She wasn’t going to win this one.

I dropped to the ground and rolled under the iron chain toward her. I was on my feet and running before Tamid could finish whatever warning he was shouting.

I crashed into Shira and we collided with the ground. A hoof clipped my head, sending a spiderweb of blinding pain across my vision.

I started to get up, but Shira’s hand clamped over my ankle, wrenching me down. Her eyes were almost as frantic as the Buraqi’s.

“Mama’s going to tan your hide for this,” she hissed, her fingernails digging into the soft skin of my wrists.

“She’s gonna have to catch me first.” I drove my knee into her stomach before she could get us both killed. I untangled myself from her coughing shape and rushed to my feet.

A half dozen more women had entered the iron ring while we’d been scuffling like this was the school yard. They were keeping their distance. The Buraqi’s hooves were starting to sink back down in the sand. Much longer and it’d manage to go back to its immortal form and become part of the desert.

I whistled. It spun.

For a few long heartbeats we faced each other. I took one step. Then another. Two more. It still hadn’t moved.

All at once, Shira dove for it, gripping a fistful of iron. The Buraqi darted out of her way. And then it charged me.

I made myself hold my ground. Like I was facing down Jin’s bullet again. I wasn’t going to die today, not even now with the Buraqi’s hooves cutting through the sand and its weight bearing down on me.

I danced out of the way a moment before it reached me. I put out my hand, holding the nail; my skin skimmed its hide, then went flat against its flank. Iron and skin.

The Buraqi’s scream was the sound of something being torn, and I felt it deep in my gut. I moved with the immortal beast as it furiously struggled. I moved with it, fighting to keep skin against spirit. I saw the anguish in its face. It didn’t want to be trapped. I understood that. Neither did I. The nail dropped from my hand, but it didn’t matter.

My hands wrapped around its neck as it turned to muscle. The world seemed to drop away as the Buraqi panted against my chest. Sun and sand became flesh and blood below my fingers. I felt the strength of it below me, old as the world, older than death and darkness and sin. All I’d have to do was climb on its back and let it carry me to the end of the desert.

The Buraqi cried out and my thoughts scattered as the scream made something tear loose inside me.

Someone shoved me back as men swarmed the beast with my uncle at the forefront. My chance to run was gone. The Buraqi whinnied weakly as an iron bit was shoved between its teeth and nails and horseshoes were hammered to its feet. Three iron shoes, enough iron to anchor it to its physical form permanently, and one bronze, to make it obedient.

Men were shouting to send word that we had a Buraqi. Onlookers were whooping and laughing. Kids were clapping their hands. I was already forgotten. The beast tossed its head, looking at me like I’d betrayed it.

I had blood in my hair and on my clothes. No. I wasn’t letting it get taken away that easily. I started pushing through the crowd before I could think better of it.

Someone grabbed my arm and wrenched me sideways between two houses. A hand covered my mouth, keeping in my shout.

“Well, hello there,” a nasty voice slithered into my ear, “Little Miss Bandit.”

six

“Goddamnit, Fazim.” I shoved him away. I guess he made it out alive from the pistol pit after all. And he’d called me Bandit. He knew. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Fazim let me go, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He took two steps away from me, to the edge of the shadows between the two houses. He didn’t need to guard me all that close. We both knew I didn’t have anywhere to run.

“Do you always drag girls behind your house to beat them up for putting a knee in your sweetheart’s gut?” I leaned back against the weak wooden frame.

“Marry me.” He said it so suddenly, for a second I just stared at him with my jaw still moving.

Then I burst out laughing.

I couldn’t help it. He looked so damn pleased with himself. Like he really expected me to say yes. “Well, paint me purple and call me a Djinni, if that isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day.” I shoved bloody hair off my face.

He was still grinning. “You’ve got nice eyes, you know. There was someone else with eyes like yours out in Deadshot last night. Blue-Eyed Bandit, they called him. Got me thinking, not many people in this desert with eyes like that.”

Of all the times for him to grow some brains. “You saying I’ve got a long-lost brother?”

“You know what I’m saying, Amani.” He stepped toward me, and I fought everything in me telling me to step back. Only a few feet away the commotion over the Buraqi was still making a racket, but just then it felt like the world had narrowed to Fazim and me. “And you’re going to marry me so that no one else finds out.”

“And what’s the next part?” My eyes darted to the opening between the two houses. I saw a flash of colorful khalat as someone rushed by. I willed the next person to look our way. “You tell me you’re in love with me and these months with Shira have been a big ruse while you were waiting for my mother to be dead a year?”

Fazim grinned. Like he’d just been waiting for me to ask. “Well, until you caught that Buraqi, Shira was my best shot in town to get me on the way to rich.”

“And she’ll get you even further that way once my uncle sells it.” Was that why Shira had flung herself into the fray? To get this idiot to marry her, for love or money?