Chapter Sixty Samira
SIXTY SAMIRA
Mere seconds later, sandaled feet slapped through the archway. Peering around Keir’s shoulder, all I could make out were filth-encrusted toes poking out beneath a plain dress. A girl.
Adrenaline surged through me. It was difficult to make out her features beneath what appeared to be layers of grime. Her head was shaved to mere bristles, and an odor drifted across the room, so horrible it managed to span the several feet between us. It smelled like… feces?
Was this my qareen?
“Forgive the intrusion,” she said in a sweet, polished, proper voice. “I seem to have gotten lost. You are… Kaldfolk, yes? Is this Kaldfold?”
If Keir responded, I couldn’t hear him over the rushing in my ears. I knew that voice. Knew it better than my own. It was a voice I never thought I’d hear again. It felt like a trick. Work of the jinn, maybe.
But then Keir shifted to the side, and I couldn’t deny the evidence before my eyes.
Queen Amunet Khada’s clear emerald eyes were bright as ever, if a little unsure as she took in the hulking Kald in front of me.
A shackle hung from her wrist, and streaks of filth covered every visible inch of her skin.
There was something different about her, more than the signs of rough treatment on her body.
There was a gleam in her gaze that hadn’t been there before, a fidgeting in her stance, a hollowness to her cheeks that seemed more than just hunger.
Then her Khada-green eyes moved from Keir to me, darting from my ear-length hair to the runes across my forehead.
Her shapely brows pulled together. “You’re Ashoran,” she said with surprise, her eyes flitting between me and Keir as if trying to explain to herself what an Ashoran might be doing with a Kald.
A ringing started in my ears.
She didn’t recognize me.
I had spent sixteen years at her side. I had tended to her every whim. Dressed her. Bathed her. Fed her. I had received scars at her hands—my chest ached even now from renewing the X she’d given me. I’d traded my very life for hers.
And she didn’t have a clue who I was. It was written all over her confused, pretty face.
She held out her hands in front of her, flexing her fingers. “My power feels stronger. Like it… knows you.” The queen’s gaze on me was curious. Calculating.
Conditioning ordered me to curtsy. Duck my head and clasp my hands in front of me. Exclaim what a relief it was to see her.
But as the ringing faded, a fire breathed to life in my gut.
She was here. Somehow, for this last leg of the Merging, she was here. She could finish this. She could find Rade. She could charm Keir. She could get rid of the Shroud. She could save everyone.
The Gods-Chosen had stepped into the story at exactly the right moment.
I wasn’t needed anymore. The burden I’d been bearing all these weeks in Kaldfold was gone. I should be rejoicing. I waited for the ecstasy of relief to sweep over me.
Instead, the fire bloomed larger in my stomach, my heart pounding like a fist on a door.
“What are you doing here?” I said. My grip was so tight on Keir’s arm, I could feel the give of his skin under my nails, but he didn’t pull away.
Amunet’s eyes narrowed to slits, and she came a few steps closer. “Do I know you?”
I waited breathlessly, this unnamed emotion blazing through me.
But I could name it. The heat in my gut, the tight bands squeezing my heart even as my heart beat against them. I was angry.
I’d given so much for this girl. More than just this life, I’d sacrificed my afterlife.
The gods had turned their backs on me because of the choices I’d made.
Keir despised me, the Kaldfolk would curse me.
All for her. And she couldn’t even bother to remember my face?
She got to just waltz in at the very end and take all the credit?
Take my friends, my accomplishments—and it was an accomplishment that I’d made it this far.
I had earned the right to live as long as I had. Had earned every breath I took.
The world had always been unfair. In Khada Palace, I had found a way to live with that reality. Just keep my head down, obey, go through the motions, don’t say a word. Pretend everything was fine. No, more than that, pretend to be happy. Grateful.
But right now, standing here, I could no longer pretend. Could no longer bear it at all.
Amunet crouched at the edge of the pool and studied me. Even with Keir between us, I locked eyes with the Gods-Chosen. I refused to be the first to break.
Her face went slack, as if she’d been hit. “You.”
“Me,” I whispered.
Her eyes flicked from me to Keir. Taking in his posture, his protective stance, his stare.
