“You are afraid,” I challenged him. “Your ministers have noticed the change in you, and your enemies in court, the ones that used to fear you, now plot against you. You know your throne is in danger. Even if the shansen weren’t a threat, someone from within would overthrow you. Betray you.”
“Speak another word and I will have your tongue cut out.”
“You won’t,” I taunted. “You need me. You cannot lead A’landi looking like—”
“Like this?” Khanujin barked, pointing at his face and making a grotesque expression. “The shansen brings his army to my gates. We are at war, and I will lead no matter how I appear.”
Desperation leaked from his voice. Despite his bravado, he knew A’landi wouldn’t follow him like this. Not when he looked more like a ruthless child than the benevolent ruler everyone had been deceived into revering. I nearly felt for him. Maybe some part of him did care for our country.
“You won’t win against him. Not without my help. I can restore Edan’s enchantment. I can make you what you once were.” As soon as I’d uttered the words, I stopped. Where were they coming from? I didn’t know how to restore the emperor’s enchantment. But I couldn’t stop. I spoke as if possessed.
You can, Sentur’na. We will help you.
I clenched my jaw, willing the voices to go away. The effort cost me my calm. My eyes blazed, their scarlet sheen coloring my vision. Khanujin drew a shallow breath; I could tell my appearance unnerved him.
“What are you?”
“The dresses give me power. Only me.”
I refused to say any more.
“You are no enchanter,” he said, staring at me. “You’re a…a…”
Demon? I lifted my pendant, pinching open the walnut slightly so it shone with the power of the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Was it a demon’s amulet? I still couldn’t bring myself to believe it was. Its power seemed to weigh heavier on me every day, not fighting against the darkness inside me but not embracing it either. Yet.
“I harness the power of Amana,” I said, though the words clung to my throat, feeling only half true. “Her magic is even greater than Edan’s. How else do you think I defeated the shansen?”
“You are the reason the wedding fell apart,” Khanujin growled, but he made no more threats. I could see from how my pendant drew his eyes that I’d tempted him.
He believed me.
“Give up your search for the Lord Enchanter,” I said, seizing the silence. “His oath to you is broken, and he is powerless. In return, I will help you.”
He gave me a glare so withering it would have sent any of his ministers onto his knees, quivering with fear.
At last he said, “If you are successful, I will consider clemency for your family. But not for the Lord Enchanter.”
“I’ll need the pouch your men took from me,” I said, pushing forward. “Everything inside will aid me with the enchantment. And I’ll need fabric enough to make a new set of robes.”
“A cloak,” he decided. “You will enchant a cloak for me. Have it ready by dawn. If it is not, I will have a seamstress killed for every hour longer it takes.”
The doors slammed shut behind him. Minutes later, a guard barged into my room and threw my pouch at my feet.
When I looked inside, all I glimpsed was my scissors and my sketchbook. Panic rose in me, until I turned the pouch’s soft leather inside out. The meteorite dagger tumbled out, along with my carpet, the mirror, and Edan’s flute.
I hugged the pouch to my chest, sighing with relief.
I’d barely returned everything into the pouch when one of the older seamstresses arrived. Her back was hunched as if it’d been recently whipped, and she wouldn’t look at me.
In her arms was a bundle of material and threads with which I was to make His Majesty’s garment.
“I’m sorry,” I wanted to say before she left, but the words wouldn’t part from my lips.
I worked through the afternoon, fashioning a cloak with a gold-inlaid hood, then embroidering a dragon onto the back of the garment.
But how to restore the emperor’s former glory to him? I did not have any more magic from my journey—no more tears of the moon or laughter of the sun—to weave into the garment.
Even my scissors would conjure no magic on his behalf.
“Amana, help me,” I whispered, praying over and over.
She did not heed my plea. My plight, to sew an enchanted cloak for the emperor, was not one worthy of the mother goddess’s attentions. The pendant around my neck remained still, the dresses silent.
Even my scissors did not hum. What was I to do?
You know precisely what magic will bring the power you need to restore Khanujin.
My head snapped up. I reached for my meteorite dagger, raising it at the shadows slinking across the floor. I half expected to see Bandur there, his laugh echoing against the walls.
But there was no one. No one but the demon inside me.
My fingers tightened around the dagger’s hilt.
“Jinn,” I whispered. The veins of meteorite on the blade gleamed to life. As before, touching the stone edge stung. But this time, the blade was warm instead of cool. This time, my fingertips flinched at the pain—as if tiny thorns had bitten them.
I studied the double-edged weapon, stroking the iron half, then touching the meteorite side and laying my fingers flat against the stone.
“Don’t use the amulet,” Edan had warned me. “The more you rely on its magic, the harder it will become for you to resist the change.”
But if I didn’t, the shansen would win. A’landi would be lost.
Had Lady Sarnai stayed, things would be different. But it was left to me. I had to fight the shansen alone.
“I have to protect A’landi,” I murmured to myself.
My pendant thrummed against my chest, its light writhing and boiling as if Amana’s children within—the sun, the moon, and the stars—sensed that I was trying to summon a demon.
I removed the pendant from my neck and set it on the ground. My body gave a sudden heave, my pulse quickening as Amana’s strength left me.
I wrapped my hand around the sharp edge of the blade and whispered, “Edan, forgive me.”
A hot flash of pain cut off my breath. I opened my hand slowly, taking in the thin line of blood arcing across my palm. The color was bright against my skin, but as it seeped out of the wound into the loose lines of my palm and settled there, it darkened like black ink.