Farid gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, the gesture filling her with warmth. “You’ve experienced intense trauma, been overworked, and still expected to function at full capacity without enough sleep. I understand.”

Never, not once, had Farid led Karina astray. Maybe now was the time to start listening to him.

“You’re right,” she said again, silencing the nagging doubt still within her. “I’m sorry for overreacting.”

“You never have to apologize to me, Karina. But there might be someone else who deserves an apology from you.”

Farid opened the door to the safe room and Tunde burst forward, enveloping Karina in his arms. “Karina!”

He pulled away, his eyes wide with terror, and Farid slipped from the room, saying something about getting an update from the guards and bringing them a change of clothes. The room itself was small and windowless, stocked with enough food to feed the royal family for weeks. Karina wasn’t sure why she needed to be in a safe room if there was no threat, but Farid never did anything without a reason.

“Where is Adil?” asked Tunde, leading her toward a divan.

Malik, she almost corrected. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.

“They say they found you on the roof with him. Why were you together?”

The hurt in his voice was evident. Karina had no response, so the silence stretched into minutes until Tunde pulled away, recoiling as if she’d struck him across the face. They were still sitting in silence when Farid returned with a change of clothes. Karina only spoke again when he was about to leave.

“Farid, wait,” she said. “What if I wasn’t seeing things?”

Farid paused, one hand on the doorframe. “Everything is fine.”

“I know, but I still think we should evacuate.”

“You’re tired, and you’re not thinking straight.”

“But what if what I saw was real? What if—”

“Karina, stop!”

Karina flinched. Farid had never yelled at her, and that alone disturbed her more than anything else that had happened that day. He took a deep breath before pressing his hands to his face. Tunde looked between them nervously.

“I’m sorry, it’s just—there’s been so much happening recently between your mother and the council and the necropolis. I just want to make it through this day. Please cooperate for once. For me.”

Karina blinked and stood up. Farid’s mouth drew into a tight line.

“Karina, I don’t have the patience to deal with one of your tantrums right—”

“I never told you I went to the necropolis.”

His eyes went wide. “You did yesterday.”

“No, I didn’t. How do you know about that?”

“I—you—”

Farid’s gaze shifted left and right, landing everywhere but on Karina’s face. A snarl played on her lips. “Why are you trying so hard to make me doubt what I know I saw?”

A lifetime of memories crashed down around her as she watched the man she had trusted with her life struggle to come up with another lie to pacify her.

Farid had known about the necropolis without her telling him. He’d been unusually calm when she’d told him about the traitor and again during her interrogation of the council. And as long as Karina could remember, he’d had access to her mother’s garden.

Karina stopped an inch from Farid’s face. “It was you. You were the true traitor all along.”

“Guards!”

A pair of Sentinels burst into the room. Before they could reach her, Karina clawed Farid across the face, her nails leaving red trails in their wake. She fought as hard as she could, but she was no match for the Sentinels’ strength. Tunde tried to help her, but the other Sentinel subdued him as well.

As the soldiers forced her to the ground, she searched Farid’s face—for remorse, guilt, a sign of the man he’d once been.

She found nothing.

“All these years of planning, and it ends like this.” Farid sighed.

Karina braced herself as he pulled a dagger from his sleeve. She refused to look away from the dark, empty eyes of the only brother she had ever known.

Farid brought the dagger down in one motion, slitting open Tunde’s throat.

31

Malik

Malik had nearly died the day he’d been born.

Mama had told the story so often there were times he could have sworn he remembered that day himself. Not only had he been born several weeks early, he’d slipped out of the womb with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. The midwife had removed it in time, but Malik had spent his first days of life deathly still.

Mama had lain there with him and refused to let anyone touch his unmoving form. Three days later, when they tried to wrest him from her arms, he’d screamed so loudly the midwife had been convinced he was some sort of demon.

“I named you Malik because I knew you were strong like the kings of old, and no one could take that strength from you,” Mama would always say, tears in her eyes.

As touching as the story was, Malik knew he did not deserve such a noble name.

He was not strong.

He was not brave.

As the Sentinels dragged him from the roof of the Sun Temple, Malik felt further from his name than he ever had.

Malik awoke in a cell, the only light coming from a flickering torch far out of his reach. Dark stone walls surrounded him on all sides, save for a door made of thick iron bars, and the putrid smells of rot and human waste choked his throat. Though his head throbbed in pain where the Sentinel had hit him, Malik was otherwise uninjured. Thick ivory manacles bound his hands together, though his feet had been left free.

He instinctively reached for his magic, but where the threads of power should have been, there was instead a heavy, muted feeling, like someone had stuffed cotton into his lungs. Panic pooled in his chest; were the chains doing this? The Mark slithered up and down his arm—at least he still had that, but it was useless when he couldn’t move his hands.

Slowly, the memory of what had occurred on the roof of the Sun Temple returned to him. The kiss that had seared through his body. The fatal blow that hadn’t murdered Karina.

Idir had lied. Instead of killing Karina, the spirit blade had shattered whatever force had kept the obosom trapped. Malik had thought the grim folk could not take physical shape inside the human world, but clearly Idir had done so before if he had married and then fought Bahia Alahari.

Now the obosom was free to wreak vengeance against the city he had once helped build. And Malik had made it possible for him to do so.

Malik couldn’t summon the energy for outrage, or even despair. It had taken all that he had to kill Karina, and it still had not been enough to save Nadia.

He had not been enough to save Nadia.

There was nothing left to fight now, no trick left to try.

So instead Malik closed his eyes and stopped fighting. He prayed to the Great Mother to make Nadia’s death painless, even if it meant his taking twice as long. He prayed that Leila had found a way to escape from wherever they held her and save Nadia after he had failed them both time and time again.

After countless minutes, footsteps echoed through the dungeon’s walls. “Is this where it ends, man-pup?”

At this point, Malik wasn’t even shocked that Nyeni had found her way to this prison. After all the incredible things he’d seen the griot do, sneaking past a few dozen guards was child’s play.

Of course it would not be enough for the griot that she’d won. Now she had to come rub his failure in his face as well.

Nyeni sighed. “I expected better from you. That being said, you have made it further than anyone could have predicted.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Nyeni tilted her head. “So every single thing you’ve done until now hasn’t mattered? What about that boy you helped during Solstasia Eve? Did he not matter?”

Malik’s eyes cracked open, and he had to focus hard to see Nyeni staring at him through the bars of his cell. They had never met until that fateful day a week ago, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that the griot had been watching him for far longer.

“Why do you keep following me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Like all good storytellers, once I start a tale, I see it through to the end. Answer my question.”

Malik sighed. “Helping one person won’t fix everything I’ve ruined.”

“That may be true. But it’s also true that to aid even one person is to save an entire world.”

Nyeni knelt until she was level with Malik, and her eyes glowed with the otherworldly blue that had once terrified him. “You are not strong in body, no. No one will ever sing songs about your physical prowess. But you are kind, Malik Hilali. Do not underestimate the strength it takes to be kind in a world as cruel as ours.”

Malik shifted, the chains peeling away skin from his already raw wrists. He knew in his heart that the griot was wrong.