She snorted. “It’s a magic that suits you.”
The prince frowned. “Because I’m a coward?”
She paused, remembering she’d called him that in the Wanderer’s Sanctuary. That he would bring up such a flippant barb now, when they were in such peril, made her laugh. “That’s one way of putting it. It’s—”
Footsteps. Two pairs. Coming from around the corner.
Aisha moved on instinct, pressing herself against the wall and drawing her sword. Her grip on the foreign blade was awkward, but it would suffice. She was not sentimental about her weapons. All that mattered—all that had ever mattered—was that they could cut. She pressed a finger to her lips as the prince hurriedly threw his shadow over his head and vanished.
Soon the footsteps were right beside her. Aisha lunged. The men reacted too slowly. She looped her arms around one’s neck, pressed the edge of her blade into his throat, and glared over his shoulder at his companion. “One more step and I’ll cut his throat.”
The second man was undeterred. He rushed her with his blade.
But the assault never came.
One moment he was running toward her. The next, he was struggling in place with his sword arm bent awkwardly behind him. Aisha couldn’t see the prince, but she could hear his quavering voice coming from behind the captured man. “Tell us where the merchant is.”
The assailant beneath Aisha’s blade shuddered. “In our treasure chamber.”
Aisha hesitated. A trap?
The prince’s prisoner shifted. And then—he broke free, wrenching away Mazen’s invisible hand and throwing himself against the wall. The prince gasped.
The man Aisha had captured threw her off in the same moment, nearly knocking the blade from her hand. Aisha staggered. She just barely managed to duck an incoming strike from her assailant as she rushed the other man. The prince’s shadow had fallen from his shoulders, and Aisha saw him crushed against the wall, hands uselessly outstretched to shield himself from his attacker, who was raising his blade.
Aisha stabbed him in the lungs before he could bring it down.
Prince Mazen made a choked sound of distress as the dying man collapsed in front of him.
The still-living man came at them with a roar. Aisha reached for her sword, but it was stuck fast in her victim’s shoulder. Thankfully, the prince was faster. He grabbed the corpse’s sword off the ground and swept it through the air. The motion was clumsy, panicked, but it still landed. The sword lodged itself into the villain’s shoulder.
The man screamed. Prince Mazen screamed.
Aisha experienced a moment of startling clarity. She slid behind the prince as the killer pulled the sword out of his shoulder with a grunt. Mazen stumbled back, gripping the now-bloody blade with shaking hands.
Aisha was ready for him.
No sooner had he fallen into her than she wrapped her arms around him from behind and grasped his hands over the sword hilt. The prince stiffened. Aisha marveled at the softness of his hands in her calloused ones. She could feel his frenzied, fragile heartbeat beneath her fingers.
She pushed the observations away and focused on guiding his blade. Their opponent was still staggering from the first wound, so when she and Mazen plunged the sword into his chest, he did not retaliate.
He groaned, bled. And slowly, he died.
Mazen’s hands were shaking so badly Aisha could barely keep hold of them. The moment she peeled herself away, he keeled over like a puppet with cut strings.
“Prince?” She stepped forward.
He abruptly straightened. He looked unbalanced, like a passenger on a ship trying to acclimate themselves to the turbulent sway of the ocean. “I’m okay.”
Aisha frowned. “You’ve killed ghouls before, haven’t you?”
The prince breathed in deeply. “Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
She looked at him for a long moment before she handed back the sword. “Then come on. Let’s find this treasure chamber.” She reached down to pluck the sword off the fresh corpse, then strode on ahead. The prince followed.
They passed through more ruined corridors, saw more dusty wall paintings. Aisha was unaccustomed to filling silences, but she tried to comfort the clearly unhinged prince by musing aloud her opinion that the ruins had once belonged to jinn. She hoped the speculation would distract him, maybe even coax him into telling one of the stories he was so obsessed with, but Prince Mazen didn’t respond. He was staring at his hands. At the red smeared on them.
“Prince?”
Mazen didn’t respond. His eyes were foggy, unfocused.