A lifetime passed in the span of a single breath. Then Idir grinned. “I accept.”

Idir grabbed Malik’s hand. There came a moment of complete, perfect stillness between the earth and air. In the last second, Malik turned toward Karina and gave her a reassuring smile. He had a face made for smiling, like the sun breaking through the clouds after a storm; it was a shame he had not done it more when he’d had the chance.

Quick as a flame going out, Idir vanished, and Malik fell to his knees.

33

Malik

The creature that had once been Malik rose to his feet, staring at himself in wonder. All his features remained the same save one—his eyes, before a black darker than a raven at night, were now glazed unearthly blue.

Idir threw Malik’s head back and laughed. He clawed at Malik’s cheek, leaving several streaks of blood streaming down his face. He brought Malik’s bloody fingertips to his lips.

“Fascinating. Truly fascinating.”

Idir walked toward Karina, his arms and legs moving at different speeds from each other like a puppet controlled by a drunk puppeteer. Anyone on the platform could have stopped him, but they were all frozen in fear. The guard nearest to him cowered as Idir wrenched the sword from his hands.

“Wait, this wasn’t part of the plan,” cried Farid, eyes flitting between the possessed boy and Karina.

“Be quiet and consider yourself lucky I haven’t razed this entire city to the ground. Yet.”

Idir turned Malik’s face skyward, where Bahia’s Comet should have been.

“Bahia, my love, if you’re watching this—I win.”

Idir turned Malik’s body to face Karina, poised to strike the killing blow.

Malik hadn’t known what to expect when he let Idir into his mind. Perhaps it was a stupid idea, but it was the only place in Ziran where he had any kind of advantage.

Had he thought about it, he might have expected his mind to be someplace barren and broken, like Idir’s prison. However, after ceding control of his body to the spirit, Malik found himself beneath a large lemon tree, one of hundreds stretching in every direction. The world around him was the kind of green Malik had only ever seen in one place.

Home.

This was the Oboure of his childhood, back when life had been an endless string of summer days. Malik searched for his house, but there was nothing but him and the lemon grove.

Though he could not see or hear the outside world, Malik had a vague sense of his body’s actions. He felt the sharp sting when Idir clawed his cheek and the deadly desire welling in his chest when the obosom turned to Karina.

But he also noticed several cues Idir missed, like the shortening of his breath and the sudden racing of his heart as Idir raised his blade high.

Though Malik didn’t always like his mind, he knew it well. So instead of trying to fight for control, he waited.

Idir placed a hand against Malik’s chest, his eyes growing wide as his chest tightened.

“What is wrong with you?” Idir snapped, though to everyone else he looked like he was talking to nothing. Had he had control of his body, Malik might have shrugged.

“My mind is not the most hospitable environment.”

The panic attack had already begun, taking root in his mind like a weed overtaking a garden. A spiderweb of cracks splintered the lemon grove to bits, and Malik braced himself as large chunks fell away into a void beneath his feet.

Idir clutched Malik’s chest. “What is—I don’t—what are you doing to me?”

It was odd witnessing one of his panic attacks from the outside. Malik felt Idir’s grip around the mental landscape loosen, and he began to speak.

“A thousand years ago, an obosom fell in love with a mere mortal girl.”

The green of the lemon grove melted into golden sands and rising stone. The stones formed a city of pyramids and obelisks through which a sparkling sapphire river flowed. At a secluded bend of the river, a girl reached into a well and pulled out a large snake. Idir howled as the snake shifted into a white-haired figure in the girl’s arms.

“Many warned the spirit that nothing but tragedy could come from such a love, but he did not listen. When the girl waged war against her former slave master, he fought by her side. When the girl founded a new nation as refuge for her people, he ruled over it with her as its king.”

Malik’s connection to the outside world severed completely as he focused on weaving the illusion around them. The Kennouan city crumbled into itself, and a battlefield littered with corpses burst from the center, sprawling and infinite. The two figures from the first illusion fought side by side through the carnage.

