Chapter Sixty-Three Amunet
SIXTY-THREE AMUNET
Oxygen surged into my lungs, and I sucked in the deepest breath I could, coughing violently. Sand exploded out of my mouth, and light blinded me. My thoughts were sluggish, pulse thundering in my ears. My head flopped forward, chin hitting my chest.
A rope was tied around my ribs. I was being dragged across black sand. What…?
I looked up, and Athar was there. He grinned and waggled his fingers in goodbye.
“Wait,” I croaked. Sand coated my mouth, crunched between my teeth, burned my throat with its dryness.
But something was wrong. My power no longer thrashed.
My fingertips no longer tingled. In fact, I could hardly feel my power at all beyond a subtle wind.
A mere inkling that it was out there somewhere.
With her.
Footsteps shifted behind me. On my flimsy neck, I turned to see a woman with yellow eyes and a face covering. The one from the Cirra Tribe. On my other side was the younger girl. They hauled me toward the shade of trees.
“No.” I struggled weakly. “No, let me go!” But my arms were useless, entirely drained. “Athar!” I tried instead.
But Athar was gone. Vanished like he’d never been there at all.
My head was light, chest searing as I continued to gasp for oxygen, and my legs wouldn’t work. There was nothing I could do as the women dropped me unceremoniously against a tree trunk. I laid there, breathing hard, glaring up at them.
The leader loomed over me, fingers tense around her spear. “Hello, Amunet Khada.”
The younger girl cinched the rope tighter around my torso, pinning my arms to my sides. Behind her, men and women from their tribe stood. All armed. Some still in their hyena forms.
The younger girl passed the rope to a man while she pulled out a curved bowl and fitted it to the side of my neck as the leader twirled her spear. She stopped with the razor-sharp edge against my jugular. “Amunet Khada,” she boomed, “you stole from the Cirra Tribe. Now you must be bled.”
I stared back from beneath my lashes, eyes unflinching. I just needed a few more moments. Strength was returning to my limbs. Just a few more—
The leader sliced.
Pain flashed through me as blood gushed out of my neck and into the waiting bowl in a scene hauntingly similar to what I’d just witnessed with my maid. I struggled, but the man holding my rope didn’t falter. Keeping me firmly in place as the Cirra Tribe bled me out.
My heart was a deafening drum in my ear, slowing with each ounce of blood lost. Each blink lasted an eternity.
I watched as the girl switched out one bowl for another.
My blood glittered slightly—the remnants of the jinni’s magic in my veins.
Nothing like the shine from my decoy’s qareen.
Nowhere near as powerful as what that girl had stolen from me.
I laughed, blood bubbling out of my lips, dripping down my chin. Oh, that girl had made a very grave mistake. Did she really think she could steal from Shaya’s daughter—from Shaya himself—and get away with it? She might have my power now, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“When I get my power,” I wheezed, “I’m coming for your people first.”
“You won’t live that long,” the girl replied.
I grinned. I didn’t have to see myself to know that grin looked deranged, demonic, showcasing the darkness nestled inside me.
She blanched.
There was a distinct thunk, and then her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed.
For a moment, I didn’t understand what had happened. But then the rope fell from my arms and familiar dark brown eyes were in front of me, and a cloth was pressed to my throat. “Hold this.”
My tongue felt too big, words clumsy as I murmured, “Jasim?”
He grabbed my limp hand and forced it to my neck. “Keep pressure on it.” Then he spun away, scimitar raised, as the leader snarled and lunged at him. Hyenas cackled, too, and pounced.
It was all happening too fast for my blurred vision to make sense of. Jasim’s black curls fanned around him as he spun. Metal clanged. The smell of copper filled the clearing. People in face coverings hit the ground and didn’t get back up.
The cloth under my fingers grew warm and sticky. I was still bleeding. It wasn’t slowing. But my heart was expanding, relief and hope compounding on each other as I gazed at Jasim in blank shock. “You… came back?”
He grunted as he threw a hyena off him, sparing me a single glance.
“You were right. My expectations of you weren’t fair.
” He slashed again, blood spattered. “I don’t want you to be anyone else.
I’m sorry I made you think—” Jasim ducked before he caught a blade to the face.
His foot shot out and knocked the tribesman into another, both of them crashing to the ground.
“But I will never leave you. Be who you are, and I… I will be better. I love you, Amunet.”
Dizzy with blood loss, adrenaline buzzing through my veins from terror, I smiled. He was here. He hadn’t left me. Which meant…
It wasn’t too late. I could be the girl he thought I was.
I’d caught a glimpse of her in my qareen.
It wouldn’t be easy, but… but I’d try. And he would see the selfish side of me, the dark side aligned with the God of Death, and not shrink away.
He’d already caught a glimpse of her, too.
We would both get better. We’d grow, together. Together.
That light feeling in my chest grew and grew until I thought I would burst with the elation. “Jasim, I love—”
Shrieking filled the trees. Not a pained scream, not an animal’s call, either. The Cirra Tribe whirled in its direction, alarmed.
And then an arrow shot out of the brush and burst through Jasim’s throat.
The world went silent.
My ears closed up. My breaths echoed in my head.
I stared. At the protruding arrow, dripping red. At the wide-eyed shock on Jasim’s face.
Then I screamed. My chest rattled with it, my throat strained. I watched helplessly as Jasim’s knees buckled and hit the ground. Blood poured out of his throat, his mouth.
No, I thought, screeched, begged. No!
His eyes sought mine, those reassuring brown eyes that I’d turned to so many times, that had always been there when my mind got too loud, when I needed a lifeline to cling to, that had just fucking come back.
Those eyes that even now, as he choked on a breath, bestowed me with the look.
I scrambled toward him, sluggish and uncoordinated.
My fingers clawed at the earth as I tried to drag myself closer, my nails broke, and dull pain pricked me.
It was nothing compared to the agony welling up inside me.
Jasim’s chest stuttered, that breath he fought so hard for trapped behind the arrow. And then his face went slack, and the light went out of his eyes.
My chest caved in. Tears branded my cheeks. An unholy shriek sliced up my throat.
Blood loss and shock threatened to rob me of my consciousness, but I hung on stubbornly. As if I could reverse the past few moments as long as I stayed awake.
Men surged into the clearing, tongues wagging with their battle cries, red-and-yellow sashes across their chests, many of them brandishing bows and arrows, like the one sticking out of Jasim’s throat.
The man leading the charge came straight for me, gold-flecked brown eyes sparkling, lips pulled wide in a smile, his pointed ears poking through a mop of curly brown hair.
The khopesh in his hand swung wide, and then a tribesman blocking his path was choking. A line sliced clean through his throat, pouring out in a waterfall of red, coating his chest. Within seconds, his skin lost all color, and he fell, dead.
The man with pointed ears swung off his horse as the sound of a battle echoed around us. Feet tromped over Jasim’s corpse. Hyenas howled and snapped their teeth, meeting blades. Spears locked with khopeshes. But it was as if he hadn’t noticed any of it.
Prince Sen Almassi of the Dry Lands crouched in front of me, those gold-flecked eyes half mad. His bloodthirsty grin was the last thing I saw before I finally lost consciousness.