Chapter 19
AMEIRAH
For hours, I sat awake in the vaulted cell, surrounded on three sides by stone the colour of sunlight that drained the warmth from me rather than providing it. The icy temperature bled into my bones, making me shake, and I had to wonder if magic kept my prison as cold as possible.
From where I sat slumped against the wall, another cell was visible through long metal bars.
Like mine, it was little more than a half dome of stone.
Bleak and unsettling. Others fanned out on either side, arches vanishing as far as I could see, lit sparingly by shafts of light from above that created dark pockets of shadow.
The others were empty, as if I’d been placed far from the other prisoners.
But I could hear them. Weeping. Begging for help, mostly in a language I’d never heard before.
The call to prayer drifted through the wall from the palace’s nearby minaret, the muezzin’s voice amplified by magic.
He hadn’t been conscripted to fight in the war against Kalder unlike my home’s, I noticed.
How many other cities and towns had been forced to make sacrifices, while Morysen lived utterly removed from the grit and horror of war?
Resentment spread like a fever through me, and though it wasn’t fair, I began to hate every café and bookshop and medina we’d visited.
Fajr was lonely and quiet except for distant sobs and prayers from the other prisoners. The last bit of warmth leeched out of me when I knelt, the golden stone beneath me an unforgiving prayer mat. It began a struggle to even hold onto that flash of resentment as my energy drained.
I went back to sitting against the wall and waited.
Waited to see what the king would do with me, waited for another magic torture session from Kaazhim.
Unless this was it. Unless he’d thrown me in the dungeon and left me to rot, where Varidian would never find me, where no legion would come to my rescue.
They wouldn’t even if they found me; the legions answered to their commanders, who themselves answered to the king. I’d be forgotten down here, a missing person for the rest of my life. Which may not be long at all unless someone bothered to provide food and water.
I dozed against the wall, slipping in and out of sleep as Morysen’s sounds of life drifted through the stone, as if minuscule gaps had been left to torment prisoners with the freedom we’d never have.
I heard hawkers shouting prices, so these cells must run beneath the palace and close to the market on the other side of the walls.
And judging by the dungeon that stretched further than I could see, it was even more expansive.
Perhaps it flowed all the way beneath the great city, a prison with enough cells for a whole army.
A loud cheer woke me from a fretful sleep, and I stretched out my aching body, getting to my feet to test the stability of the bars—extremely stable—and the stone of the arched opening—unyielding.
Running my fingers over every bit of wall I could reach produced the same result. I was thoroughly trapped.
I’d just reclaimed my spot against the wall when footsteps scraped further down the tunnel, sending a rush of goosebumps down my arms. The back of my neck tingled as those steps came closer, unhurried, leisurely.
If they’d been marching, determined steps I might have thought they belonged to Kamaal, might have thought he’d come to liberate me, but my heart sank. It was either a guard or—
Bakshi Saber walked into view in one of those brightly coloured djellabas he used as a disguise, his dark hair slicked back from a face lit with pure satisfaction.
“The lightning soul in the flesh,” he said in greeting.
The words hit me like a physical slap, sending me recoiling into the wall. “I’m not—”
“Oh, I know,” he replied leaning against the curved wall of the cell across from mine. “But no one else has to know that. Ithanys is safe, the threat finally contained. Can’t you hear the city celebrating?”
The cheers that had woken me… I opened my mouth but found no words, shock merging with outrage and good, old-fashioned rage. It was that that allowed me to say, “Varidian will come for me. You know he will.”
Bakshi laughed, a sneering, dismissive laugh that looked as at home on his face as those affable, easy-going smiles he handed out in droves.
“Varidian cannot save you, whether he’d like to or not.
” He tilted his head, considering me, and I tried so hard to control my emotions, to hide them like Kamaal told me to in Jamaa Square.
“Through the careless actions of Falael Jouhari, neither you nor Varidian signed the certificate of your marriage.”
Ice hit first, spreading through my chest like a layer of frost. And then rage combusted every frozen shard until I burned with hatred. “You cannot take my marriage from me.”
He held eye contact for longer than was comfortable, a little smile on his weathered face. “I already have. But it seems my actions were both pre-emptive and unnecessary. Word arrived this morning from the recovery team searching the wreckage of Daurith.”
I froze—on the outside and inside, where my soul lived within my body.
I breathed, “Daurith survived. The messenger said so.”
“It survived the first attack. But not the attack last night.”
I bared my teeth, but my rage rapidly spiralled away from me, cold filling its place. He did this. Daurith survived his first attempt, so he sent more wyverns, more riders, to ensure its destruction.
“The bodies of your husband and his legion were found in the ruins; their wyverns perished with them.”
I began to shake, first in my hands, my knees, then the rest of my body. He was a liar; why should I believe a single word he said? Daurith may be standing as we speak, Varidian utterly safe, unhurt, not burned in the smouldering wreckage of a sacred city. He might be alive. Bakshi was a liar.
