WE’RE HALFWAY TO ILORIN before Tzain feels safe enough to pull on Nailah’s reins. When we come to a stop, he doesn’t move. I must’ve sparked a new level of rage.
As the crickets chirp in the towering trees, I slide off the saddle and hug Nailah’s gigantic face, massaging the special spot between her horns and her ears. “Thank you,” I whisper into her fur. “You’re getting the biggest treat when we get home.”
Nailah purrs and nuzzles her snout against my nose like I’m the cub she’s been tasked to protect. It’s enough to bring a smile to my face, but when Tzain drops to the ground and stalks toward me, I know even Nailah can’t protect me from this.
“Tzain—”
“What’s wrong with you?” he shouts with such fury that a family of blue-whisked bee-eaters flees from the trees overhead.
“I didn’t have a choice!” I rush out. “They were going to kill her—”
“What in gods’ names do you think they’re going to do to you?” Tzain slams his fist into a tree with so much force the bark splits. “Why don’t you ever think, Zél? Why don’t you just do what you’re supposed to do?”
“I did!” I reach into my bag and throw a velvet purse at Tzain. Silver pieces spill across the ground. “I got five hundred for the sailfish!”
“All the money in Orïsha won’t save us now.” Tzain palms his eyes, smearing tears on his cheeks. “They’re going to kill us. They’re going to kill you, Zél!”
“Please,” the girl squeaks, drawing our attention. She possesses an uncanny ability to shrink; I forgot she was even here.
“I…” Her face blanches. Under her long hood, I can barely make out her stark amber eyes. “This is my fault. All of it.”
“Thank you.” I roll my eyes, ignoring Tzain’s glare. Without her, Tzain would be nothing but smiles. Our family would finally be safe.
“What did you do?” I ask. “Why were the king’s men chasing you?”
“Don’t tell us.” He shakes his head and jabs his finger toward Lagos. “Go back. Turn yourself in. It’s the only chance we have to—”
She removes her cloak, silencing us both. Tzain can’t look away from her regal face. I can’t stop staring at the golden headdress fastened into her braid. It dips onto her forehead, all swooping chains and glittering leaves. In the center, a diamond-crusted seal shines. An adorned snow leopanaire, which only one family is allowed to wear.
“Oh my gods,” I breathe.
The princess.
Amari.
I kidnapped Orïsha’s princess.
“I can explain,” Amari says quickly. Now I hear the royal affect that makes my teeth grind. “I know what you must be thinking, but my life was in danger.”
“Your life,” I whisper. “Your life?”
Red flashes behind my eyes. The princess cries out when I slam her against a tree. She chokes, eyes wide with fear as I wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze.
“What are you doing?” Tzain shouts.
“Showing the princess what it looks like when her life’s actually in danger!”
Tzain yanks me back by the shoulders. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
“She lied to me,” I shout back. “She told me they were going to kill her. She swore she needed my help!”
“I did not lie!” Amari wheezes. Her hand flies to her throat. “Father’s executed members of the royal family just for sympathizing with divîners. He would not hesitate to do the same to me!”
She reaches into her dress and pulls out a scroll, gripping it so tightly her hand shakes.
“The king needs this.” Amari coughs and gazes at the parchment with a weight I can’t place. “This scroll can change everything. It can bring magic back.”
We stare at Amari with blank faces. She’s lying. Magic can’t come back. Magic died eleven years ago.
“I thought it was impossible, too.” Amari registers our doubt. “But I saw it with my own eyes. A divîner touched the scroll and became a maji.…” Her voice softens. “She summoned light with her hands.”
A Lighter?
I step closer, studying the scroll. Tzain’s disbelief sticks to me like the heat in the air, yet the more Amari speaks, the more I dare to dream. There was too much terror in her eyes. A genuine fear for her well-being. Why else would half the army chase down the princess if her escape didn’t pose some greater risk?
“Where’s the maji now?” I ask.
“Gone.” Tears brim in Amari’s eyes. “Father killed her. He murdered her just because of what she could do.”
Amari wraps her arms around herself, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears inside. She seems to shrink. Drowning in her grief.
Tzain’s exasperation softens, but her tears don’t mean a thing to me. She became a maji, her voice echoes in my head. She summoned light with her hands.
“Give me that.” I motion for the scroll, eager to inspect it. But the moment it touches my fingers, an unnatural shock travels through my body. I jump back in surprise, dropping the parchment to cling to the bark of a jackalberry tree.
“What’s wrong?” Tzain asks.
I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. The strange sensation buzzes beneath my skin, foreign yet familiar at the same exact time. It rumbles in my core, warming me from the inside out. It beats like a second heartbeat, vibrating like …
Like ashê?
