“Let her go!” screamed Malik. He lunged forward, but his magic spiked once more, ready to choke him at a moment’s notice.

“Perhaps I was not clear enough the other day.” Idir’s claws danced across the soft skin of Nadia’s neck. “If you fail the task I have given you, I will rip out this child’s throat. But you, Malik? If you fail me, you will live. And you will spend every minute of the rest of your life knowing your sister died when it was completely in your power to save her.”

“No!” screamed Nadia, tears running down her face. “Malik, help!”

“Do you understand?” asked Idir, his voice dangerously low.

Malik couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. “I understand.”

Idir’s lips pulled into a smile, and Malik had never hated anything or anyone more. “Then we are done here. Good luck with the Second Challenge, Champion Adil.”

This time, Malik did not fight as the Mark took over his skin. He kept staring at Nadia as long as he could, and even after he had returned to the stillness of the Azure Garden’s prayer room, the terror on her face still filled his eyes.

When Malik finally lifted his head, it was clear from the length of the candles that hours had passed. Only a few more remained until the Second Challenge. He forced himself to his feet, spirit blade in hand. Forget Solstasia, forget being a Champion—he needed to find Karina and end this now. Nadia had seemed physically unharmed, as Idir had promised, but clearly the obosom could not be trusted to ensure her safety for much longer.

But charging after Karina was as foolish a plan now as it had been on Solstasia Eve. Recklessness was more likely to get him killed than save anyone.

Unsure of what to do, Malik wiped his face and looked up at his patron deity. The sight of Adanko sparked a memory from half a lifetime ago, back when Papa had still believed he could turn Malik into a hunter like him.

“The fool who chases after hares will forever have an empty plate,” Papa had said as he’d shown a young Malik the proper way to loop a snare. “Our job is not to convince the hare there is no danger. Our job is to make the hare enter the trap even knowing it’s there.”

Malik looked down at his measly leather bag.

Until now, he’d been trying to chase after Karina and insert himself into her world. But she was the hare here, and as long as she had the advantage of a protected environment where she was used to being a target, he was never going to catch her.

What if he instead of chasing Princess Karina, he let her come to him?

Instead of fighting down his memories of the raid, Malik combed through them until he landed on the moment when Karina had listened to him, enraptured, as he’d described the various ways to fix a headache. All it had taken to grab her attention was a story.

Malik turned the bag over in his hands. “A long time ago, before your grandmother or even your grandmother’s grandmother was born, Hyena traveled through a town holding a bag not unlike the one I hold right now.”

The air around Malik warmed and stirred as the illusion came to life. Even though sweat poured down his brow, plans for the Second Challenge bloomed in his mind.

He had let the glamour of being a Champion distract him for too long. Even last night, he had let Karina’s moment of kindness stall his hand. But no more. He would not lose sight of his true purpose in Ziran any longer.

20

Karina

The Kestrel’s funeral was a quiet affair.

The only people present inside Ksar Alahari’s temple were the priestess running the service, Karina, Farid, and the council. The timing was unusual as well: the last hours of sunlight rather than a nighttime gathering. However, with the Second Challenge beginning at sundown and the priestesses insisting they could not put the service off any longer, now was when they met.

Her wakama match that morning was far from her mind as Karina watched the priestesses prepare her mother’s body for burial, dancing light from the lanterns casting flickering shadows over the cold room. She moved wordlessly when they called her forward and offered her a jar of thick clay that smelled vaguely of saffron.

Normally, family members took turns drawing symbols over the deceased’s body to grant them the gifts they’d need on their journey to the Place with Many Stars. But as Karina was the Kestrel’s only living relative, it was up to her to draw each one.

Dipping her fingers into the warm clay, Karina drew a symbol of peace on her mother’s right cheek and a symbol for wisdom on her left. Health on her forehead, strength on her chin. Karina paused before drawing the symbol for serenity. Ten years before, the Kestrel had closed her large hand over Karina’s tiny one and held her up so she could draw that same symbol on Hanane’s chest.

Karina all but threw the jar at the priestess when she was finished. She raced back to her seat, pretending she did not see Farid’s glassy eyes or Grand Vizier Jeneba wiping tears from her cheeks.

There was no reason for Karina to be upset as none of this was permanent. In a few days, she and the Kestrel would laugh together about this like mothers and daughters were meant to do.

Afterward, the council swore that once Solstasia was over, they would hold the full funeral the Kestrel deserved, and Karina simply nodded. One by one they left the room until it was just her and Farid with her mother’s corpse. Karina’s wounds pulsed with pain, but they were dull and distant, like everything else around her.

Farid stared at the Kestrel’s white shroud. His mourning garb was loose on his body, bright like bones left out too long in the desert sun.

“I knew your mother better than I knew my own,” whispered Farid, and Karina snapped to attention. She needed less than one hand to count the number of times Farid had brought up his late parents of his own free will. All she knew was they had been diplomats and close friends of her parents, and that they had perished in a bandit attack when Farid was seven years old.

“Do you know what your mother told me the day I arrived at the palace?”

Karina shook her head. Her parents had taken Farid in as a ward long before she had been born; to her, Ksar Alahari without Farid in it was impossible to imagine.

He sighed. “She told me that the people we lose never truly leave, but that only we get to define how they stay.”

An ugly wisp of jealousy flooded Karina. After Baba and Hanane’s death, her mother hadn’t comforted her in a similar way—or in any way. The posthumous rejection stung, but the shame that followed it was worse. What kind of daughter was she to resent her mother at her own funeral?

Farid pressed his palms against his eyes. “It never ends, does it?” He pulled his hands away and turned to her. “Karina, you could have died.”

“No one dies from wakama, Farid,” she reassured him. “If they did, we wouldn’t let children play it.”

“Last night when you snuck out without a guard, you could have died!” Farid’s voice cracked, echoing through the stone room. “I’ve already lost everybody I love. What am I supposed to do if I lose you too?”

He ran his hands through his dark chestnut hair. For all his power and status, Farid was simply a person who had lost so many he held dear.

Just like her.

Karina began to reach for him and paused, unsure of what to say. The Life Champion, that boy Adil, had comforted her so easily during the raid; she tried to adopt a similar tone as he had, though she was still too angry at his lies to dwell on him for long.

“I promise you I’m not going anywhere any time soon.” She forced herself to grin, despite the pain. “Besides, I’m so annoying that I’m sure when I arrive at the Place with Many Stars, the Great Mother is going to send me back rather than put up with me.”

Farid’s mouth twitched toward a smile, but he smoothed it into the strict guardian expression Karina knew so well. “That is highly unlikely. But either way, this complete disregard for your own safety can’t continue.”

“Because I’m the last Alahari. I know.” The last Alahari for now.

“That’s not it.” Farid paused, as if the words he wanted to say were causing him physical pain. “A part of me died the moment Hanane did. I’ve spent every second since wondering what I could have said or done differently when I thought we’d still have more time together. Not a day goes by when I don’t hear her voice in my head like—like—”

“—like she’s still here,” Karina finished.

Farid nodded. “Like she’s still here.” He shook his head and sighed. “I’ve buried my parents, Hanane, your father, your mother—don’t make me bury you too.”

This was something they’d never talked about before. The moment felt alarmingly fragile, as though acknowledging its existence would shatter it completely.

“She loved you.” It was the only thing Karina could think to say. “Maybe not in the way you wanted or needed but . . . in her own way. She loved you.”