Chapter 36 #2
“Yes! I’m supposed to turn the spindle over to the peris. Not give it to the physical manifestation of ambition!”
Raksh rolled his eyes but then stepped closer. Crimson blazed in his gaze, pinning me where I stood.
“You promised that I could make you a legend,” he reminded, and it was a threat and an oath all in one.
“I do not want that,” he added, jerking his head toward the possessed Dalila.
“Fate means nothing to me, Amina. I want someone who rips apart the story laid out for them and writes their own. So go defeat her and become that person.”
I glanced back at the beach, remembering how easily Lab had overpowered me. Majed was now so close that he waved an arm in greeting, no doubt relieved to see who he believed was Dalila. “I don’t know how.”
“Try providing a distraction.”
“A distraction?”
“You threw me to that marid beast back in Socotra ordering me to be one. Consider this repaying the favor.”
By the time I had turned back to protest, Raksh had vanished, melting into the early dawn gloom.
A distraction. Now if I had any idea how to accomplish that.
I headed for the beach, feeling as exposed as I had before the griffins.
I was better armed, but with blades and a stolen spear I didn’t want to turn on Dalila’s fragile mortal body.
The sand crunched beneath my sandals, sounding terribly loud.
Twenty years telling you to be more discreet and you’ve yet to stop bellowing like a hit bull.
Dalila’s charge as we were led into the dungeons returned to me, the words making my chest ache.
God, I hoped my friend survived this. But I leaned into the sentiment; Lab did not think highly of my intelligence and a charging bull was as good a distraction as any.
“Majed, get back!” I screamed, rushing toward the shore. “It is not truly her!”
Majed startled so badly, he nearly tumbled from the skiff. I watched him shade his eyes, searching my way.
Lab glanced back but didn’t falter, twisting Dalila’s face into a mask of terror. “Come quickly!” she cried to the men. “Majed, please! She’s lost her mind! She’s having delusions!”
As I drew nearer, I did not doubt which of us made for a more convincing case. Dalila and I were both covered in blood, but I was rushing across the sand with supernatural speed and flashing weapons while she begged for assistance.
Ah, well, the time for such discretion had passed. I hurled the spear, striking the patch of wet sand between Lab and the approaching boats. It pierced the ground hard enough to bury half its shaft in the sand, the rest vibrating madly.
Now Lab did jump, spinning around with a mix of incredulity and outrage.
“Get away from my crew,” I snarled.
“Amina?” Majed was close enough to gasp my name. “What are you doing?”
“Stay where you are!” I commanded. “That isn’t Dalila.”
Lab met my stare with Dalila’s gaze and the hurt she pulled on was hauntingly familiar. “At least you’re finally admitting it,” she said bitterly. “That I’m not one of your crew, I never was.”
I tried not to flinch. “You’re not Dalila.”
“No?” Her eyes blazed. “And how would you know? What do you know of me? Of the things I desire? Have you ever asked?”
“I know the real Dalila wouldn’t be here luring the rest of the crew to their deaths. Because she is one of us. She is family, she is my sister—” My voice broke. “And I’m so terribly sorry if I ever made you doubt that.”
Majed had gestured for the other skiffs to stay back. But because he was also a stubborn old fool who didn’t listen, his own boat was still closing in.
“You’re both alive,” he greeted, relief in his voice. “Thank the Most High! Now, what in the devil is going on? Why are you throwing spears at one another?”
“Because the queen is possessing her,” I explained, nodding at the point of the spindle poking out of Dalila’s gown. “She’s in the spindle. We need to take it from her.”
Claiming that a household tool was possessing someone did indeed sound like the type of thing a person suffering delusions would claim, and no matter our experience with the otherworldly bizarre, Majed did pause.
After all, had I not confided to him that I was having visions, that I didn’t feel myself?
Lab pounced upon his uncertainty. “Do you see what I mean? She just set the palace gardens ablaze and slaughtered a dozen innocent Khatti Ugalans, claiming they were goats!”
“Don’t listen to her,” I warned my navigator, resisting the urge to glance around the beach. Where was Raksh?
“Majed, please!” Lab raised her hands in frustrated beseeching. “The queen and her men will be here any minute, and if they catch us, they’re going to execute her. We can still escape, but you know as well as I do that we cannot drag Amina away by ourselves. She is too strong. We need more men.”
