Chapter 33 #2
But someone had tipped him off, and now it would be his turn to take a knee before the executioner.
The door opened.
Chukwuemeka looked up, shock befalling his face as he saw her.
Chidinma stood in the doorway, her robes a deep blue.
They exchanged a glance, one belonging to father and daughter. His only biological daughter out of the three he raised, the only one who loved him, the only one he failed.
She stepped into the cell.
The door closed behind her.
The evening air was cool against their skin as they sat on the palace wall, watching the chaos below. Men ran through the courtyards, armour clanking, voices raised in urgent commands.
Orda Naiman was advancing. Three days became two. Two became tomorrow. The army that had waited at the border was now marching, and the Borjigin scrambled to meet them.
At the centre of it all, Somadina strode through the crowds of soldiers, issuing orders, clasping shoulders, and projecting the confidence of a king even though he could not yet sit on the throne.
His armour caught the torchlight, gleaming gold and crimson, and his voice carried across the courtyard like a war horn.
Azul watched him with an unreadable expression.
Beside her, Chidinma watched too.
They had not spoken for nearly an hour—had simply sat together in the gathering darkness, two sisters who had never been sisters, watching the man who was husband to one and perpetrator to them both prepare for battle.
"The army will hold," Chidinma said finally. "The generals know what they're doing. And with the Valthorne reinforcements coming, he might actually survive this."
"I hope he survives this," Azul said with a sip of tea. "I haven't finished with him yet."
Chidinma glanced at her and then down at her tea.
"I went to see Father," she said.
Azul’s gaze flickered. "Did you?"
"Yes."
"And?"
Chidinma was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "I wanted to speak to him. Just once. I wanted to know if... if my feelings would change. If seeing him there, in that cell, waiting for death…I wanted to know if I still loved him."
Azul waited.
"I don't. I don't love him. I don't hate him. I feel nothing. He's just a man who used to be my father."
"And has that changed anything?"
Chidinma shook her head slowly. "No. Nothing has changed."
Azul dropped her cup with a clink.
"Are you willing to kill him?"
The question pushed all awkwardness between them away, forcing strangers to contend with the fact that they had been raised by the same man.
"Yes," she said. "I am," She continued. "When I saw him, the very first thing he said to me, before he asked how I was, before he asked if I was safe, before anything—was to beg me to ask Somadina to spare him." She laughed, pained.
"He didn't care that Somadina hurt me. He didn't care what I endured. He only cared that I might be able to save his worthless life." She looked at Azul, and for the first time, her eyes watered. "What a hollow man. What a pathetic, selfish, useless man."
Of her father’s three daughters, only she, Chidinma, was born from his seed.
Azul was taken in, Kamsi was a Djinn, and yet he raised them all with the same care he applied to everything, with the expectation that he would slowly accumulate the power that would one day lift his family above the mud of their village origins.
The first he raised to be queen. Beautiful, composed, trained in every art that might catch a prince's eye.
He had poured resources into her education, her wardrobe, and her very presence, shaping her like a sculptor shapes clay.
When the time came, she would marry well—better than well—and her rise would lift them all.
The second he rose to support from the shadows.
Less visible, less celebrated, but equally valuable.
She learned to read rooms instead of books, to track the movement of power through a palace, and to be everywhere and nowhere at once.
She was adaptable, she was cold, and she was the one who would hold a knife.
The third he raised to support from the spirit realm.
A Djinn, like Borji—but where Borji had been left to find his own path, Kamsi was guided, shaped, and aimed.
She learned the old ways, the rituals and prayers, and the language of gods and ancestors.
She would be their connection to forces beyond mortal comprehension.
Three daughters. Three purposes. Three paths to power.
Chidinma resented it. She was the only true daughter — why had he given the most prestigious position, the one of queen, to another.
But standing here, walking through corridors she had mapped in her mind years ago, watching her sister dismantle a kingdom piece by piece, she understood the difference between her and Azul wasn't just whose bed they ended up in but who they were willing to kill.
"I asked about Kamsi," Chidinma said suddenly.
Azul stilled. "Where is she?"
"He wouldn't tell me. Said it wasn't my concern."
Azul was quiet for a long moment. "It's fine. We'll find her."
"I don't understand you," Chidinma whispered.
"I should hate you. I do hate you. You took everything—my place, my purpose, my father's attention—and you don’t even want it.
Everything shifts around you like you were the centre of fate.
And yet." Chidinma's voice cracked. "And yet you're the only one who makes me feel like I'm not going mad in this place.
The only one who sees me. The only one who—" She stopped, pressing her hand to her mouth.
"You're not drowning," Azul’s voice seemed softer than usual. "You're learning to swim. It just takes time."
Chidinma laughed. "You're terrible," she said. "A devil."
Azul smirked. "I know."
"I hate you."
“Hmm,” she picked up her cup again. “Thank you, by the way, for the letter. If not for that, I probably wouldn’t have considered the Mal-kai.”
Chidinma’s eyes widened, a small smile playing on her lips. “Anytime.”
Azul took a sip of tea.
"Do you want to see father yourself?" Chidinma asked.
Azul shook her head. "If I see him I'll accidentally kill him."
"...I see."
The Dowager’s lungs burned. Her legs screamed. Her white mourning robes, once the symbol of her grief and station, were now torn and mud-stained, catching on branches and brambles as she fled through the darkness.
Behind her, she heard the men who had found her in the city, who had seen a lone woman in fine robes and recognised opportunity. They were simply predators, and she was simply prey.
"Stop running, old woman!" one shouted, his voice rough with laughter. "We just want to talk!"
She ran faster.
The river appeared before her like a gift from the gods—the Udamili, dark and vast, its waters gleaming under the faint light of the crescent moon. She had no boat, no bridge, no way across. But she had something else.
Faith.
The Dowager stumbled to the water's edge, falling to her knees in the mud. Behind her, the men crashed through the undergrowth, closer now, so close she could hear their breathing.
"Udamili!" she cried, her voice raw with desperation. "Goddess of the river! Mother of waters! You chose me! You named me your Divine King! I beg you—protect me! Save me from these dogs! I have served you! I have sacrificed for you! I have—"
The men burst from the trees.
They stopped at the sight of her kneeling in the mud, arms raised to the sky, robes torn and wild. For a moment, they laughed.
"Look at the old witch," one jeered. "Praying to a river. What's it going to do, drown us?"
They advanced.
And then, from the river, a creature burst forth.
The men stopped.
"What is that?" one shouted.
A shape emerging from the depths, vast and terrible, its outline barely visible in the darkness. Scales caught the moonlight, gleaming like polished emeralds. Eyes opened—six of them, each the size of a man's head, burning with ancient hunger.
The creature rose from the Udamili like a Titan.
The men screamed, crashing back into the trees, their confidence shattered by the appearance of something far more dangerous than they could ever be. Their screams faded into the night, swallowed by the sounds of the river and the beating of the Dowager's heart.
She knelt in the mud, staring up at the thing that towered above her, and felt something she had not felt in decades.
Awe.
"You came," she whispered. "You heard me. You—"
The creature’s mouth opened, and the woman was swallowed whole.