to comprehend what I see. I’m facing a large circle, one as high and wide as I am tall, suspended a few feet above the golden floor. The edges are sizzling and snapping like lightning, bright white with sparks of blue, and looking into it is like peering through a window into another world.
An entirely different world.
A world bathed in midnight with three moons hanging in the sky above a field of green that’s moving—wait, not a field. A body of . . . water? No, that rippling green sludge is definitely not water. And through this window of sorts, things are scrambling over the bottom edge and dropping to the floor, shrieking like a thousand birds.
These things are blue. Small—they don’t even reach my knees. And though they look like a waterfall gushing over a cliff, they disperse into individual beings. Beings that have oversized fangs reaching past their fat lips, curling almost under their chins and jutting up to their eyes, which are yellow and cat-like beneath sagging, hairless brows. Their bodies are a deep, inky blue from head to . . . talon? The leathery folds of their skin almost look black against the lighter blue of their protruding bellies.
It takes me so long to even realize what’s happening that Eshe has to scream, “Fight!” before my limbs begin moving. And then there’s one right in front of me, snarling and wielding something like a tiny sledgehammer. He brings it down hard, apparently intent on smashing my toes. I leap out of the way, almost blinded by the dazzle of blue swinging from the chandelier above us, almost deafened by the screeching of dozens upon dozens—hundreds?—of these creatures.
“Goblins!” someone cries.
Goblins don’t exist. And yet one just launched itself straight at my face.
My knife is up in a second, so sharp that I barely feel resistance as the creature embeds itself on my blade. His shriek dies into nothing, and inky blackness spills over my hand, my arm, my garments.
My vision starts to go black. I see the flicker of firelight, feel the tatters of a patched blanket beneath bare feet tucked beneath my hips. In my hand is a pumice stone, and I’m dragging my knife across it—
“Stay with me,” says Eshe sharply, grabbing my arm and dragging me backward toward the wall.
Right to where the shadows lurk, watching.
Watching—and doing nothing!
Screams are hitting the ceiling, inky blood mingling with red blood on a glittering floor, the shadows and sparkles flaring from the swinging chandelier. Hot droplets of candle wax fly, hitting the skin of my bloodstained wrist. The sultan moves aside, enough for Eshe and I to press against the wall—and then for Hulla to squeeze in too. Neither of them see him. They don’t know he’s right beside them as Eshe turns to me.
“Think of something,” she gasps, and I see, for possibly the first time ever, something akin to panic in her eyes. “Or we will all die.”
“I can’t think like this!”
I can’t exist like this. I’m helpless, my knives no weapons for the kind of mass killing that needs to happen here—with more bodies pouring over the edge of the window, falling onto their bellies, and then leaping into the fray with snapping jaws and shrieking calls.
“You have to,” says Eshe. Then she lets go of my arm and hurls herself back into the tumult with nothing but a single knife. She has never kept as many weapons on her person as I. She hadn’t needed to—she is a thief, not an assassin. Not a killer.
But here she is, killing. And here I am, a killer, unable to move.
Hulla seems suddenly torn between staying with me and following Eshe. Her blade shakes uncontrollably, but she plunges after my friend, hacking as she goes.
Invisible eyes weigh on me, measuring each of my shallow, frantic breaths. I can’t think as two more blue bodies launch themselves at me, and all I can do is let my knives fly, cling to my instinctive reaction to protect my own life.
What about the lives of the other young women in this room? What about the screams of the ones hiding in the corners mingling with the ones boldly confronting our enemies? The tall one I’d stood near wields two long scimitars, slicing and dicing blue limbs from blue bodies, letting black spatter the hood over her face. Someone shouts at her for aid—calling her Fathuna.
A pained cry goes up. My head swivels by instinct, and I instantly regret it. Red blood gushes from an open wound, a girl falling to her knees, and my vision clouds yet again.
No, no, no—I need to think. I can’t disassociate now. I must fight the goblins attacking me behind and before, sledgehammers bashing. I must think of a way to get this all to stop.
I turn away from the wounded girl, but out of the corner of my eye, I see Eshe leaping over bodies and nearly slipping in blood to get to her side. I try to survey the room even as I’m fighting, spinning and thrusting and dodging in a dance I’ve known all my life. I try to let my muscles take over, to give my brain the space to think, to plan. But all I can think is: Don’t die! Don’t die! Don’t die!
