Chapter Twelve Amunet
TWELVE AMUNET
King Zaid gazed down at me with sad eyes from where he sat on the edge of my bed.
That was the way he’d looked at me for months now, but tonight, the weight on either side of his lips seemed heavier, the lines around his sparkling green eyes deeper, and he wasn’t wearing his crown. He always wore his crown.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and yawned loudly. “What’s wrong, Baba?”
He tried to smile. But his frown was just too heavy for him to accomplish it. “I need you to wake up, little one.”
“Why?”
He placed his hand on my shoulder, and I could feel the slight tremble. “This is important, Amunet. I’ll explain later.”
I should’ve been afraid. Or at the least, cautious. But he was my father. I trusted him. Of course I did. So I obediently threw back my sheets and slid out of bed, clutching my ratty crocodile doll to my chest.
Father offered me his hand, and I took it.
The hallway was deserted. Even at a mere six years old, I knew that was strange. There were always guards and servants around. But not that night. That night, I could hardly even hear the rushing sound of the Lotus River. As if all of Ashorah had gone silent.
“You remember your lessons about the Seven Monarchs?” Father asked me. His palm was sweaty against mine. Nothing strange about that—this was Ashorah. Everyone was sweaty all the time.
I nodded.
“Do you remember what you learned about the Gods-Chosen?”
“When things get really bad, the gods send their children to help us,” I recited, nose curling as dirt and sand stuck to the pads of my bare feet.
“They are called the Gods-Chosen. There have been six Gods-Chosens so far, but a seventh is coming soon. Shaya’s child.
A gift he gave to you after he saved you in the Wastelands. ”
“Very good, little one. That’s very… good.” His voice hitched.
I looked up at him. The moonlight reflected the line of wetness running down his left cheek, a river of silver. My brows drew together. That wasn’t sweat. “Baba, are you crying?”
He pulled me through another door, into his bedroom suite. There were no guards stationed there, either. That wasn’t just strange. That was wrong.
Suddenly, where there had been no fear before now surged forth a heaping dose of it. My heart thundered, and I crushed the crocodile doll to my small chest. “Baba?”
My father paused in the parlor outside his sleeping chamber and crouched so he was eye level with me. His green eyes shone brighter, outlined in more silvery tears. The terror intensified in my veins, as if burning oil had replaced my blood. Fathers weren’t supposed to cry.
He took my shoulders in his hands and looked me straight in the eye. “Listen to me carefully, Amunet. You are a Gods-Chosen.”
A bit of excitement wound through my fear. Gods-Chosens had magic. If I was a Gods-Chosen, that meant I would get to play with magic.
But before the giddiness could really take root, he continued, “This is my fault. I’m sorry, little one.
I thought there was more time, that I could figure something else out, but the river is drying up again, and I—” He cut himself off abruptly, heaving a sharp breath.
Again he tried to smile, but it wobbled as another rivulet fell down his cheek. “I need you to be brave, all right?”
My brows scrunched together as I nodded.
He took my hand again and led me to the large balcony outside his room. All expertly chiseled stone, made to look like a courtyard instead of merely a balcony, with clipped and sculpted topiaries. But none of that was new to me. I barely spared it a glance.
The smell registered before the image. Deep and metallic. Sticky beneath my bare feet.
Blood.
The crocodile fell out of my hands, landed in the blood with a dull, wet splat.
Bodies were piled high, at least five deep. Arms and legs stuck out of the pile awkwardly, twisting wrong. As if they’d been tossed there. And their faces… gods, their faces. All of them wrenched in unending screams, frozen in a state of abject terror.
A sob climbed up my throat. “Baba—”
“Sacrifices are necessary to reach him. You know that. But I needed a bigger one for this. Now, I need you to repeat after me, Amunet.” My father stood behind me, gripping my shoulders hard enough to make me wince. “I, Amunet Khada, offer up this gift to Shaya…”
I looked up at him. From this angle, he looked nothing like the father I knew. Looming over me. Face stoic and severe. Scary. “I don’t want to—”
“Say it.” His fingers tightened on my shoulders.
My eyes burned as I repeated, “I, Amunet Khada, offer up this gift to Shaya…”
“And pledge myself as your servant.”
“Please, Baba—ah!” He shoved me a step forward, my foot splashing the blood up my shin. Tears seared my cheeks. “And pledge myself as your servant.”
