it again. Right now. She would take this dagger, cut into my qareen, and then…
what? Vanish. It would not be in her nature to help Keir, a Kald, against his qareen—or to help me, a slave too insignificant to have a name.
Keir and I would be left alone to deal with his double.
And to figure out a way home, if we were lucky enough to survive the scorched creature behind the waterfall.
I stared and stared at my qareen, and the longer I looked, the more disgust filled me. Pathetic, broken, helpless. A scared little girl always at someone else’s mercy.
I hated her. I hated her fear. I hated her choked screams. I hated the tears streaming down her cheeks. It was a loathing so deep, it was an integral part of me. A hatred that had always been there, lurking in the background of my consciousness, that I hadn’t spotted until just now.
“This is your last warning,” Amunet said. “Give me the fucking dag—”
I slit my qareen’s throat.
Glittering blood flooded out of her neck, and she twitched violently. I must’ve nicked an artery, because it spurted out and splashed over my chest.
The moment her blood hit me, the metallic scent punched up my nose, and my hatred and disgust drained away as the horror of what I’d done sank in. My qareen jerked harder, all the veins in her head bulging as she fought to hang on to life, choking on her own blood.
With a gasp, I tossed the knife away like it’d burned me. “Oh gods,” I whispered, covering my mouth. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“What have you done?” Amunet shrieked, and lunged at me. Grabbed me by the shoulders and sent me flying into the wall.
My head cracked, and pain burst through me.
Something sharp pricked my neck. It took several hard blinks before I managed to make out Amunet’s twisted face.
She snarled at me and pressed Keir’s dagger harder against my throat.
She looked nothing like the girl I’d served my whole life.
Not the savior I’d pictured. She looked like an animal.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done? That was mine, and you’ve—”
Something shifted on the altar, and she stopped. I strained past the pain and horror running through me to focus.
My qareen’s blood moved. Twisted along grooves in the altar I hadn’t noticed until just then, slid down to the floor, where more symbols had been carved. Glittering blood, like a river reflecting sunlight. It filled in the ruts on the floor, draining toward us.
Amunet and I watched in stunned silence as it puddled around our feet.
Then disappeared as it seeped into my skin. Only mine.
Wide-eyed, Amunet lowered the dagger and stepped away.
A white, burning pain blasted through me, like a hundred branding irons had been thrust into my core at the same time.
I tried to swipe the blood away, smacking at my legs, my arms, but it was useless.
It climbed up my thighs like vines, stretched across my shoulders, until it reached my chest. I screamed.
Pain and agony. That was all there was. Soul-wrenching pain. Bright light burst behind my eyes, and I caved forward, slapping my hands over my face. It scorched me from the inside out, eating away at my organs, evaporating my blood, turning my bone marrow to lava.
When I opened my eyes, the dead girl on the altar was missing her runes, her bronzed skin utterly unblemished.
The pain ripped through me again, knocking me off-balance. I swayed forward but managed to catch myself on the altar before I hit the floor.
With a tattooed hand.
Barely able to catch my breath, I gaped at my knuckles, my wrists. I held them up in front of me, breaths jagged. Both hands were covered in faintly glowing green runes, which reached up my arms, down my torso, painted over my legs.
Every rune that had been on the qareen’s body was now on mine.
I staggered away from the altar, but pain surged up my legs, sapping their strength, and I landed hard on my knees beside the pool.
The water was calm enough this far from the waterfall for me to clearly see my reflection. My eyes weren’t brown anymore.
They were orange.
And they beamed like sunrays out of my skull.
Stupefied, I glanced up at Amunet. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she took me in. She shook her head once. “You—”
She was wrenched backward, as if an invisible hook had ripped her off her feet. She went sailing through the air, toward the wall—and then through it. Disappeared.
It was the last thing I saw before white, agonizing fire swallowed me up.