The thought makes my heart clench, revealing a gaping hole inside me that I didn’t even know still existed. When I was young, ashê was all I ever wanted. I prayed for the day I would feel its heat in my veins.
As the divine power of the gods, the presence of ashê in our blood is what separates divîners from maji. It’s what we draw on to use our sacred gifts. Ashê is what maji need to do magic at all.
I stare at my hands for the shadows of death Mama could conjure in her sleep. When ashê awakens, our magic awakens as well. But is that what’s happening now?
No.
I crush the spark inside of me before it can blossom into hope. If magic’s back, that changes everything. If it’s truly returned I don’t even know what to think.
With magic come the gods, thrust into the center of my life after eleven years of silence. I barely picked up the shattered pieces of me after the Raid.
If they abandon me once more, I won’t be able to do it again.
“Can you feel it?” Amari’s voice drops to a whisper as she takes a step back. “Kaea said the scroll transforms divîners into maji. When Binta touched it, all these lights burst from her hands!”
I turn up my palm, searching for the lavender glow of Reaper magic. Before the Raid, when a divîner transformed, there was no guarantee what kind of maji that divîner would be. Often divîners inherited the magic of their parents, almost always deferring to the magic in their mother’s bloodline. With a kosidán father, I was sure I would become a Reaper like Mama. I longed for the day I would feel the magic of the dead in my bones, but right now all I can feel is an unnerving tingle in my veins.
I pick up the parchment with care, wary it’ll trigger something again. While I can make out a yellow painting of the sun on the weathered scroll, the rest of the symbols are unreadable, so ancient they look older than time itself.
“Don’t tell me you believe this.” Tzain lowers his voice. “Magic’s gone, Zél. It’s never coming back.”
I know he’s just trying to protect me. These are words he’s had to tell me before, wiping my tears, stifling his own. Words I’ve always listened to, but this time …
“Others who touched the scroll.” I turn to Amari. “They’re maji now? Their gifts returned?”
“Yes.” She nods, eagerly at first, but with time her enthusiasm fades. “Their magic came back … but Father’s men got to them.”
My blood chills as I stare at the scroll. Though Mama’s corpse flashes into my mind, it’s not her face I picture bloodied and beaten.
It’s mine.
But she didn’t have her magic, a small voice reminds me. She didn’t have a chance to fight.
And like that, I’m six years old again, curled behind the fire in our Ibadan home. Tzain wraps his arms around me and points me toward the wall, forever trying to shield me from the world’s pain.
Crimson splatters into the air as the guard beats Baba again and again. Mama screams for them to stop while two soldiers jerk the chain over her neck, so tight the majacite links draw blood from her skin.
She chokes as they drag her from the hut like an animal, kicking and thrashing.
Except this time, she would have magic.
This time, she could win.
I close my eyes and let myself imagine what could have been.
“Gb3 ariwo ikú!” Mama hisses through her teeth, given new life with my imagination. “Pa ipò dà. Jáde nínú 1j1 ara!”
The guards strangling her freeze, shaking violently as her incantation takes hold. They scream as she rips their spirits from their bodies, killing them with the wrath of a Reaper in full command of her gifts. Mama’s magic feeds off her rage. With the dark shadows twisting around her, she looks like Oya, the Goddess of Life and Death herself.
With a guttural cry, Mama tears the chain from her neck and wraps the black links around the remaining guard’s throat. With magic, she saves Baba’s warrior spirit.
With magic, she’s still alive.
“If what you say is true”—Tzain’s anger cuts into my imagination—“you can’t stay. They’re killing people for this. If they catch it with Zél—”
His voice cracks and my heart rips into so many pieces I don’t know if my chest will hold. I could screw everything up for the remainder of his days, yet Tzain would still die trying to keep me safe.
I need to protect him. It’s his turn to be saved.
“We have to go.” I roll the parchment and place it in my pack, moving so quickly I almost forget the silver-filled purse on the ground. “Real or not, we have to get back to Baba. Escape while we still can.”
Tzain swallows his frustration and mounts Nailah. I crawl on behind him when the princess speaks, shy like a child.
“W-what about me?”
“What about you?” I ask. My hatred for her family flares. Now that we have the scroll, I long to leave Amari stranded in the forest, let her starve or become a hyenaire’s prey.
“If you’re taking that stupid scroll, she has to come.” Tzain sighs. “Otherwise she’ll lead the guards straight to us.”
Amari’s face blanches when I turn back to her.
As if I’m the one she has to fear.
“Just get on.” I scoot forward on Nailah’s saddle.
As much as I want to leave her behind, we’re not done with each other yet.