I reached for my link to Raheema, but it felt far away as it had every time I tried to reach her this morning.
They’d locked me here, but where did they send my wyvern?
Was she in a prison wagon, bound for some worse dungeon?
The cold spread through me until I had to clench my teeth to stop their chattering.
“So no, Varidian is not coming to save you,” Bakshi said, watching me, seeing beyond the scant veil hiding how close I was to falling apart. “No one is coming to save you.”
I curled my trembling hands into fists and—became aware of the strange light, empty feeling on my finger. A horrible stillness overtook my body, killing even the quiver in my hands.
“You took my ring,” I said without looking, my voice a whisper, a shadow, a portent of death.
Bakshi angled his head, eyes bright on me, like my suffering was a delight. Only that movement, not a single word of confirmation. I clenched my fists tighter, until my fingers hurt.
“I want it back,” I said in the same whisper of velvet rage. “Even if Varidian is—gone.” It was a struggle to spit the word out, to even acknowledge that it might be true. “What harm is there in me keeping the ring?”
“It’s a symbol,” Bakshi replied, unmoved by the scream for help that echoed through the dungeon, a woman’s scream shattering the tension. “Like you as the lightning soul are a symbol that we have triumphed, that good has at last found victory over corrupt magic and evil.”
“But I’m not—”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand, a spiteful laugh in his throat. “As far as Ithanys is concerned, we are safe.”
“But the clergy, the wyverns—”
“Will take longer to root out, of course,” he cut in smoothly. “In fact, I think they’ll take a good long while to remove from our empire. Perhaps, in the end, they will be the ones who triumph.”
I jerked forward with a hiss, wrapping my hands around the metal bars, freefalling into my core of magic and ready to blast this place apart.
But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how Kaazhim ripped out pieces of my power and made me kill all those clergymen.
“You control those wyverns. You sent those riders to Daurith—and to the Red Star a month ago. It’s Raheema, isn’t it?
Your riders were searching for her. And you wanted Muhannad to kill her. Why?”
“You expect me to spill all my secrets?”
I scoffed, cast a glance at the empty cells around me. “Who would I tell them to?”
“You’ll soon be going on a journey, to complete a little task for me. I wouldn’t want you to spread lies to your companions.”
The laugh that left me was low, an omen of danger he’d do well to heed. “I’m not doing anything for you.”
I didn’t like the slow smile that crossed his face, brightening amber eyes to gold. “And here I thought you’d become good friends with Mihrunnisa.”
Was he really insinuating… “We are good friends.”
“Then you’d be distressed if she joined you down here,” he said casually, glancing around the arched cells. In the distance, someone was sobbing, pleading.
“You—you’re threatening your own daughter.”
Bakshi shrugged. “If you think I’m a man of empty promises, I assure you I’m not. And yes. I’m threatening my own daughter. She matters less than the journal I want you to retrieve for me. The fate of this world hinges on it.”
Fate of the world? Fate of his dark invasion was more accurate. But he was already king of Ithanys—why did he need to conquer, to send wyverns and ruthless riders to attack our cities?
“Why would I help you?” I sneered. “If it benefits you, it benefits the wyverns that sacked Wyfell, and your fake clergy.”
“Oh, the clergy are real. They were, at least.”
“And now…?”
“Like I said.” That slimy smile again. “I can’t reveal all my secrets. And if you have no interest in cooperating, I accept your choice.” He pushed off the cell wall, all colourful menace and corrupt power. “Expect your new cellmate within the hour.”
I knew he was testing me. Knew he was bluffing.
Except… I couldn’t say that for sure. And part of me remembered the pain he’d ordered Kaazhim to inflict on me, the magic he’d commanded torn out of me, and I flinched from the idea of his next punishment.
That and my soft, compassionate heart damned me.
Mihrunnisa was kind to me, and I couldn’t forget that.
I spat through gritted teeth, “Fine.”
Bakshi paused and turned to give me a beatific smile, his congenial mask on full display. “Perfect. I’ll send someone to retrieve you within the hour.”
I stepped away from the bars, leaning against the wall again, furious and afraid and denying every word he’d said about Varidian, Mak, and the Legion of Fyrevein.
They were alive. They couldn’t have perished.
They’d survived aerial battles that history books would be written about.
They’d flown across the wall, flown into hell itself, and survived. They couldn’t be dead.
But I was cold, right down to my bones, and now Bakshi was gone, the shaking took over my whole body. He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t. But if he was…
The king had taken my wedding ring as a symbol, yet he’d left me with other trinkets. The pendant I’d bought myself for my eighteenth birthday, and the bracelet Mihrunnisa gifted me. With all its spikes hidden, he must have assumed it harmless.
And if Varidian had truly left this world, I’d use it to kill his father and every last member of his dark army.