His voice cracks and my heart rips into so many pieces I don’t know if my chest will hold. I could screw everything up for the remainder of his days, yet Tzain would still die trying to keep me safe.
I need to protect him. It’s his turn to be saved.
“We have to go.” I roll the parchment and place it in my pack, moving so quickly I almost forget the silver-filled purse on the ground. “Real or not, we have to get back to Baba. Escape while we still can.”
Tzain swallows his frustration and mounts Nailah. I crawl on behind him when the princess speaks, shy like a child.
“W-what about me?”
“What about you?” I ask. My hatred for her family flares. Now that we have the scroll, I long to leave Amari stranded in the forest, let her starve or become a hyenaire’s prey.
“If you’re taking that stupid scroll, she has to come.” Tzain sighs. “Otherwise she’ll lead the guards straight to us.”
Amari’s face blanches when I turn back to her.
As if I’m the one she has to fear.
“Just get on.” I scoot forward on Nailah’s saddle.
As much as I want to leave her behind, we’re not done with each other yet.
CHAPTER EIGHT
INAN
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”
A thousand thoughts race through my mind. I try to latch onto the facts: magic in Orïsha; an ancient scroll; treason by Amari’s hand?
It’s not possible. Even if I could believe the magic, I can’t accept my sister’s involvement. Amari can barely speak up at a banquet. She lets Mother dictate her clothes. Amari’s never spent a day outside these walls, and now she’s fled Lagos with the only thing that can bring our empire down?
I think back, recalling the moment the fugitive girl crashed into me. When we collided, something sharp and hot crackled through my bones. A strange and powerful attack. In my shock, I didn’t peer under the fugitive’s hood. But if I had, would I really have seen my sister’s amber eyes peering back?
“No,” I whisper to myself. It’s outlandish. I have half a mind to commit Father to the royal physician. But it’s impossible to deny the look in his eyes. Crazed. Calculating. In eighteen years I’ve seen many things in his gaze. But never fear. Never terror.
“Before you were born, the maji were drunk with power, always plotting to overthrow our line,” Father explains. “Even with their insurgency, my father fought to be fair, but that fairness got him killed.”
Along with your older brother, I think silently. Your first wife, your firstborn son. There isn’t a noble in Orïsha who doesn’t know of the slaughter Father endured at the maji’s hands. A carnage that would one day be avenged by the Raid.
Out of instinct, I finger the tarnished pawn in my pocket, a stolen “gift” from Father. The sênet piece is the only survivor of Father’s childhood set, a game of strategy he used to play with me when I was young.
Though the cool metal usually anchors me, today it’s warm to the touch. It almost stings as it passes through my fingers, burning with Father’s impending truth.
“When I rose to the throne, I knew magic was the root of all our pain. It’s crushed empires before ours, and as long as it lives, it shall crush empires again.”
I nod, remembering Father’s rants from long before the Raid. The Britāunîs. The Pörltöganés. The Spãní Empire—all civilizations destroyed because those who had magic craved power, and those in charge didn’t do enough to stop them.
“When I discovered the raw alloy Bratonians used to subdue magic, I thought that would be enough. With majacite, they created prisons, and weapons, and chains. Following their tactics, I did the same. But even that wasn’t enough to tame those treacherous maggots. If our kingdom was ever going to survive, I knew I had to take magic away.”
What? I jerk forward, unable to trust my own ears. Magic is beyond us. How could Father attack an enemy like that?
“Magic is a gift from the gods,” he continues, “a spiritual connection between them and mankind. If the gods broke that connection with royals generations ago, I knew their connection to the maji could be severed, too.”
My head spins with Father’s words. If he doesn’t need to see the physician, I will. The only time I dared to ask him about the Orïshan gods, his answer was swift: gods are nothing without fools to believe in them.
I took his words to heart, built my world upon his unwavering conviction. Yet here he stands, telling me they exist. That he waged war against them.
Skies. I stare at the blood staining the cracks in the floor. I’ve always known Father was a powerful man.
I just never realized how deep that power ran.
“After my coronation, I set out to find a way to sever the spiritual bond. It took me years, but eventually I discovered the source of the maji’s spiritual connection, and I ordered my men to destroy it. Until today, I believed I had succeeded in wiping magic from the face of this earth. But now that damned scroll is threatening to bring magic back.”
I let Father’s words wash over me, parsing through it all until even the most inconceivable facts move like sênet pawns in my head: break the connection; break the magic.
Destroy the people after our throne.
“But if magic was gone…” My stomach twists into knots, but I need to know the answer. “Why go through with the Raid? Why … kill all those people?”
Father runs his thumb down the serrated edge of his majacite blade and walks to the paneled windows. The same place I stood as a child when the maji of Lagos went up in flames. Eleven years later, the charcoal smell of burning flesh is still a constant memory. As vivid as the heat in the air.
“For magic to disappear for good, every maji had to die. As long as they’d tasted that power, they would never stop fighting to bring it back.”
Every maji …
That’s why he let the children live. Divîners don’t manifest their abilities until they’re thirteen. Powerless children who had never wielded magic didn’t pose a threat.
Father’s answer is calm. So matter-of-fact, I cannot doubt that he did the right thing. But the memory of ash settles on my tongue. Bitter. Sharp. I have to wonder if Father’s stomach churned that day.
I wonder if I’m strong enough to do the same.
“Magic is a blight,” Father breaks into my thoughts. “A fatal, festering disease. If it takes hold of our kingdom the way it’s taken others, no one will survive its attack.”
“How do we stop it?”
“The scroll is the key,” Father continues. “That much I know. Something about it has the power to bring magic back. If we don’t destroy it, it shall destroy us.”
“And Amari?” My voice lowers. “Will we have to … will I…” The thought is so wretched I can’t speak.
Duty before self. That’s what Father will say. It’s what he shouted at me that fateful day.
But the thought of raising my blade against Amari after all these years makes my throat dry. I can’t be the king Father wants me to be.
I can’t kill my little sister.
“Your sister has committed treason.” He speaks slowly. “But it is no fault of her own. I allowed her to get close to that maggot. I should’ve known her simple disposition would lead her astray.”