the ice is tricky business. Every sliding step of the way, my mind reels. I did this. I did this. I did . . . this? No, definitely not.
Maybe it’s all one big misunderstanding.
I stumble against the doors, catch myself on a knob, and force them open. A rush of warm air blankets me from head to toe—a desperate relief from the cold. But even though I’m no longer frigid, something cold sits in my gut. A heavy, slumbering thing ready to burst forth at the least provocation.
I shove the sensation aside, because the second thing I notice once I’m through the ballroom doors is the shift in the atmosphere.
Something is very, very wrong.
It’s midafternoon, but shadows fall in a way that sends a shiver up my spine. A preternatural stillness cloaks each pillar, each hallway.
The fountain has gone silent.
Where is Eshe? She was in my room last I saw her, but she said if I needed her she’d be in search of near-death experiences. A facetious line, certainly, though probably terrifyingly accurate.
I slip down the hallway, moving as quickly as I can while still being silent and keeping my eye on my surroundings. I’m not that far from my room, but with the strange silence blanketing the palace, my skin crawls with every step.
Will I ever make it back?
A sudden melancholy washes over me. What if I never make it back to my rooms, or find Eshe? What if I never have a chance to marry the Neverseen King?
Where did that thought come from?
And why can’t I shake this dreadful hopelessness seeping into every pore of my body?
I’m going to die tonight, aren’t I? That’s what this feeling is. It’s my intuition, telling me that I’m in my last hours, my last moments . . .
Why is the hallway suddenly so dark?
Something slicks down my spine, cold as ice and wet as a tongue. Something that stabs like a paralyzing fear through me. I know this sensation.
I’m being watched.
Breathing in a deep, fortifying breath, I keep walking. Though every cell in my body begs me to turn around, to see what stalks me, I cannot let it know that I sense it. Is the sagging of my soul, the wet blanket of hopelessness, coming from whatever follows me?
I force my feet to keep the same pace.
My awareness tingles as I sense something coming closer, faster, closer.
Grab your knives, the tips of my fingers plead, aching for that solid familiarity against my palms. That comfort of knowing I am not truly helpless. I restrain myself. Grabbing my knives, even letting my hands drift closer to those hilts, would betray my awareness of the creature following me.
The darkness deepens, slowly reducing my vision of the rest of the hallway. Thoughts fill my head, thoughts that don’t even seem to be mine, but reach into every pocket of hope and strength inside me, tearing holes like the roots of a parasitic vine.
I should stop fighting—I should give up. There’s no point. I always knew I’d lose. I’ve spent my life awaiting the moment of my death. There is nothing to do now but lie down, and just . . . let . . . it . . . happen.
I can almost feel the breath of an open, gaping mouth behind my neck. There’s no helping my stiff spine, even if I chant silently to keep myself from running or whirling around with knives raised.
Keep walking. Keep walking. Keep . . . walking.
Those vines stretch deeper into my mind, a sensation that is real enough I almost reach up to touch the back of my head. I fight them, shoving against them, willing them away—
It would be easier just to give up.
Give in.
All of this suffering will be over in a moment.
You will never feel pain again.
I blink against blindness. What if I did stop resisting? What if I let those roots dig deep . . . deeper . . . all the way—
They flood my body, so sudden and so painful I nearly cry out. And then—
They reach my gut, where that icy wasteland lies in wait. Those tentacled, prying fingers dive straight into the ice. And immediately freeze. The darkness shifts, and there’s something like an unexpected blip in the air between me and the creature hunting me. The ice inside me reaches up, up, up, following those roots, overcoming their silent struggles. Another silent blip. A rippling wave bursts from behind me, and the darkness gives way to flickering light.
That’s right.
A slow smile spreads across my face.
I whirl, knives flashing in each hand, and pin the creature against a locked door. The world brightens quite suddenly, enough for the creature to be visible to my sight. It’s humanoid, and I have it by its neck, my arm pressing its windpipe into wood. It’s . . . not a shadow, as I’m so used to, but a physical, featureless body. If I took a blob of black paint and drew a proportional stick man, with no depth or characteristic, that’s what I have pinned against the wall. Perhaps the greater surprise, however, is that it doesn’t move. As though its entire body is . . .
