Leila recovered first, hauling Malik to his feet. This time, he didn’t fight as she tugged him through a dilapidated door leading out of the kitchen. As they burst into the street, they were engulfed in a flood of light.

Bahia’s Comet blazed in the western corner of the sky with the intensity of a small sun, so bright that Malik could not gaze directly at it without squinting. The comet seemed bone white at first glance, but further appraisal revealed trails of blue, purple, and green wisping off the comet’s tail and disappearing into the star-studded night. Everyone in the street had their faces turned heavenward, light dancing across their bodies in waves. In that moment, every person in Ziran was connected by something that had existed for eons before any of them had been born, and Malik felt the urge to cry once more that Nadia wasn’t there to see it.

He was going to free her. He swore it in the name of the Great Mother and the comet soaring overhead.

But how?

It wasn’t until Malik’s eyes adjusted to the brightness that he realized they weren’t in the neighborhood they had entered the house from. Unlike the street before, this one seemed opulent, with flowering gardens and strong walls on all sides. A house that could disappear and reappear wherever it wished to be was the least strange thing that had happened that day, yet Malik was still shocked.

He angled himself toward the glittering outline of Ksar Alahari. Surely Princess Karina was there right now doing whatever princesses did while other people suffered. The Mark scurried to his palm and switched into its blade form, heavy and waiting.

“Where are you going?” demanded Leila, wrapping her hand around Malik’s arm as he stepped away.

“I have to find the princess.” Ksar Alahari was so close. If he left now he’d surely arrive by dawn.

“So you’re just going to walk up to the palace with a knife in your hands? The guards will skewer you with arrows before you even reach the gates.”

“But I have to do something!”

“You won’t be doing anything if you get yourself killed!” Leila dragged Malik into a side alley, where they crouched behind a pile of firewood. “Options. What are our options?”

“Go to Ksar Alahari,” he suggested.

“No one just goes to Ksar Alahari, Malik.”

“Fine. Poison?”

“How are you going to poison her if you can’t get into the palace to begin with?” snapped Leila, and Malik fought the urge to ask if she had a plan or was just going to keep shooting down his.

“Maybe I could ambush her at the Opening Ceremony?”

“But there will be people everywhere. How would you pull it off without getting caught?”

The spirit blade sank into his skin, and Malik put his head in his hands. There was an answer here; there had to be. Idir wouldn’t waste his time asking for a task Malik couldn’t accomplish . . . would he?

A crowd of purple-clad people passed by the alley, and Malik glanced at their palms—they were all Life-Aligned, same as him. This must be the Life portion of Temple Way, which meant these people were heading to the Choosing Ceremony. Even now as Malik’s world crumbled to ash, the people of Ziran were finding out who would get the honor of fighting for their Alignments and living at Ksar Alahari for the next week.

Malik bolted upright. The Champions would be housed at Ksar Alahari for the duration of Solstasia.

They’d be living with Princess Karina.

Malik’s eyes traced the familiar lines of the Life-Aligned emblem etched into his palm. The role of Champion was so sacred among the Zirani that not even the sultana could revoke the title once given. If he became a Champion, he’d be living within a stone’s throw of Princess Karina for the rest of Solstasia. Nothing else would get him so close to the princess so quickly.

And once he was near Princess Karina, it would be easy to find an opportunity to summon his spirit blade, and let the weapon do what it had been created to do.

Malik shook his head. No, this was absurd. There was no way that he would ever be named a Champion, not when there were thousands of people in Ziran more suited to the task and no Eshrans had been chosen for hundreds of years.

Yet what other choice did he have? Malik thought and thought, but no other path seemed as clear as this one.

Somehow, he had to get Life Priestess to choose him as a Champion. But before that, he needed to get to Life Temple.

“Where are we going?” yelled Leila as Malik tugged her out of the alley. It was an odd feeling, him leading and her following for once.

“Just trust me!”

Malik and Leila slipped into the crowd, and if people noticed that Leila was not Life-Aligned, they seemed too excited to mind. His sister’s vise grip on his arm didn’t lessen as they followed the masses into the plaza before Life Temple.

Images of Adanko adorned every altar and doorstep, and her haunting eyes seemed to bore into Malik, as if she already knew and disapproved of the small plan growing in his mind.

A rustling sound came from overhead. The grim folk had returned—not in ones or twos but dozens upon dozens, more than Malik had ever seen together at one time. They paraded through the sky in a procession to match the one below. And for once, Malik was too awed to be scared. Legends had told of people coming into abnormal abilities after contact with the supernatural; had meeting Idir strengthened his ability to see the grim folk?

“Do you see that?” he asked Leila, buoyed by an unlikely hope that died when she said, “See what?”

Disappointment left a bitter taste in his mouth. If only there were some way to show his sister exactly how much magic surrounded them at all times, let her glimpse the world the way he saw it. At this thought, his powers twisted within him, drowning out his other senses. It was an itch that demanded release, but Malik did not know how to relieve the burn. He flexed and unflexed his fingers, willing something to happen. Nothing did.

They reached the Life Temple all too soon. The Life Pavilion had been modeled after the spiral that symbolized their Alignment, and it was in this spiral pattern that the crowd stood. A stone statue of Adanko towered over everyone, her long ears turned toward Bahia’s Comet.

The ceremony was already well under way, with thousands of voices singing together in a tune Malik knew well. It was the same one the Life-Aligned sang during weekly temple services, and the familiarity of the melody was welcome after the horrors of Malik’s day. On the dais in front of the temple, Life Priestess stepped forward, her bowed head shaved and body swathed in robes of deep purple. A large white hare was draped across her shoulders like a shawl, and it peered curiously at the audience.

Life Priestess threw her head back and raised her hands to the sky.

“Oh, blessed Adanko, you born of life and patron of all those who walk the path of the living and the righteous, honored are we to gather tonight in your holy presence! Dearest patron, bless us with your wisdom so that we may choose the Champion who can best show the world your glory and usher us into a new era!”

The chorus grew as loud as a tsunami, and Life Priestess began to dance in time to the song, weaving in and out of the plumes of smoke that rose from the base of Adanko’s statue.

“Speak to me, my patron! Reveal to me the Champion you have chosen!”

Malik locked eyes with the goddess’s stone facade. A priestess could be convinced and needled, bribed and negotiated with, but no one could force her choice for Champion.

No one except a goddess herself.

If becoming a Champion was the only way to get close to Princess Karina, then Malik would make himself a Champion.

The magic Malik had spent so long denying climbed to the surface, burning through every inch of his being. He clapped a hand to his mouth as tears streamed unbidden down his face. After so many years of pushing his magic down into the darkest parts of himself, Malik didn’t know what to do now that it lay within his grasp.

“Malik? What’s the matter?” Leila crouched beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s me,” Malik whispered, and even as the ceremony raged on, the air around him seemed to grow thicker, more real.

“What?” asked Leila.

“It’s me. The Champion. I’m—Adanko is going to choose me,” he said. The same ethereal blue light that had bathed Nyeni and Idir now bathed Malik, though no one but him could see it.

“Speak to me, Adanko! Speak to me!” called Life Priestess, her voice buoyed by the chorus surrounding her.

“It’s me. The Champion is me! Adanko has chosen me as her Champion!”