“See that it finds Blood Shrike Helene Aquilla,” I tell him. Then I remember she is dead and gone and has been for a millennium. Once you do this, you can never come back. My queen’s voice is a whisper, gentle as a candle on a chill night. Even by the Empire’s famed Masks.Īs I offer him the parchment, I hear her. The wraiths are disparate scraps of lost souls, joined by ancient sorcery and undetectable when they wish to be. He submits reluctantly, cowed by my magic, straining always to be free of me. The words within are not.Īt my summons, the Wraith Lord approaches. Ghuls swish at my ankles.īeyond them, the Wraith Lord awaits my orders, along with the efrit kings and queens-of wind and sea, sand and cave, air and snow.Īs they watch, silent and wary, I consider the parchment in my hands. Then the glow fades, leaving only pallid moonlight. The four points of the Star flare, lighting the far reaches of the speckled granite cavern, eliciting a wave of angry hisses from the creatures around me. A wrench shudders through me as I offer the armlet up, and it oozes away like a silver eel to join with the Star. Enough to imprison the jinn for a thousand years.Īs if sensing the armlet clinging to my wrist, the Star rattles, yearning toward the missing piece. Such vast power within this weapon-enough to destroy an ancient city, an ancient people. The metal gleams with impatience, potent as the glare of a jungle beast closing in on prey. Thin striations spiderweb across it, a reminder of the day the Scholars shattered it after imprisoning my people.

It is a four-pointed diamond, with a narrow gap at its apex. The Star hangs from the wall of the cavern far from human eyes.

I swore two vows that day: to protect, always. “Meherya, no.” I have wondered in the years since then if she already feared what I would become. “I would destroy any who dared hurt you,” I said. It lit our children umber as they trailed scorch marks and laughter across the stone floor. That day, the breezes off the river ruffled her midnight hair and sunlight poured like liquid gold through the sheer curtains of the windows. I spoke with the passion and folly of youth, though I was not, of course, young. “I fear what you will do if harm comes to those whom you love.” “I fear for you, Meherya.” Her voice trembled. Her gaze settled on our children as they tore about the palace, their bodies flickering from flame to flesh, tiny cyclones of impossible beauty. But in later years, with a furrowed brow. My queen spoke the words often across the centuries we spent together.

A reaper at the gates by sabaa tahir