Majed glanced between us and then held out his hand. “Why don’t you give me the spindle and then we’ll talk?”
Relief lit Dalila’s face. “An excellent idea.”
“No, don’t!” I cried as Masjid pushed his pole back into the water.
But Lab clearly hadn’t intended to give Majed the spindle: she just needed him closer. With the distance between them suddenly shortened, she twirled her fingers as though winding a thread.
My navigator was yanked from his boat. Majed cried out in surprise as he tumbled into the water. He’d no sooner resurfaced than he was dragged through the rocky surf as though a struggling fish on a line and thrown at Lab’s feet, bloodied and gasping for air.
“Majed!” I tried to rush forward but got barely two paces when I stumbled, my feet snarled from beneath me. Horrified, I glanced down, expecting to find my body again seized by the queen.
But it wasn’t Lab’s magic slowing me down.
It was . . . shadows? I stared, astonished as patches of ebony gloom flooded the beach, grasping and clawing like a pack of hounds.
Shadows darted from their surroundings, separating from the rocks and debris that had cast them, growing and expanding like a hungry swarm.
They released their grip on my feet and then swept past, sending a cool wave of jittery magic coursing through my body.
Familiar magic. In heartbeats, the beach was entirely covered in obscuring shade, as though dusk had fallen, as though an eclipse had veiled the sun.
Only then did their master emerge.
“Hello, vengeance,” Raksh crooned, smoky mist churning around his hips. He wore his human guise, but his eyes were crimson as rubies and locked entirely on the queen. “I did wonder if one of us might be at your warped core.”
Lab immediately darted a hand into her garments, but the spray of glittering sand she tried to hurl—similar to that which she’d thrown when they first met—barely left her fingers before it was snatched by the gloom.
Raksh laughed, a vicious sound. “No, I am afraid that trick no longer works. You were fast, I grant you that. I suppose such speed and paranoia are the purview of one still young.” He clucked his tongue.
“But my wife has already set to tearing into your fabrications and she was ever so kind as to return me to myself.”
He drew nearer to her and Lab hauled Majed to his feet, pressing one of Dalila’s knives to his throat.
“Come no closer,” she warned.
“Why?” Raksh mocked. “Because you might cut the navigator’s throat?
My bond is not with him.” He kept walking, shadows rippling at his feet.
“I’ll confess I was curious if I might see the appeal of your aspect.
All those days and nights ripped apart at your hands .
. . I thought, perhaps when I finally have her, I’ll taste it.
I’ll recognize it: that desire for revenge.
” He tilted his head, considering. “But I do not. It still seems a waste. However, you are standing in the way of my ambition and that’s a very dangerous place to be. ”
In my time with Raksh, I’d seen a great many versions of him: the selfish coward who stole a boat and doomed the rest of us, the careless demon who’d cost Asif his soul over a jest, the spirit who unerringly led me to Dunya and lucky fortunes, the eager lover who anticipated and fed each desire before it was even fully formed in my mind.
But this . . . this was the creature whose name had been forgotten before my civilization arose.
The one who clapped his hands and drove a tavern to gruesome madness, who was exercising magic I’d never before seen.
Who hungered for the lost eons when he made legends and had glimpsed in me an opportunity that he’d happily kill others to seize.
Raksh took another careless step toward Majed and Lab.
“Don’t!” I cried. Lab had the knife pressed hard enough against Majed’s skin to draw a thin line of blood. “Raksh, please! There must be another way.”
Lab took advantage of our disagreement.
“You are a fool to partner with one of them,” she warned Raksh. “She’ll use you to save her people, then pitch you off her ship yet again. You must know how capricious humans are.”
“Oh, no doubt. It is why I enjoy them so. That impulsiveness, that unpredictability. You believe you know where their story is headed and then just like that . . .” His eyes slid to Majed. “Another hero emerges.”
Heedless of the knife at his throat, Majed shuddered. His eyes went wide with shock, confusion . . . and then grim resolve as whatever suggestion Raksh had clearly just fed him fell into place.
No! But before Lab could notice, before I could stop him, Majed moved.
With the same clever fingers that had swiped a treasure off the automaton—with the skills Dalila herself had no doubt taught him long ago—he plucked the spindle from Lab’s pocket.
The queen must have been tied to it for she noticed instantly, roaring in rage and reaching out to seize the spindle back.