Fifty
“Are you okay?” Maz’s steady voice called out as I tried not to think of my grandmother dead of the zoraat she had consumed. I tried not to think of me walking away from her, of the choices we’d both made to get here.
Death by her own revenge.
Will that be me?
Noor and Maz waited at the edge of the village, with Mazin’s horse saddled and a pack mule waiting behind it. Noor sat on the dirt, her hands and ankles magically bound together, a tie that was once around her mouth now loosened and drooping around her neck. I exhaled with relief at seeing her unharmed; her round eyes met mine and she nodded. Souma’s treasure was slung over the back of the pack mule and a single bag of zoraat remained.
“No,” I answered Mazin, “I’m not okay.”
My eyes narrowed on the zoraat.
I walked past him and snatched up the bag of seeds from the side of the mule.
“And I won’t be until these things are destroyed. All of them.”
I threw the bag on the ground, my chest heaving, a thousand screaming voices echoing in my brain.
These seeds were death.
My grandmother’s. Baba’s. All the protestors in the city fighting to survive. The power inside my veins rebelled at what I was about to do, but I ignored it. Instead, I concentrated the energy inside me into a single spear of pure flame and aimed it at the bag. In a flash it lit up, a flame so hot it turned bright blue before blazing red. It was over quick, the bag of zoraat burning to ash.
The ground was scorched black where the sack had been.
“Seems a bit of an overreaction,” Noor called out. She lifted her hands in the air. “Care to remove of these djinn-made bindings if you are going around burning things?”
I did the same to the rope tying her hands, concentrating my power there until they sputtered into a small flame and disintegrated.
After Noor was free, she stood, looking from me to Mazin. “The last time I saw you, you were trying to murder him. Now what are you? Friends?” She crossed her arms. “Or something more?”
“I changed my mind about the murder,” I said, putting my hands on my hips, deliberately ignoring her other question.
“Have you?” Maz raised a brow. “That’s a relief. I thought you might take up the sword against me again.” He smiled, and I returned the gesture.
That feeling fluttered in my chest, familiar and yet new. I didn’t know this Mazin, and yet he still set my body aflame like no magic that existed.
“I think I liked it better when you two wanted to kill each other,” groaned Noor.
I shot her a look. “Noted.”
“Your grandmother?” Mazin asked, and I didn’t meet his gaze. I felt the sorrow of her death, even though she had been responsible for everything. It was an odd clash of emotions—grief warring with anger. I understood why she had done it, which was perhaps what scared me most of all. That she had loved my mother so much it hadtrumped all other relationships and prevented her from seeing what she still had left.
Noor’s eyes were pinched with concern.
“She took too much zoraat,” I explained. “She couldn’t handle it. I tried to… purge it from her, but it would have taken all of me. That wasn’t something I was willing to give.”
Noor looked down at the ground, as if another memory preyed on her. I glanced to Maz whose dark eyes were bleak. We were all haunted by death here, and it was time to finally banish those demons.
But I allowed myself one moment, one small instant of grief.
I wrapped my arms around myself and closed my eyes, thinking of my mother, father, and grandmother. All the people who were now gone.
Mazin’s sure footsteps came closer, until he dropped an arm across my shoulders and pulled me in against his chest. I pressed my face into his sherwani and inhaled—lemons, woods, and morning. All the things that made me think of him and I’d wanted to expel from my memories I now helplessly leaned into. He pressed his hands into my unbound hair and pressed his lips to the top of my head as I sobbed against his shirtfront.
My grandmother may have made her choices, but the sounds of agony she made as I walked away would stay with me a long while.
I waited a few moments before pulling away from him and wiping my tear-streaked face with the back of my hand.
