Baba and I were a team. Ever since my mother died, we were together against everything.
Mazin followed my father into his smith, and a flush of shame heated my cheeks. The boy threw the curl of a grin at me over his shoulder as he went.
I clenched my fists tight against my legs.
That boy had made an enemy today.
Four
I dug till my hands bled. After a few days I’d healed enough from my injuries that every hour was focused on tunneling underneath the floor of my cell. We moved forward in inches, and though it was the tiniest of increments, I felt like I was moving with purpose.
Freedom.
Family.
I pushed back against that tiny voice that wanted a different goal, a darker, more wrathful purpose.
Revenge.
But I couldn’t afford to think about vengeance now. My only priority needed to be getting back to my father and making sure he was okay.
The first few days of digging, Noor and I worked quietly together, shifting away the black earth millimeter by millimeter. But after a year of being confined alone, I wasn’t about to continue the silence. Working alongside her made me realize I wasn’t impervious to the need for human companionship, as much as I wanted to pretend otherwise.
We sat in the dark tunnel, illuminated by the sun filtering through the small slice of window, as I chipped away at the earth and passed cups of dirt back to her.
“You worked for Emperor Vahid? Dealing with djinn magic?” I asked cautiously. I had been itching to talk to her about it for days, turning over her earlier words in my mind. If she had access to zoraat—the most powerful substance in our world—there was no telling what she could do once she broke out of here.
She paused, holding the tin cup in her hand. She lifted her eyes to the small window in my cell, staring at the disappearing light.
“Technically one of his chieftains,” she responded finally. “His name was Souma and he was responsible for managing Vahid’s zoraat farms, as well as mixing the right doses for his soldiers and healers. I worked as an herbalist in Vahid’s royal apothecary, under Souma’s supervision.”
“All that djinn power.” My words were hushed. “How were you allowed to work with it? I thought you had to be incredibly special to even touch zoraat.”
“Are you saying I’m not special?” She arched a brow, but her smile faded. “Actually, I’m really not. Just an orphan who managed to be in the right place at the right time. I needed somewhere to go and Souma needed an assistant. Working with zoraat was quite dangerous and he kept… losing them.” She winced.
“So, you weren’t chosen because you were special, it was because everyone else died.”
I handed her another cup of dirt. Noor emptied it in the waste bucket and came back to the tunnel.
“I suppose you could say that. But I also had a knack for zoraat blends. You must consume the djinn seeds in exactly the right proportions or the results can be catastrophic. Emperor Vahid mixes his own blends, of course—they say the djinn he bargained with for the power taught him how to use it. But for the soldiers and healers and anyone else who uses zoraat, Souma and his staff mix the blends.”
“Did you try them?” I couldn’t hide the awe in my voice. I had never known anyone who had eaten zoraat. I had seen Emperor Vahid a few times in passing when I’d been at the palace with Maz but hadn’t ever spoken to him directly.
To be able to use raw djinn magic, to have the power to reconfigure your body, to wield a smokeless flame or shake the very earth we walked on—those kinds of abilities could come in handy. I flexed my fingers, not thinking about the djinn magic so much as my own skills—the swords I longed to hold, the daggers I dreamt to throw again.
It wasn’t magic I craved, but the weight of steel in my grip.
“No, I never got to use them myself. That was only for the generals or the emperor’s personal healers, and he controls their consumption very strictly. He never wants to give anyone more than they need. But Souma said I was one of the finest blenders of djinn magic he’d ever seen. It was one of the reasons he…”
Noor trailed away, her face shadowed in the darkness of the tunnel, the faint light catching the shimmer in her eyes. After a moment she cleared her throat. “It was one of the reasons he trusted me so much.” Her voice cracked.
Souma sounded like someone important to her. Perhaps even a father of sorts. I swallowed, my throat tight. I knew what it was to miss a father.
An unfamiliar kinship tugged at my heart, recognizing the shared emotion. We were more than just two escapees, we were two daughters, two people who had been wronged, two people trying to get back what we once had, though we probably never would. This place had stolen years of our lives, and we wouldn’t get the chance to live those again. I curled my fingers into the dirt, savoring the feel of it pushing under my fingernails. Someone was responsible for taking that life away from me, and I wanted to be the one to make him pay.
Noor’s sniff brought me back. She scraped more of the dirt into the tin cup.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
