“And the people running the puppets, who were they?”

“My family.” Dedele paused before adding, “Did you happen to see if any of them made it from the square?” Karina shook her head, and Dedele nodded solemnly, her shoulders sagging.

“Where are we going?” Karina asked.

“Osodae. In Arkwasi,” Afua finally sat up. “There are people there who can teach you about what it means to be a zawenji, especially since you’re descended from a powerful spirit as well.”

Karina wondered if the day would come when she wore the name zawenji as comfortably as Afua did. “But if I’m really a zawenji, why didn’t you sense it when we met?”

“Because you were repressing your powers too far for anyone to sense,” Afua said gently. “Not just you—the other zawenji in Ziran have all had their powers repressed as well.”

Karina’s heart raced as she recalled the jet of fire bursting from Commander Hamidou’s hands. “The Sentinels. They’re all the zawenji in Ziran you couldn’t find.”

Afua nodded. “All your Sentinels have had their magic channeled into heightening their physical senses. I took the enchantment off Commander Hamidou while we were hiding, but I’m sure Farid, or anyone else who understands magic, could do it too.”

Karina was too horrified to speak. She’d always felt so unsettled by the Sentinels’ strength and speed, the way their movements never seemed truly their own. Her own family had been doing this since the foundation of Ziran. Had she not been born an Alahari, she also would have been turned into a weapon by the very city she’d sworn to protect.

“So the murderer obsessed with a teenage girl also has an entire magic army at his beck and call.” Dedele sighed. “This situation just keeps getting better.”

A shiver ran down Karina’s spine as she imagined the life of mindless servitude she’d almost had, and she wrapped her arms around herself. She looked at Afua and Dedele, these girls who barely knew her yet had risked their lives to bring her to safety.

“I’ll make this up to you one day,” she swore, and Dedele grinned.

“Between this and me dropping out of Solstasia for you, you owe me big-time, Princess. You can start paying me back by not letting a sandstorm rip my ship apart before we get to Osodae.”

While Afua rested and Dedele checked the damage to the ship, Karina sat at the end of the barge. Memories returned to her one by one like grains of sand spilling into an hourglass.

Making Hanane laugh by knocking over their nursemaids with sudden gusts of wind.

Promising her parents she would never show anyone outside the family what she could do and that she’d never use her abilities to cause harm.

Accidentally summoning the bolt of lightning that would silence her father’s and sister’s voices forever.

She had been responsible for all that. Her alone.

And now some version of Hanane was alive once more, in violation of the Ancient Laws. Karina had spent most of her life wishing for just one more minute with her sister, and now that she’d had it, she could not quell the sense of foreboding blooming within her.

“You look like someone pissed in your favorite watering hole.”

A hulking hyena leered down at Karina from the front of the ship as she jumped back in alarm. Eerie white markings swirling in its fur differentiated it from a regular animal, and the others on the barge had no reaction to the creature’s appearance, as if they couldn’t see it at all.

“Now there’s a talking hyena.” Karina sighed, fighting to keep the surpise from her face. “This may as well happen too.”

“That’s the talking Hyena to you. Capital H. And is that any way to speak to the person who stopped your little storm? You should learn to control that before you kill someone . . . well, kill more someones.”

Karina’s lips twisted into a snarl. She was not in the mood to be mocked, even by a living legend. “I obviously know of you, but you speak to me as if we’ve already met.”

Hyena snickered as her face transformed into a human one with an impressive mustache that smelled of orange oil. Karina sat up, her full attention now on the trickster.

“You were the bard from the Dancing Seal!” Karina yelled, not caring if Dedele or Afua thought she was talking to herself. “This is all your fault! If I’d never read that stupid book—”

“—the ulraji sorcerer you call Farid would have tricked you into performing the ritual anyway, you never would have regained your magic or learned the truth about your heritage, and you never would have destroyed the Barrier,” said Hyena as her face regained its canine shape. “Idir’s theory that you had magic strong enough to rival Bahia’s was right. This morning, when the boy tried to kill you with the blade Idir gave him, your zawenji magic connected with his ulraji magic, and it was just the catalyst needed to release your ten years of pent-up nkra in one fell swoop and overload the Barrier.”

Karina hated the way her heart thudded at the mention of Malik. She latched onto the hatred and let it unfurl into the places where affection for him still lingered. The boy was ulraji, which made him the enemy. She had no love to spare for her enemies.

“Why did you give me the book?” Karina asked, and Hyena looked down.

“Let’s just say I owe Bahia Alahari more debts than I can spend my immortal lifetime repaying.”

“So what happens now?”

Hyena shrugged. “A lot of things could happen. You could get to Osodae and meet others like yourself. Or you could jump from this barge and wander the desert until you die. The possibilities are endless.”

Hyena leaned forward, and Karina wondered if Bahia Alahari had felt this scared when she’d encountered the trickster for the first time.

“But I can promise you one thing: no matter what you choose, you and the ulraji boy will cross paths again, because the two of you are destined.”

“Destined for what?”

“That, little zawenji, is for you to decide.”

Karina almost scoffed before remembering it might be offensive to do so in front of a legendary being. If she ever met Malik again, the only thing he was destined for was her fist breaking his nose. “I thought the point of destiny was that it was already chosen for you.”

Hyena’s cackle rocked the whole boat. “This is why I still love interacting with you humans after all these centuries. You don’t understand how anything works. It’s adorable.”

Tensing her muscles into a hunter’s crouch, Hyena nodded. “Goodbye for now, Your Majesty. I am excited to see who you’ve become the next time our paths meet. And fair warning, I won’t be there to stop the next storm you create. Controlling your magic is your problem now.”

The trickster jumped from the barge with a wild howl. Karina ran to the edge, but where Hyena should have been, there was only sand. Their conversation had made little sense, but that was how conversations with Hyena went in all the tales. The only part Karina understood was that she would one day meet Malik again, and her vision burned red at the thought.

Instead of dwelling on her anger, she looked ahead. Somewhere far past the edge of the desert, in the heart of the jungle was Osodae, the capital of Arkwasi. There she’d find this school Afua mentioned, but more important, she’d find the Arkwasi-hene, leader of the only army in Sonande large enough to rival Ziran’s. If she wanted any chance of defeating Farid and his Sentinels, she was going to need to convince the Arkwasi-hene to aid her.

“Your Majesty, are you ready?” Dedele called out.

Karina glanced over her shoulder at Dedele taking control of the barge’s rudder, and Afua crouching into position, her magic pooling around her hands. She looked beyond them at the little she could see of Ziran, the speck on which she’d lived her entire life.

She would return one day to be the queen her people needed her to be. She would return to seek justice for her family against the man she had once called brother. She would rectify the inhumane resurrection that had created the creature who now wore her sister’s face.

This was the oath Karina made to herself as she looked away from her past and forward to her future. Ahead stretched a world waiting to meet her, and the promise of all the things to come pulsed in the winds around her.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

With the wind pushing her along and the stars blurring into white streaks overhead, Karina journeyed into the unknown.

37

Malik

Malik had expected dying to feel like a nothingness too overwhelming to categorize, or perhaps an icy grip that would leech the feeling from his body. However, all he felt now was warmth, like slipping under a blanket on a dark, windy night. On instinct, Malik moved toward the feeling like a child reaching for their parent after a nightmare, and it enveloped him completely.

“Oh, you’re awake.”