Frozen.
“Get out of my House,” I snarl at it, my voice low. “Go back to where you belong. And close the door behind you.”
I step back, prepared for it to launch itself at me.
It doesn’t move.
The darkness vanishes in a second, coalescing back into the creature, as though it’s nothing but a statue of the deepest, densest ink that spread itself too thin a moment ago. I stare at it as the sun slices into my eyes, as that feeling of depression and hopelessness sinks away from me.
Then the body’s legs start shortening, its ankles vanishing into its feet, and its feet spreading wider and wider—
It’s melting.
My jaw sags. In the span of a minute, the entire creature is nothing but a puddle of melted darkness on the ground.
I turn and run. As fast as I’ve ever run before. My breath saws in and out of my lungs, and if I was any less afraid, I could gasp, “Oh sands, oh sands, oh sands!” I have no idea what just happened, but I suspect I shouldn’t still be alive, and that can change in an instant if I don’t move very quickly.
When I round the corner, there’s the banister—and something huddled beneath it, toes peeking out. Another . . . thing? Or one of the women?
“Gaya?” I breathe.
Her head pops around the corner, and her eyes are as wide as moons. “Nadira?”
“Get to my room! Now!”
With a whimper, she scrambles to her feet and we race up the stairs together. I grab hold of the banister, and there’s not a scrap of warmth to be found. Instead, it shudders.
I wish I could comfort it.
Gaya and I reach the second floor and I lead the way, both of us sprinting for our lives. I fling open the door, and she blows past me into the room. Her skin is white as starched linen.
“What is happening?” she breathes.
Eshe isn’t here. I curse under my breath as I slam the door behind us, then run to the window and fling aside the curtains. The courtyard is empty, the fountain lifeless.
“Stay here,” I say, ignoring several more questions from Gaya. There’s no time for answers. I hardly even know what is happening.
I pull the door shut, whirling to a stop outside my room. Where could she possibly be? I look up and down the hallway—and desperately hate the unending illusion of it. I hate the sunlight streaming through the window ceilings, as if it doesn’t care that my life is crumbling to pieces.
Then a scream pierces the air.
Without another thought, I barrel down the hallway toward the scream. I draw my knives, one in each hand. Please don’t be too late. Please don’t be too late. My legs pound, my heart pumping, until—
A roar rips through the corridor.
My feet stumble, and I almost fall flat on my face when I reach the source.
Ahead of me, two bodies throw themselves against a great carved wood door, inlaid with gleaming pearlescent stones. Eshe and Safya. Eshe screams again from the effort of shoving against the door. Something’s trying to get out.
I don’t have to wonder for long what it is.
Safya stumbles back, letting out a growling grunt, and a long reptilian head shoves past her guard, through the doorway. Two enormous nostrils flare, scales gleaming a luminescent crimson.
“No, you don’t!” Eshe shouts, shoving against the door with all her might.
They cannot keep the creature contained. They need to run. I know this, and yet I hurl myself forward until it’s three of us pushing, shoving, giving cries of effort and pain. I throw my weight into it, grimacing. For one moment, the door closes a few inches, and a burst of hope flares like a bright flower in my gut.
Then the reptilian head gives a large shove, and all three of us stumble back. Eshe screams again. Safya and I don’t, but sweat streams down our foreheads. My limbs quake from the effort.
We’re not going to—
A fourth pair of hands slam into the door, above mine. Familiar warmth floods my back. He’s here, my whole body sings, weeps. He’s here.
The door slams shut.
Without shifting my weight, I turn. My eyes meet shadow. But he’s more than shadow, and his irises gleam back at me as he looks down, his arms braced against the door over my head.
“Neverseen King!” Safya breathes beside me.
There’s something in that tone . . . something I definitely don’t like.
“What muscles you must have!” chirps Eshe between gulps of air. If my face wasn’t already so flushed from exertion, I might have blushed on behalf of her.