Until one other thought cuts through the cacophony around me.
What kind of sultan stands to the side and watches women fight for their lives, never stepping in to lend a hand? What kind of sultan demands a bloody competition of his potential brides?
Clearly an absolutely wretched one.
Suddenly it’s my anger fueling my strikes, it’s anger behind the knife I throw to the complete opposite end of the hall, stabbing a goblin straight through his heart just before he pounds Eshe’s leg as she bends over the fallen girl.
It’s anger that makes me turn to the window. To the thing that must be some sort of portal. We’ll never win this battle unless we close it, unless the barrage of blue bodies stops long enough to kill the rest.
I don’t know magic. I don’t know how to close a portal. But I bet my life someone in this room does.
My unsteady feet stumble over blue bodies, my hands stained almost black, and I fight my way to where my sultan lurks in the shadows. It’s the one corner that is not sprayed with goblin blood.
“How do I close it?” I demand, unable to stop fighting long enough to glance his way. “Tell me now!”
There’s a pause that could only be for a split second, but it feels like an eternity. I kill three goblins in the span it takes for his deep voice to rumble, “Blood.”
A goblin leaps—impossibly high for one so small, and catches me around the neck. My balance is thrown as he swings onto my back, sharp nails digging into my throat. He shrieks in my ear, a noise that sounds alarmingly like the cry one makes when throwing all their strength into a blow.
He’s going to bash my brains out.
I tuck my chin into my chest and hurl myself into a somersault, landing on claws and talons, and my shoulder hits a hammer. I bite back my cry of pain and stab backward, and it’s the sudden “Yeep!” that tells me I’ve hit my mark. I can’t even distinguish the flow of blood anymore.
I stand in a literal blood bath. One that covers the floor so thoroughly that not an inch of polished gold is visible. I fight my way toward that portal, every step the effort of a hundred horses against the torrent of blades and fangs and blue.
Eshe is suddenly beside me, her face smeared with black. I’ve never seen her look so serious in my entire life. Neither have I seen her boundless energy reducing so quickly, her single knife striking much too slowly.
“Blood!” I call to her. “We need to close the portal with blood!”
One of the other girls is only a few steps away. She’s much shorter than I, wearing a set of robes that, beneath the blood, were once fine. She turns her head, hearing me. Then she begins shouting, the strength of her voice belying her small frame and hunched shoulders.
“Close the portal with blood!”
Then we’re racing toward the sides of the portal, unable to approach the front because of the incessant stream of bodies. I realize belatedly that I didn’t ask how to close the portal with blood, whether there was some sort of something we had to do. But we are too far away from the sultan now.
Eshe bends down, scoops up a handful of liquid and splashes it straight onto the white and sapphire glittering edges of the portal. It shudders in response. A surprised goblin cry goes up.
More of the young women fight toward us, scooping and tossing blood onto the portal. It shakes and shudders, and I know I need to bend down and help. Submerge my hands. I need to do it.
I can do it. I can. I will. I start to reach down. Everything inside me revolts.
But then more goblins launch themselves at me, at Eshe, at the others coming to help. I don’t stay my blades. They need someone to watch their backs—they don’t need more cupped palms. They need me to keep them alive long enough to shut down the portal.
So I fight. And I tell myself that I’m not a coward for fighting.
The cacophony only gets louder and louder, a sharp sizzling cutting through their cries. I barely am in time to look up as the entire portal shudders, and then snaps shut like an enormous eyelid. It slices straight through the goblins.
It’s the work of a minute for the twelve of us to dispatch the rest—no, eleven. There’s only eleven of us. I spin, casting about in the sapphire ruins below a broken, glittering chandelier, but I see no sign of the fallen girl. Is she . . . buried?
I press a hand to my stomach, then bend over and dry heave. My entire body is shaking, shaking so hard I can barely stand. I don’t even want to look at the other young women, the ones I have saved, who have saved me. My reflection stares back at me in black.
It was only then that I realize the sultan is gone too.
I’m drenched. From head to toe. My hands are covered, my blades dripping.
Dark spots erupt across my vision. I barely hear a familiar voice call out, “Nadira!” and I have just one moment to ensure that Hulla’s shaking form is still standing before I stumble, fall—into darkness.
