The shadow never moved, just stood there smiling at her from a distance. Find me, it whispered. Find me. Find me. By the time Aisha had dismounted, the voice was a relentless jeer, urging her onward and making her vision beat red with rage.
Aisha climbed the dune. Even when the wind battered her from every direction and her world descended once more into darkness, she climbed. She pressed her lips together—sand crunched between her teeth—and put one heavy foot in front of the other. Over and over and over again—until her heel met air.
There was a moment of suspension. And then Aisha stumbled, gracelessly sliding down the slope of sand on nerveless legs. One of her scarves flew loose, and by the time she’d reached the bottom of the dune, her throat was so full of sand she could barely breathe.
Irritated and shaken, Aisha cursed as she reached for her blades. She was relieved to feel both still sheathed at her hips.
Good. Her eyes were burning and her body was sore, but at least she had her weapons. She wrapped her fingers around the hilts as she squinted into the dust. That was when she saw the chasm: an ominous darkness partially hidden behind a curtain of sparkling sand.
Aisha threw a look over her shoulder at the desert. The storm still raged behind her, vicious and blinding and relentless—just as impenetrable as the void before her. Aisha knew a trap when she saw one. The jinn had orchestrated this so that regardless of which way she turned, she would be lost.
Find me. The taunt echoing from the darkness had the cadence of a song.
She faced the gloom with a glare. She had no way of knowing if the jinn was the cause of the sandstorm, but it didn’t matter. It was her job to exterminate the creatures. What kind of hunter would she be if she let this monster escape to wreak havoc on unsuspecting travelers?
She would deal with the jinn first, then she would find the group. Simple.
Aisha stepped forward. “Prepare yourself, jinn.”
She began the hunt.
21
LOULIE
Loulie saw Qadir’s fire first: a bright, nearly blue flame that flickered fiercely in the distance. It was the single guiding light in this pitch-black sandstorm. She rode toward it, stopping only when her horse’s hooves clicked rather than crunched.
Then Qadir was at her side, leading her horse into the cave. She cursed as she unwrapped the shawls from around her face. Her eyes burned like hell, and there was sand in her teeth. Qadir wordlessly handed her the waterskin as she dismounted, and she drenched both her face and throat with water before shaking off the thick layer of dust that had settled onto her clothing.
“No sand in your lungs?” Qadir said.
She coughed. “Only a little more than usual.”
Not long after Qadir tethered her horse, the prince entered the cave through a curtain of dark sand. His eyes were cracked with red as he slid off his saddle and unwound his scarves. Loulie expected a smirk, not the haunted look on his face. “Has Aisha arrived?” he asked. Loulie glanced at Qadir, who shook his head. The prince cursed. “I lost her in the storm.”
Though he made the proclamation calmly, Loulie saw his panic in the way his throat bobbed and in the way he looked not once, but twice over his shoulder, as if he expected his admission to summon the thief. Before Loulie could say anything, he went to stand at the cave entrance. Sand assaulted him from various directions, but the prince stood tall and still as he stared out into the dark void that had become the desert.
“Gods,” she heard him murmur. She was taken aback by the emotion in his voice.
“We’ll search for her after the storm clears.” Qadir approached the prince’s horse and patted the dirt from its muzzle.
The prince whirled. “But Aisha—bint Louas…” He looked at a loss for words.
She almost—almost—felt sorry for him. Mostly, though, she was disappointed that he too had not disappeared. That she could not lose him and flee this terrible quest.
Abruptly, as if he realized he’d let his mask fall, he turned away from the entrance and sighed. “Fine. We wait for the storm to clear.”
And wait they did. When evening came, they broke bread over the fire and took turns watching the mouth of the cave. There was barely any conversation between them, and Loulie was glad for it. She did not want to talk about the lost thief. And she did not want to talk about Dhyme again—especially when the topic was Ahmed.
She had been trying to forget him since he was mentioned last night, but now the conversation was etched into the back of her wandering mind: a reminder that she too would have to visit him. A reminder that, for all her convoluted feelings about the wali, she wanted to visit him. Loulie absently turned the thought over in her head. It faded only when she slept, once more dissipating into a problem to be addressed later. Always later.