“I accept you into my mind, my body, my soul…”
I shook my head, but there was nowhere to go. My father was blocking the door, and the bodies… the bodies prevented me from running to the edge of the balcony. “I accept you into my mind, my body, my soul…”
“And vow to be yours until my dying breath.”
“No, Baba,” I sobbed. “I don’t want—”
He spun me around, fingers still clamped around my shoulders, and stared down at me with a fury that almost made his Khada-green eyes glow, his pearly white teeth as bright as a full moon within his black beard as he bared them at me. “Say. It.”
I flinched back in fear. In a voice so small, I couldn’t hear it over the rushing of my pulse, I whimpered, “And vow to be yours until my dying breath.”
An icy breeze shot through the gaps in the balustrade. It wrapped around me in a funnel of cold so intense, it burned. It stole my breath as shudders spread over me. Though I knew it was useless, I tried to run.
My father’s fingers were claws in my shoulders as he forced me to face the pile of bodies.
And the darkness that climbed over them.
My breaths shuddered in and out as I watched it crest the small hill of bodies. Like an inky plume of black smoke. It had no eyes, yet I felt as if it was looking right at me.
I screamed and struggled against the king’s grip. But he wouldn’t let go.
Cold unfurled from that darkness, emanated from it. I couldn’t feel my toes, my fingers.
“Stop fighting,” my father said in my ear. The harshness was gone. The words sounded like a plea. “You have to stop fighting, Amunet.”
But I couldn’t. I tried to dislodge his grip, screaming and screaming and screaming, even as the darkness slithered closer. Every hair on my body stood on end, my heart in a full-out sprint. But it didn’t matter how hard I resisted; I couldn’t break free.
I watched in horror as the smoke reached my feet and began to crawl up my legs, bare beneath my nightgown. Ice seeped into me, freezing my blood, my bones, choking off my screams. My father’s hands finally fell away, but the darkness held me frozen as it ate its way up my body.
It reached my mouth, which was still gaping open in a frozen shriek, and plunged inside.
I couldn’t see the balcony anymore. Couldn’t see anything at all. All around me was the darkness. It strangled me, stole my breath, my words, my tears. It funneled inside me until there wasn’t room for me anymore, until I was being crushed inside my own body.
No air, no space, only the cold, the dark, and a dull scratching at the back of my skull.
Help! Help! Hel—
A hand covered my mouth.
My eyes burst open.
Jasim’s dark eyes stared back at me, his fingers tight over my mouth. Sunlight shone through the leaves of the cypress tree Jasim had stitched me up under.
A scream clung to the back of my throat, mind stuck halfway between the nightmare and this world. I scrambled to find things in the present to ground myself in the here and now.
But then I realized Jasim’s body was on top of mine, covering me. And those dark eyes were wide, boring into mine. Imploring me to understand—
A low growl rumbled.
My muscles locked up. Jasim’s heart thundered where his chest pressed into mine. Slowly, staying as still as I could, I turned my head to the left.
The creature that approached us kept its snout low to the ground, nostrils flaring.
Its head looked like a leopard’s, complete with spotted fur and jagged teeth that dripped saliva, but its long body was fortified by a hide more akin to a crocodile’s.
The paws that thumped closer with each second belonged on a lion, and the curling, venomous tail at its back was a scorpion’s.
The growl that bubbled out of it was menacing and guttural.
A chimera.
I knew the solitary mismatched predators roamed the deserts far from the cities, but gods, I never thought I’d see one. The scream that had been stuck in my throat worked its way to my tongue.
Jasim’s hand tightened over my mouth, fingers biting into my flesh. My gaze jerked back to his. Though there was fear, his eyes were also filled with a command. Quiet.
I swallowed down the scream, felt it drop like a boulder into my stomach, and nodded.
Jasim cautiously removed his hand but remained on top of me. He ducked his head, so close his lips brushed my ear as he dared to whisper, “Scimitar. Left side.”
I lifted my left hand and reached for his blade.
“Slowly.” Jasim’s eyes darted between me and the chimera. It snarled, head dipping so low that its jaw brushed the earth.
Oh gods.
Moving with excruciating slowness, my hand settled against his ribs and slid down toward his hip.
The metal of the pommel brushed my fingertips and I clutched at it.
Jasim murmured, “When it attacks, roll to the side and get to your feet as quickly as possible. Make as much noise as you can. Aim your strikes at the tail first, then go for the head.”
I nodded. “And what are you going to do?”
He met my eyes, and I saw the decision there, suddenly understanding why he was on top of me. “You are the Gods-Chosen,” he whispered. “Your survival is all that matters.”