“Don’t listen to him, he’s just trying to protect me! I came to fetch my brother, and I saw him fighting with Driss. I tried to stop them, but I pushed him too hard and he fell.” She turned to Tunde, the only other person who had seen what really happened. “Tell them, Tunde. Tell them it was me.”

Tunde looked between the two siblings, and the shock and confusion on his face shifted into resignation.

“It was her. Driss attacked first, but she was the one who pushed him over the edge.”

The world slowed to a halt as the soldiers restrained Leila. Life Priestess tried to pull Malik away, but he fought. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t having another sister ripped away from him.

“Don’t touch her!” he screamed. “She didn’t do it—it was me!”

Leila gave Malik one last look as the guards dragged her in one direction and Life Priestess hauled him in another. She mouthed two words to him in Darajat, two words only he in all of Ksar Alahari would understand.

Save her.

It turned out that not even the death of a Champion was going to derail this Final Challenge.

Sun Temple had petitioned that the challenge be postponed out of respect for their loss, but the palace had refused. Thus, Malik found himself back in the stadium once more, this time with only Tunde by his side as thousands of people screamed their names. The only section of the stands lacking in spectators was the Sun-Aligned, their empty seats louder than their cheers would have been.

Ksar Alahari had truly outdone itself for the Final Challenge. In the three days since the wakama tournament, they had constructed a sandstone maze in the middle of the stadium. The maze’s walls loomed two stories high, and the mist that curled from its entrance was ice-cold despite the scorching heat. Even Bahia’s Comet was dulled in the shadow of this ominous structure.

Despite the audience’s excitement, the atmosphere outside the maze was much more subdued. Karina’s smile was muted and her movements slow, likely from the same exhaustion that had plagued Malik since the necropolis. Karina looked between him and Tunde with a grimace, Driss’s absence heavy in the air.

Had Driss’s family retrieved his body? Had the guards already executed Leila for a death Malik had caused? These questions and millions more crowded Malik’s mind, and he folded each one deep inside himself even as tendrils of panic curled up his throat.

Now was not the time to break down over killing Driss. It was time to stop fantasizing about a future with Karina that would never be and instead make sure Leila’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

He had to win this, no matter the cost.

“People of Ziran, we have reached the Final Challenge, though tragedy has struck one of our beloved Champions,” Karina called out. “As the Great Mother guides his soul on the journey to the Place with Many Stars, may we remember the strength of Driss Rhozali’s pride and the fierceness of his soul.” Everyone in the stadium pressed three fingers to their lips and their hearts. Malik had to force himself not to retch from nerves.

After the prayer had finished, Karina turned to him and Tunde. “It is only because my Grandmother Bahia was pure and true of heart that she was able to defeat Kennoua. Thus, inside this labyrinth, you will each encounter obstacles that will test your true heart: valor, cunning, the ability to do what must be done, no matter the cost to oneself. You may bring nothing with you besides the clothes on your back. There is no time limit. The first person to leave the maze wins. Champions, are you ready?”

“We are ready,” said both boys. Karina looked at each of them in turn, her eyes lingering on Malik for a heartbeat longer than on Tunde. Malik swallowed thickly and looked away.

The priestesses handed each of them a chalice and instructed them to drink until the contents were empty. A taste somewhere between cherries and mud ran down Malik’s throat, and when he looked up once more, the world had taken on a hazy glow. As soon as they’d finished their drinks, Karina stepped back and raised a hand toward the maze.

“Go!”

The cheers of the people faded into the mist as Malik and Tunde ran forward. After a series of turns, they found themselves before three branching paths. Even though it was just past noon, the mist was so thick the sunlight could not illuminate what lay ahead.

Tunde’s eyes fell on Malik’s swelling black eye. “Are you going to summon a monster to eat me too now that we’re alone?”