The door at our backs gives a sudden shove, and I’m almost thrown to the ground. The Neverseen King braces himself, leaning harder, closer to me.
“Get to Nadira’s room,” he growls. “All three of you. Now!”
“We’re going to help you.” Safya’s face is set in determination, her dark brows lowered over her eyes. “Tell us what to do.”
Another powerful shove on the door sends Eshe sprawling. She stumbles to her feet, sweat dripping off her nose as her gaze swings between the door and the rest of us.
“Get to Nadira’s room,” the Neverseen King repeats, strain lining every syllable. “That’s how you can help.”
Safya’s jaw tightens. Stubbornness. But also . . . something more? My gut sinks despite myself. It’s hard to imagine that someone who voluntarily murdered another woman in cold blood could harbor any sort of warm regard.
The Neverseen King looks down at me, his gaze intense and desperate. Take them, he seems to say, even as the door gives another lurch, and his powerful shoulders strain harder.
“Listen to him,” I growl, ducking under his arms and grabbing Eshe. I make to grab Safya, but she jerks away from me, her nostrils flaring. “If he needs us, he’ll come get us.”
We both know it’s a lie.
She doesn’t move.
“Safya,” the sultan groans, holding back the door against an onslaught of hits. “Please.”
That’s what makes her lips tighten, and she shoves off the door. Together, the three of us break into a sprint, making for my room. It’s not long before we reach the familiar door. Eshe flings it open, and we barrel into the supposedly safe space.
I pause in the doorway, glancing back.
I’m just in time to watch the Neverseen King’s shadow vanish—and the door burst open. That reptilian head emerges, wide slitted eyes unblinking as it surveys the hallway. Then, like a bat climbing out of a cramped space, claws reach through the doorway, pulling a slender, gleaming body through the small opening. Its wings come with it, folded tightly against its scales. Once it’s free in the hallway with nothing but its long sinuous tail flicking back and forth in the doorway, those wings expand, then tuck back in.
One eye catches mine.
That great head swings my way, extending its neck and raising that head toward the crystal skies. Its jaws open, and light sparks in a cage of teeth.
A dragon.
I slam the door shut and bolt it firmly.
Then I turn around, half daring to breathe as I face the three women staring at me with various shades of shock and fear. Safya stands alert by the vanity. Gaya is curled up in the corner by my bed. And Eshe has collapsed onto the settee.
A roar splits the air.
Gaya pulls her knees up tighter to her chest, hiding her face against them.
“What happened?” Safya demands, eyes fixed on me.
“We don’t know!” cries Eshe, flinging up her hands. “One minute, everything was normal. The next, something changed in the air, like a wind. Then . . . chaos!”
“You know.” Safya prowls a step closer to me. “You were with him when it happened, weren’t you?”
My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth as another roar shakes the palace, as a sudden smallness takes over me. I didn’t think much of Safya’s quiet, hunched shoulders at that first meal. Not until she stabbed Itr, and the realization of her ruthlessness washed through my core.
Now? This isn’t a healthy respect that flows through my veins.
It’s terror. Terror, like I knew at Jabir’s hand. It’s the terror that comes when you face someone that has embraced the stains of blood.
With a shudder, I realize I haven’t. Not truly. I thought I had, back in that ballroom. I’d given into that despair, the freezing ice inside me.
In one flashing movement, I can throw one of my knives and hit Safya right in the heart. Or I could go for her head. I can do it this very instant. I could end this terror right now. The fear mounting with each of her purposeful steps toward me could be completely gone with one move. My competition for the Neverseen King could also be gone with that same flick of the wrist.
But I can’t.
The realization sends helplessness washing down my spine. I’m not the villain I thought I could be. I’m not the ruthless killer, the coldhearted murderer.
That’s not who I am.
I cannot be that.
And it makes me deeply vulnerable.
I want to fold my arms around myself, curl into a ball like Gaya. I feel like a small child, the same girl who waited that moment after Jabir killed Baba. Who waited, as Jabir’s beady eyes met mine, knowing that the next minute, my blood would run hot and sticky to join my parents’.
Safya’s knife flashes. It presses into the vulnerable flesh of my neck. I freeze. My vision tunnels. Eshe shouts something.
