Imad took another step forward. Mazen saw silver glint between his fingers. Throwing knives. “Now, because of your jinn, I must resort to torture the old-fashioned way.” He raised a hand, snapped his fingers. “Kill her.”
Mazen was too busy gripping Loulie, too busy fearing for her life, to notice the killer behind Aisha shift. He did not notice the gleam of his knife until it was too late.
Until it tore a gash into Aisha’s throat.
There was no scream. No cry.
Just Aisha’s single-eyed gaze, boring into him desperately. And then nothing. The spark of panic faded, and Aisha bint Louas collapsed.
The world tilted.
Mazen was aware of his heartbeat. Of breathing in and in and in. Of a scream, beating wildly in his chest. Of the merchant, biting her fist so hard blood trickled down her knuckles.
“Your brother took everything from me.” Imad was close enough to stab him, close enough to kill him. “Now I shall take everything from him.”
Mazen couldn’t stop looking at Aisha. At her impossibly still body.
Get up, he thought desperately. Get up!
But Aisha didn’t move.
She had been so confident, so powerful. An unfaltering force of nature. If she could not survive, how could he?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. To Aisha. To the merchant.
Again, the world shook. Mazen stumbled on his feet as the walls shuddered. He no longer had enough strength to hold the merchant, to stand—not even enough to see right. He blinked.
The world righted itself.
Then, again, it shook. Tilted.
And cracked.
There was a sound—Mazen recognized it as the sigh of cascading sand.
Imad turned. Mazen followed his gaze to the web of cracks breaking across the surface of the ancient walls. They spread and stretched like veins, pulsing, thrumming, until the walls burst and a torrent of sand crashed through the room in the form of a gigantic wave.
Mazen stumbled back as Imad was swallowed.
The world disappeared, replaced by a hazy veil of black.
And then there was sand in his eyes and nose and throat, and the merchant was no longer in his arms, and Gods, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, help…
He was sinking, sinking, sinking. Until—
The sand beneath him gave way, and Mazen fell into nothingness.
46
LOULIE
Layla could not stop staring at the stretch of sparkling, flowing sand. This was her first time seeing the Sandsea up close. It took her breath away.
“Majestic, isn’t it?” She whirled to see her mother riding beside her on one of the tribe’s camels.
Layla glanced back at the shifting gold-red tides. “It looks like the ocean.” Some people said the sea was infinite, that it had no bottom. Was the Sandsea the same way?
“The jinn live there,” her mother said. “So far down only the strongest can climb out.”
Layla tilted her head. “Does that mean if we dove deep enough, we could visit the jinn’s world like they visit ours?”
Her mother smiled wryly. “The jinn have magic, dearest one. Magic to help them break through a tide of endless sand. We do not have that same power; we would stop breathing before we reached the bottom.” Layla startled when her mother set a hand on her shoulder. “We are wanderers, but even we must never venture into the Sandsea. It is too dangerous.” She raised a brow. “You hear me, Sweet Fire? Do not ever walk into the Sandsea.”
Layla turned away to hide her flush. It wasn’t that she’d actually been considering it. Just that she was… curious. She cleared her throat. “You told me once the Sandsea was made from jinn fire?”
Her mother’s gaze turned wistful. “The Sandsea is a rip in the world, made from a fire so fierce it has never stopped burning. That kind of magic—you must stay away from it. Do you understand, Sweet Fire?”
Loulie did not understand.
She did not understand why the Sandsea had suddenly swallowed the ruins and why it had not yet killed her. Everywhere she looked, there was sand. And yet that sand was more a tunnel than an ocean, a churning eddy of red and gold that spun around her like a tornado.
She fell, and it was like falling into the sun.
Is this what the Sandsea has been all along? A tunnel to the center of the world?
But then, finally, the end came.
She hit the ground hard enough to have the breath knocked from her lungs. Slowly, she forced herself to sit up. She spotted the prince first. He was on his knees a few feet away from her, digging the compass out of the sand. She had recovered it in the darkened treasure chamber when Imad threw it away during the scare—she was glad it had made it down here with them.