Fear hid behind his friend’s joking tone, but Malik did not know what to say that would not make everything worse. As he began to turn away, Tunde grabbed Malik’s shoulder, and Malik flinched.

“You’re really not going to say anything? No explanation for that…thing?”

Malik shook Tunde’s hand off, and the Water Champion threw him a glare. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on!”

Malik stared at the first friend he had made in years. The next time they were together, one of them would be king.

“Maybe I’m not the person in this competition you really need to help,” said Malik. With that, he chose the path to the right and ran ahead.

He’d been prepared to track every turn he took, but the path went straight for an unnervingly long time. His lungs burned from breathing through so much fog, and there was no way to tell how much time had passed.

Just as Malik doubled back to see if he’d missed a turn, he tripped, and the world plunged into darkness.

When he tried to stand, his hand pushed against something flat. Wood? Moist air laden with sweat and piss filled his lungs, a scent Malik would remember as long as he lived. He was inside a wagon, in a secret compartment just like the one that had ferried him and his sisters across the Odjubai. The wagon lurched sideways, crushing Malik into the person beside him, who gave a mournful cry.

Malik knew that wail, had listened to it for months—was this the same wagon?

But how?

“Nadia!” Malik cried, but his sister was not tucked against him like she should have been. There wasn’t even enough space for him to turn from his stomach to his side. Each breath was like swallowing a mouthful of festering pond water, and tears burned at his eyes from the rancid air.

Every Eshran knew the stories of those who had risked their lives crossing the Odjubai Desert. Most succumbed to exposure or were sold by traffickers or met any number of awful fates, and those people lived only in cautionary tales and low whispers. How could he and his sisters survive this journey when all those others hadn’t?

Malik might have screamed, but even if anyone had heard him, they wouldn’t have cared. In the end, it wouldn’t be poverty or the Zirani soldiers that ended him, but this rotten wagon, which was pressing in on all sides, squeezing the air from his lungs and the life from his body. He was never going to see Mama or Nana ever again. He was never going to go to school; he was never going to see Ziran—

But he had seen Ziran. He had walked through Jehiza Square, danced on a lake, fought down a serpopard.

All that had been real. This wasn’t.

The wagon lurched again, and someone near him wailed. With some maneuvering, Malik summoned the spirit blade and sawed at the wood beneath him. Soon enough, he had a hole large enough to pull himself through. Instead of golden sand, shrouds of mist swirled beneath the wagon, and Malik froze at the sight. In his moment of hesitation, dozens of hands grabbed him.

“Take us too!” those around him cried. “Take us too!”

Guilt choked him; how could he leave these people behind knowing what waited for them at the end of their journey? He needed to stay here and figure out some way to—

No. These illusions were nothing but memory given form, and the real people they were drawn from were far beyond Malik’s ability to help. The maze was turning his mind against him, and Malik was not going to fall for it again.

For Nadia.

Jerking away from the phantoms, Malik dropped down the hole. As he tumbled head over heels, he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was lying on his back in his house.

Malik rose to his feet and surveyed his childhood home with a mixture of wonder and longing. He ran his hands over the low table at which Nana had forced him to practice writing Zirani though she herself could not read it. Night after night, long after everyone else had fallen asleep, Nana had made Malik write the letters again and again until he was as good as any native.

And there was the tattered divan on which Mama had often sat to braid a village girl’s hair for a little extra money. Almost five years ago to the day, he had gathered around that divan with Leila and Nana, a squalling infant Nadia at his hip, as Mama had explained to them all that Papa would not be returning from his last trip, but that they would be all right. His mother’s scent still lingered, a potent mix of coconut and palm oil.

It was such a small house, smaller even than the plainest homes in Ziran, yet it had been Malik’s entire world. Every scratch in the wood and dent in a pan was a remnant of a childhood that had been filled with as much love as it had been with hardship.

But though the reminders of his family surrounded him, the people themselves were nowhere to be seen.

“Hello?” Malik called out tentatively.