Then the battlefield gave way to a small settlement of mud brick houses and huts filled with war-weary yet hopeful people. The two figures stood proudly on a cliff overlooking the small city, two silver-haired children standing between them.

“But one day, the obosom grew jealous. She was now giving the love that had been only his to her people as well, and he was not ready to share it or her.”

Idir screamed as the settlement expanded, huts growing into buildings and shops. A palace of beautiful alabaster gold sprang up along the edge of it, growing like a curling vine. The city grew, and the midnight-haired girl flew farther and farther away from the white-haired figure’s grasp.

The lemon grove shuddered, and Malik could feel the spirit trying to regain control.

Breathe. Stay present. Stay here.

“So with the aid of his supernatural allies, the obosom sided with her enemies in the hopes of destroying all that she had built, so she would have nothing to return to but him. To protect her people, she banished him to a desolate, forgotten realm where nothing ever grew and the sun never shone.”

Now they were in the empty world where Malik had first met Idir. Long-dead shrubs crunched underfoot as Idir clawed the earth, desperate for an exit from his prison.

“And there you’ve been ever since,” Malik said softly, kneeling beside the pitiful creature, “letting your grief turn to obsession and rage.”

“Be quiet!” Idir roared. Malik shifted the illusion back to the lemon grove, drawing strength from the familiarity of his homeland.

“I can’t imagine what those centuries of isolation must have been like,” said Malik. After lying for so long, there was a simple power in speaking the truth. “No creature is meant to live like that. I’m sorry for what it did to you. And I’m sorry that the way your people chose to handle your betrayal was to act as if you’d never existed at all.”

Malik pulled a long strip of bark from the nearest tree. Idir tried to crawl away, but the trees crowded together, blocking his path.

“However, the pain you have endured does not justify the pain you inflict on others. I won’t let you tear any more lives apart in your quest for revenge.”

All that remained now was the solitary lemon tree they stood beneath. Idir tried to climb the tree, but the branches physically moved out of his reach. Malik grabbed his arm.

“You wanted my mind, and now it’s yours—as well as every fear and every anomaly that comes with it.”

He wound the strip of bark around Idir and the tree trunk, binding him tight.

“Even when my own mind is threatening to tear me apart, I fight. I struggle and I fail and I still fight, even when it seems pointless. That’s what you don’t understand about being human, and that’s why you can’t beat me.”

The obosom screamed out curses in languages long forgotten and even longer dead. When there was no bark left, Malik stepped away.

“This is my mind. I am the strongest person here.”

With a single breath, Malik was back in his body, the sulfur tang of the bonfire stinging his eyes. He could feel Idir scratching deep in his mind, minutes—or perhaps even seconds—from seizing control again.

However, the thought did not scare him. He was no stranger to demons in his head.

Besides, this was his mind and his body.

His to command.

His to destroy.

Malik tossed the Zirani sword aside and summoned his spirit blade. He turned to Karina and gave her the smallest of smiles.

“I’m really sorry for all the trouble.”

With nothing left to say, Malik took the dagger and plunged it straight into his own heart.

34

Karina

Karina barely processed Malik’s sacrifice, for as soon as his body hit the platform, her eyes met Hanane’s.

There were moments in life words were never meant to reach. Moments of immeasurable joy and unspeakable loss, birth and death and all the strange twists and turns in between.

Watching Hanane rise from the dead was something beyond all of that.

In a heartbeat that extended across a lifetime, the two sisters stared at each other.

“Karina?” Hanane breathed out. Her sister’s face was exactly as Karina remembered, warm and long and freckled.

The Rite of Resurrection had worked.

Karina tried to speak, but nothing came out. This was everything she had ever wanted, the answer to a decade’s worth of prayers and lonely days. Hanane’s eyes widened, and a wave of revulsion wracked Karina’s core.