And she laughed. “Incredible. I knew the Kaldfolk had taken you, but I’d assumed you’d only last a few days in their captivity.
It seems you exceeded my expectations.” She laughed again.
A sound I used to compare to birdsong. Now it grated.
Keir’s lips parted as he suddenly understood. “You’re the Gods—”
There was a yank that wrenched Keir’s arm from my grip, then a splash. Between one blink and the next, Keir disappeared underwater.
“Keir!” I screamed, peering into the deep blue, but it was impossible to see through the water. “Keir!”
The water exploded upward, and Keir went flying out of the pool. I heard something crack when he crashed down to the gold floor. He didn’t move.
I swam to the steps leading out of the pool.
A creature rose up from the depths, blocking my path, its massive form shedding water. It turned its yellow eyes on me. And its face…
It was Keir’s. But also, not Keir’s. His eyes were feral, and his lips curled maniacally at the corners. Half the creature’s body was a charred black. Not just burned but scorched.
It was Keir’s qareen, already lunging across the water toward me.
There was no use fleeing. I held perfectly still as he came within inches of me, rising up to his full height, water cascading off his bare, scorched torso.
He ducked his head into my neck just as Keir had done at the Lunar Feast, some of his skin flaking off, and drew a deep breath. He smiled against me.
I clenched my jaw as I fought every instinct that screamed at me to run. I wouldn’t be fast enough and would probably only earn this creature’s fury.
His unbound hair swung forward and curtained us off so all I could see was his deformed face as he pressed me against the pool wall, and when I felt the hard heat of him, it became startlingly apparent that he was naked beneath the water.
His large hands came up to my face, and he tilted my head as far back as it would go. His wild eyes sparkled eagerly as he put his nose to my forehead and inhaled. A moan rumbled out of him.
Then he ran his tongue over my runes, from right temple to left.
My nose curled even as my body’s trembling intensified.
He dragged his nose down my cheek and neck until he landed at my shoulder. Where the wound from Bain’s attack was. Keir’s qareen yanked my dress strap aside, running his fingers over the spot. He took another deep inhale. “Mine,” he purred—and then bit down.
I screamed as pain ricocheted down my arm and blood spilled over. He’d used his bear teeth, and they stabbed straight through my flesh. I slapped and shoved at him, but he was immovable. He bit down harder, and my eyes bulged.
A roar erupted behind him.
Keir’s qareen looked up sharply, my blood trickling down his chin.
It was Keir, one arm wrapped gingerly around his abdomen. He was favoring his right leg, and I knew he had to be in pain. But his face was twisted into a look of pure rage, his dagger aloft. Amunet had moved off to the side, inching her way around the pool and out of the qareen’s line of sight.
The qareen stepped in front of me and snarled at Keir. “Mine.”
“No,” he snarled right back, more animal than man. Keir hurled the dagger. It whistled through the air toward the qareen’s heart, but the qareen moved at the last second, and it embedded itself in the creature’s shoulder.
He let out an enraged roar as black blood dribbled out.
“Run!” Keir shouted at me before his bear form tore out of him with another roar. The qareen yanked out the dagger and let it clatter on the floor beside my head. Then he swam fast as an arrow toward Keir.
I grabbed the discarded dagger and heaved myself out of the pool—
The cord around my sternum wrenched me back, and I fell with a splash, water shooting up my nose. I broke the surface, sputtering. My chest ached from how hard the cord had pulled.
“What’s wrong with you?” Amunet shouted, eyes darting from me to the qareen, though she made no move to help Keir.
I didn’t bother answering her. The Gods-Chosen’s arrival had been a large enough distraction to ignore the pull, but now it was yanking at me with renewed vigor. Demanding. It wanted me to go through that waterfall, and it wanted me to do it now.
Keir lunged, claws extended and teeth snapping, and ripped a chunk out of the qareen’s abdomen in a spray of black blood. Its scream rattled the ceiling. In the next blink, there were two bears wrestling on the side of the pool. Blood—black and red—splattered the wall.
Keir needed my help. I wanted to help—
Now! that pull ordered.
I turned my back on Keir and lurched through the waterfall.