I opened my mouth and then closed it again, fighting for the words. Truth-telling was a dangerous game. There were so many words I wanted to say. No harm will come to your son. I’m not going to let it. Your son will live free and grow strong and clever. He will live to watch this rotten rule crumble. He will live to see tyrants fall and heroes rise in their place. He will have the childhood we never could. He will run until his legs are tired if he wants to, just chasing the horizon, or he will grow roots here if he’d rather. He will be a son any mother would be proud of and no harm will ever come to him in the world that we are going to make after you are gone.

It was too dangerous to promise any of that. I wasn’t an all-powerful Djinni; I couldn’t make promises. All I could manage was, ‘I don’t know what will happen, Shira. But I do know what I’m fighting for.’

‘You’d better.’ Shira leaned her head against the cool metal. ‘Because I’m going to die for it. That’s what I traded your rebellion for.’ Her tears had dried now. ‘I promised them that if they got my son out, I would show this city how a desert girl dies.’

*

The crowd in the square outside the palace was restless and roaring with noise. I could hear it before I even reached the balcony at the front of the palace. It was nearly dusk and they’d taken Shira away. They had offered her fresh clothes, but she’d turned them down. She hadn’t been dragged; she hadn’t fought or wailed. She’d stood up when they came for her, like a Sultima going to greet her subjects instead of a girl going to die.

She’d made me promise I would stay with her until the end. I might not be able to follow her onto the execution platform, but I wasn’t about to break a promise to a dying girl. Nobody tried to stop me as I strode through the palace halls, Imin trailing me like

I stepped through the curtains and got my first good look at Izman since the day I’d arrived. The balcony was half-shielded by a finely carved wooden latticework screen so that we could see the city without the people of the city seeing us. It overlooked a huge square, twice the size the rebel camp had taken up in the canyon. And it was filled to bursting. News of the execution of the Sultima had spread quickly. People were crowding to see a harem woman die for giving birth to a monster. It was like something out of the stories, but they were going to witness it.

The crowds jostled for a view around a stone platform that sat directly below the balcony. Looking down on it from this angle, I could see the stone wasn’t as smooth as it would look from below. It was carved with scenes from the darkness of hell. Men being eaten by Skinwalkers, Nightmares feeding off a child, a woman whose head was being held aloft by a ghoul with horns. That would be the last thing anyone led to the executioner’s block would see.

That was the last thing Shira was going to see.

I almost missed Tamid. He stood in the shadows of the corner looking miserable. Shira and Tamid had barely ever traded a word at home, no matter how small Dustwalk was. I got the feeling they would’ve hated each other if they had. But it occurred to me that Shira and Tamid had made it out of Dustwalk together. They had survived. They had survived what I’d done to them. They’d been together when I’d left them behind. That had to mean something.

‘It was a mistake to arrange this execution without consulting me, Kadir.’ I caught the edge of the Sultan’s conversation as I brushed by. He was furious. ‘The city is already restless. You should dispose of her in private. Like you did her child.’ Hala had succeeded in convincing the Sultan that the harem had watched Kadir murder Fadi. Good. He was safe.

‘She is my wife.’ Kadir sounded violent, even in the face of his father’s calmer anger. ‘She is mine to do with what I please.’

Kadir spotted me as he spun away on his heel from his father. A nasty smile spread over his face. ‘You’ – he shot the order to Imin – ‘you’re dismissed. Go find somewhere else to be.’

I sensed the other Demdji tense behind me. But he couldn’t refuse. He sketched a quick bow before ducking out.

‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Kadir sidled across the balcony towards me. My eyes darted for the Sultan, inadvertently, looking for help. But his attention was elsewhere. Rahim was nowhere in sight, either. Tamid was watching us. But there’d be no help from him. Even if he didn’t hate me, he was no match for a prince.

Kadir’s hand found the small of my back like he thought I was some puppet and he could pull all my strings. He shoved me past two of his wives, who were watching from behind the lattice screen, hiding from the crowd, out into the open at the edge of the balcony, where I was exposed. A few eyes from the crowd drew up towards us as we appeared.

‘You tried to help her get away.’ Kadir leaned into me, the pressure of his body forcing me against the railing, trapping me between him and open air and the sight of my cousin below. I could feel every inch of my body that he was touching fighting back against the feeling of him pressed to me. I hated more than anything that I couldn’t fight back. His breath was hot on my neck as he spoke. ‘And now I want you to watch her die.’

I didn’t need him to make me watch her die. No matter what happened, I would give her that. I wouldn’t do it for Kadir. I’d do it for Shira. Because whatever else she was, she was my flesh and blood and she deserved that much from me. She deserved a whole lot more, in fact. But this was all I had to give.

A roar came with Shira’s appearance onstage. Some of it was jeers, but those were drowned out quickly.