Chapter Fifty-Seven Amunet
FIFTY-SEVEN AMUNET
My qareen led me through the massive citadel. Apparently, when Athar had plopped me in the Mirror Realm, my double had also been torn from wherever her home was in here, and she’d spent the hours between her arrival and mine wandering in confusion. To my benefit.
We strode through rooms of immaculate white and nauseating gold.
Bedrooms and sitting rooms and libraries.
At the end of a corridor, a set of stairs yawned before us.
My sandals slapped against them as we descended into another open space.
There was no mistaking the opulence for anything other than an entrance hall, meant for receiving guests and awing them.
The front double doors were massive, decorated with intricate images of the Seven Monarchs.
“This is where I found you,” my qareen said with a gesture to the tiled floor. “You looked so helpless, I couldn’t possibly leave you there, so I carried you upstairs.”
“I’m not helpless,” I said sharply.
The girl flinched and nodded quickly. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just—we can all be helpless sometimes, can’t we? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Her eyes darted to mine and away fretfully before she opened another door. Her smile was shy. “It’s in here.”
Guilt pinched my chest. I hadn’t meant to snap at her.
The physical exhaustion of Dead Man’s Forest had turned into a soul-deep exhaustion.
Nearly twenty years spent proving myself.
Twenty years without a restful sleep. Twenty years doing whatever Shaya wanted of me.
Prayers, sacrifices, punishments. Yet it still wasn’t enough, and now here I was, making nice with what was supposed to be my evil double.
Except it was obvious to me now that I was the evil one between us.
No wonder Jasim had left.
I entered the room. And froze.
We were in some sort of gallery. But instead of paintings or sculptures, the walls were inlaid with plaques of iron. Gold filigree outlined silhouettes in the metal, the bright golden threads of light strange against the darkness of the space.
“Is this what you were looking for?” my qareen asked.
I peered closer.
The first panel was a battle scene. Soldiers firing arrows and slashing scimitars while balls of fire rained from the sky.
A chaotic vision. The next panel depicted victory, a woman with a leaf for an eye patch standing atop a pile of bodies.
Squinting, I could just make out pointed ears on some of those bodies.
A chill went through me as I suddenly understood.
It was the defeat of the jinn. And their descendants. Which meant the woman was Ketet.
This was the War of the Ancients.
I skipped over a few panels until I found him.
Shaya looked just like my obsidian candle, save those glittering, golden eyes. Slitted like a cat’s. His lips were curved in a sob, fangs glinting from where he rested on his knees at Ketet’s feet. Begging.
Disgust twisted my stomach, and I took a step back. The image was… This was blasphemy. Shaya did not beg. Certainly not from Ketet. No, he raged. He fought.
In the next panel, Shaya was slumped against a set of doors engraved with bodies crawling over each other in writhing chaos.
The Gate to the Underworld. Shaya pounded his fists against it.
Ketet stood on the other side with a man behind her.
He had suns for eyes, the gold filigree somehow brighter here than anywhere else. Phadar.
This was Shaya’s imprisonment.
My instincts—everything I’d ever been taught—ordered me to turn away. To not dishonor my father by looking a second more at this depiction. Sad, beaten, weeping. Helpless.
This was not right. This was not Shaya.
And yet, I couldn’t look away.
He looked so… human. I loved my father. Of course I did. But he was a god. No matter how much he cared for me, looked after me, no matter how much I prayed to him, he was still other. But this image, this heartbreak, I understood. Very well.
Reaching up, I smoothed my fingers over Shaya’s face, the bodies in the Gate, Ketet’s braids. My fingertips sparked with power as I brushed Phadar’s chest.
I brought my fingertip to a stop, resting it on the pendant that hung against his sternum. My eyes darted back to Shaya, half expecting him to have moved. To smile or to nod. He did neither.
But I didn’t need him to.
I studied the pendant closer. It was large—really more of an amulet. On its surface, gold outlined a skull. Matching the knobs on the Gate to the Underworld.
See why you were chosen.
An incredulous laugh huffed out of me. Of course!
My enemies had always speculated that Shaya hadn’t borne a child to save Ashorah but rather as a tool to achieve his freedom.
Sara had said as much in Reeda. I’d always told myself that I didn’t care one way or the other what Shaya wanted to do with the world.
Didn’t care if he wanted me to save it or throw wide his prison doors. And I’d meant it.
This amulet was the key to opening the Gate, to letting Shaya walk free once more. He’d be beside me. No more faint wisps of a breeze. No more candles or sacrifices at temples. I’d be able to reach out and touch him. See his proud smiles. Feel my father’s love.
And the creatures he’d been forced to abandon would be under his command once more.
The Shifters who’d dared invade my home, who’d tried to kill me in Dead Man’s Forest. The jinn-descended princes who’d made me grovel for sanctuary, who’d thrown me into that horrible room, imprisoned me just like Shaya.
My father would bring them all to their knees.
I grinned. “Yes,” I told my qareen. “This is exactly what I was looking for.”