Chapter Sixty-Four Amunet
SIXTY-FOUR AMUNET
I was in a cage. It rocked and jostled hard, creaking loudly, and with each lurch, my forehead smacked into the bars. But I was too weak to stop it.
A dull ache throbbed at the side of my neck. I reached up to feel it—
My hands pulled short. Wrists shackled. A glance down proved my ankles were, too.
Torches flared beside me, and I squinted to make out red-and-yellow sashes. I knew those colors.
The Dry Lands.
Immediately following that was Jasim.
He was dead. He’d come back for me. He hadn’t abandoned me, even after all I’d said, all I’d done. He’d loved me. And now he was dead.
The sorrow was crippling. Heart shredding like paper. King Zaid had been right; Jasim was all I had. And Sen Almassi had taken him from me.
I turned my head to see through the bars at the rear of my cage.
The granite Lotus River dam stood out starkly against the tan, barren landscape. Behind me by a mile or two. Which meant I was already deep in the Dry Lands. To the left of the dam, on the horizon, the sun was setting, painting the sky in a deep bloodred.
The month was over. My birthday was ending.
A ripple flowed over me, stirring my clothes, brushing the top of my shaved head. I recognized it. It was out there, like a beacon in the distance.
My power.
Seeping away like a receding tide. Growing smaller and smaller.
Pulled away by that gods-damn servant. I could still feel it, but barely, like a single hair tickling the skin of my arm. When it should have been an explosion, an overwhelming surge.
Rage filled me, burning like venom in my veins. That bitch had stolen it from me. Power that Shaya needed, that was my birthright, that I had waited twenty fucking years for, that Jasim had died for.
Though my limbs felt heavy, I lifted my arm and banged on one of the bars with my manacle. It gave a resounding clang. “Hey,” I croaked through dry lips. “Hey!”
A woman pulled up alongside me on a camel. She was dressed in a deep red breast wrap and skirt that didn’t even reach her knees. A thin chain of silver was wrapped around her head, and a teardrop pendant rested against her forehead. She lifted an eyebrow.
“Release me,” I ordered.
The woman’s lips twitched in amusement, but she didn’t respond.
My rage flared hotter. I wrapped my fingers around the bars, pressing my sweaty face to them, and bared my teeth. “Release me now. Or I will bring the might of Shaya down on you and your people.”
The woman snorted. “Oh, Prince Sen’s going to have fun with you.” Then she dug her heels into the camel’s side and cantered away.
“Get back here!” I yelled. “Let me go! Hey!” But no one looked my way. Utterly ignored my orders and banging.
The last of my energy filtered away, and I slumped back in my cage.
But my fury didn’t abate. Jasim had been good.
Loyal. Compassionate when no one else thought me deserving of it.
And because of that, he’d died. All that goodness, and for what?
A grisly death in a trickster’s forest with no one to offer him a proper burial.
Left to the insects and vultures to pick apart.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the onslaught of horrific images.
That light feeling that had bloomed so freely just hours ago withered and died, rotted until not even a seed of it remained.
If I weren’t caged, I would’ve torn through Sen’s forces with my teeth before going after the slave girl so I could drain every last drop of her blood.
No matter. I retreated into that quiet place inside myself that had allowed me to time my meals in Anwar’s cell down to the second.
I could be patient if I had to be. And when Sen made the mistake of opening my cage, he’d find me waiting for him like a coiled cobra.
When I struck, not a single person would be left to call the Dry Lands home.