A laugh echoed behind her. A man’s laugh. “You did not learn your lesson the first time, human girl?” He stepped into the darkness. Though Loulie had never seen him in person, she knew immediately that it had to be Prince Mazen, for he was dressed in fine, rich clothing.
He shifted on his feet, and the shadows beneath him slowly stretched toward her, bleeding into the light. She stepped back. Once, twice, until she was walking backward, trying to put as much distance between herself and the possessed prince as possible. “Have you come again to ‘convince’ me?” The prince held out his arms, and the shadows surged forward, nipping at her heels. “You have no power here.”
She took another step back. Another and another—until she felt the cold press of the wall against her back. Prince Mazen drew close enough for her to make out his features. She saw his eyes—and stopped. She knew those eyes. The last time she’d seen them, they had been filled with innocent wonder.
“Yousef?”
The prince stopped in front of her. She thought she saw something pass over his face—fear or regret—before he smiled and said, “Yousef no more.”
“He’s not the one you want,” Loulie said with forced calm. Her hand was shaking, and it made the light quiver on the walls. “I told you before: he’s not a hunter.”
“No,” the jinn wearing the prince’s skin said. “He is not. He is, in fact, inconsequential.”
Inconsequential. The word was a strike of flint against her dark memories.
Loulie remembered her father, starry-eyed and full of laughter. Her mother, with her sly smiles and warm hugs. She remembered a knife against her throat, a man with a serpentine smile. You are all inconsequential, he had said.
Loulie breathed out softly. She forced herself to look into the prince’s eyes. “No life is inconsequential.” She didn’t know whom she was speaking to anymore. She only hoped that whoever it was would see the truth in her words.
“Oh?” the prince said dryly.
A strange thing happened then. The darkness in the room abated, giving way to a dusky gray. Loulie heard the shouts of an audience that had moments ago been trapped in the dark. She saw the prince quiver like a leaf in the wind, then collapse to his knees with a gasp.
His shadow rose up from the ground. It sharpened itself into a blade.
The world suddenly seemed too fast, and she, too slow. She cried out a warning, but the prince’s movements were sluggish. He looked up. Recognition flashed through his eyes.
And then the shadow stabbed him through the chest, and his eyes went wide with pain.
He collapsed silently to the ground as the shadow pulled back. Crimson pooled on the floor beneath him, and it seemed to Loulie that it was the only color in the room.
“I told you.” The jinn’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. “He is inconsequential.”
Loulie could feel the jinn watching her from the shadows, but she could not stop staring at the prince, willing him to move.
He did not.
Loulie heard screaming, but the sound seemed to come from a great distance. She did not realize the source of it until the sultan rushed to his son’s side and collapsed to his knees. He yelled Mazen’s name as he took his limp body into his arms.
Loulie could only stare on numbly. Is this… my fault?
The jinn lunged at her from the shadows as an angry stream of smoke. She filled Loulie’s sight, appearing before her as a crimson-eyed wraith. Loulie swept the blade through the smoky shape, but her knife hissed through empty air.
“You are too softhearted for your own good,” the jinn said softly. “How will you seek revenge on the assassins in black with such a fragile heart?”
Loulie swung the blade wildly through the air. With every motion, she became aware of a familiar burning sensation in her lungs. She did not care. She kept slicing and screaming until her body was shaking with fatigue. Memories of blood and stars and corpses flashed before her eyes. I am not fragile, she thought. I am not fragile. I am not fragile.
But the shadows were persistent. They grabbed her arms and legs and threw her to the ground. There was a loud crack, and the light from the orb blinked and died. The room went a nightmare pitch black. Loulie scratched at the ground. Grasped her knife with numb fingers. She wouldn’t die here; she refused to die here—
GET UP. A deep voice, familiar as her own heartbeat, thudded through her mind.
Loulie gasped and opened her eyes. She saw Qadir’s knife lying beside her, blazing with blue fire. Red eyes blinked at her from the blade’s surface.