“What did you do?” Safya growls.
Even though my mind insists I’m helpless, my muscle memory takes over. I catch her wrist, block her second knife, twist and duck under her guard. My knives are out, twin scythes of light between us. She blocks my blow, and then we’re circling one another in the cramped space. Like caged animals.
“Enough!” Eshe yells. “There is a dragon out there! We need each other! Stop trying to kill each other!”
I puff a strand of hair out of my eyes, not once letting my gaze leave Safya’s. She ignores Eshe. “Tell me what you did, Mourner.”
The title grates against my spine. I flash my teeth. “Ask the Neverseen King.”
“I don’t understand why someone as good as him took an interest in you,” Safya snarls back. “He is powerful and fearless. You are nothing but fear. And you’re pathetic.”
She’s right. We both know she’s right. Fear has governed my life for far too long. But she’s also wrong.
The Neverseen King isn’t fearless. If she thinks he is, then she doesn’t know him.
I straighten and sheath my knives. “If I’m pathetic, then you wouldn’t waste your time on me. Eshe’s right. It would be stupid to kill each other now.”
Safya doesn’t have time to answer before an ear-splitting shriek tears through the air outside of my room. The door’s bolt seems an extremely thin protection against the dragon and whatever else roams the palace halls. The Neverseen King likely has some spell of protection on this room, but I don’t know what its limits are—or if I broke that spell too, along with the others. I march to the window, flinging aside the curtains and looking down. We ought to plan an escape route should something break down the door.
But what I see sends my body turning to ice.
Everything is almost as normal. Except for a creeping fog that rolls through the courtyard. As I watch, it reaches the shrubberies by the fountain. They immediately shrivel and turn black—nothing but husks. My eyes widen as the fog drifts through the courtyard, turning every living plant black and sucking the fountain dry of water until the basin is empty and cracked.
It’s a matter of minutes before the courtyard is bare.
The fog turns away, coming back toward the palace. My gut sinks as it sends white, curling fingers climbing up the walls, sneaking into windows. Searching.
“Get back!” I cry, scrambling away from the window.
“What?” demand Eshe and Safya at the same time. Gaya remains curled on the floor against the wall in a fetal position.
“There is . . . it looks like a poisonous fog. It’s coming for the window!”
“What can we use to block the window?” Eshe asks, casting around the room desperately. She yanks the covers off my bed. “These?”
“We cannot secure it on all sides,” Safya says, but she darts across the room, flinging open the wardrobe.
Eshe watches her. Then her eyes brighten. “The wardrobe! We can hang the blankets, rip up the baseboards so the wardrobe covers the window. The blankets will create more of a seal!”
Safya and I look at each other, as if expecting the other to voice a protest. Neither of us do. A second later, I’ve run to the wardrobe. With loud huffs and puffs, Eshe shoves aside the furniture, clearing a path for Safya and me to bring the wardrobe.
“Sands, that looks heavy!” She frowns as we grunt and struggle for a grip on the enormous piece of furniture.
It is heavy. In the end, it takes all three of us to move it. Eshe climbs on top, draping the blanket over the back of it and securing the top by closing the wardrobe door over the fabric. Then we shove it against the window.
We stand back.
Gaya peeks up from between her fingers. It seems my assessment of her was accurate. She’s more bark than bite. For the first time, I wish she had a little more bite.
A loud crunch echoes from outside our room. The three of us whip our heads toward the sound, and glance uneasily among ourselves. I close my eyes, hoping against hope that the Neverseen King is alright.
What if my . . . so-called blasts broke more portals than he said? What if he cannot close them all in time? What if something happens to him, or to Eshe?
And it’s my fault?
I shudder, rubbing my arm and gritting my teeth. It’s Eshe’s nervous voice that breaks through the thoughts swarming in my head.
“Um, Nadira? Safya? It’s not working.”
“What?” I spin around, and deep horror pulses through my whole body.
Thin threads of mist wriggle through the cracks, coalescing into a long arm that reaches, reaches—
“Gaya!” Eshe screams.
