I ground my teeth, the irrepressible urge to strangle him taking hold. “Or he did exactly what he did with the ghaiba. Magic passes him like a sieve, and he must have guessed he could tolerate the agony long enough to mold the seal and return it.”
“Quite a guess.” Sefa scowled at where the ring lay on the thick rug.
“Not a guess,” I growled. “A theory. Well, he is not the only one who can have them.” The doll’s compulsion over me broke when it fell onto my cuffs. If Soraya was to be believed, and my cuffs resisted the strongest tracking spells, it was possible they would negate the seal’s magic long enough for us to carry it to our wing.
“Hurry, the guard will not be long in the kitchens,” Sefa said.
Getting the ring to balance on my wrists without touching it proved a trickier feat than expected. Sefa clearly thought I had forsaken my wits, if her wary frown was any indication. Sefa could only see the ring sitting on the inside of my wrist, with no explanation as to why it did not char my flesh. With my hand facing upward and fingers pointed to the ground, I precariously balanced the ring on my right cuff.
“Good, good,” Sefa breathed. “I will go ahead and clear the path to our wing. Marek is probably waiting around the corner.” Checking again to reassure herself the ring hadn’t seared open my wrist, Sefa slipped outside the door, leaving it cracked for my foot to kick open.
I took a careful step toward the door, then another. The ring wobbled. I tried to keep my wrist as flat as possible. I had almost reached the door when I heard the voice.
“I would advise you against taking another step,” it said.
I nearly dropped the ring. Turning around without sliding it off the cuff took agonizing seconds.
The Sultana sat up, and twin white orbs stared at me in place of her eyes. Not a singular doubt existed in my rebelling stomach that the thing upright and smiling in bed was not the Sultana.
“Are you… Baira?” I choked.
The thing laughed, tossing Vaida’s head back. “Oh dear, no. But it was she who fused me to her seal, and I am afraid I must insist you return it to its rightful inheritor.”
I had not endured this venture only to be thwarted by a formless ghoul. Keeping my gaze trained on it, I shuffled back.
Between one breath and the next, the thing wearing Vaida materialized in front of me. The ring clattered from my wrist, falling somewhere between our bodies. It lingered too close, sharing my air. Its milky eyes brightened.
“Nearly there,” it sang. “They tried again and again, but your choices never changed. Who knew this one would meet with success?”
Its childish curiosity vanished, and I shrank from the ruthless threat in Vaida’s manipulated face. The rich Omalian quarters disappeared around us, and the thing’s voice echoed in a dark, ravenous cavern. Ancient magic pressed in against my sides, raking nails over my skin. With the certainty of the damned at the executioner’s axe, I knew this was not a magic mere mortals were meant to see. This was the cry of the first bird ever pushed from its nest, tentative wings stretching for flight. The first thunder of a restless sky. The waters moving under the Awaleen as they rested on their thrones beneath Sirauk, kept alive by their magic and trapped by it, too. I was a gnat fluttering toward the surface of the sun, burning from the mere flight.
“Baira’s seal is for her Sultanas alone. Do not breach her commandment again.”
The thing primly returned to its former position, and with a last smile at me, its eyes rolled forward. Vaida collapsed into the same position from which she had risen.
There were footsteps at the door, and I heard Marek’s teasing voice trying to cajole the guard away. At a loss, I kicked the ring under the dresser and prayed Vaida would think she knocked it from its nail during her drunken stupor.
I squeezed outside. Marek framed the guard’s face in his hands, blocking her periphery as I snuck down the hall.
“Where is it?” Sefa exclaimed when I rounded the corner. “Did it start to burn?”
I massaged my wrists, rattled by the echo of power waiting to devour me in the cavernous empty. “Yes, it did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
For the second trial, we had the privilege of an escort by carriage to the starting location. Diya pressed her forehead to the window, counting each tree we passed under her breath. Mehti handled stress the same way he seemed to handle everything: in excess. He maintained a steady stream of chatter about the dancers from yesterday’s festivals, then dove into a detailed description about the basturma he’d eaten wrapped around a roasted chicken.