Over the roofs of Miraji behind me, the sun was setting.

I flattened myself on my stomach and aimed the gun. God, I hoped it was a good gun. I didn’t have a plan beyond shooting the executioner. But that had to be enough, for now at least. I had to save Ahmed and then I could worry about whatever came next.

The executioner stepped onto the stage and my heart stuttered. They hadn’t sent a man to kill Ahmed. The Sultan had sent an Abdal.

Even I couldn’t make that shot.

I had the executioner in my crosshairs and I was helpless. I aimed the gun all the same. I fired. One clean shot, through the knee. A scream went up from the crowd at the sound of gunfire. But the executioner didn’t so much as stagger. I fired again and again and again, aiming desperately for the tiny target of its foot. Until the gun in my hand was empty.

Until the Abdal had reached Ahmed.

It forced him to his knees in front of the wooden block they’d laid there. Ahmed didn’t fight. He knelt down with dignity, his eyes going down to the gruesome scenes below as he laid his head on the executioner’s block.

I reached out for the desert. I could feel it scattered through the streets, sand invading the city. I started to gather it to me but the pain stabbed through my side, sending me down with a cry, scattering the sand back to street dust.

The mechanical man took one step backwards. Swinging the axe upwards. And I was helpless. I was helpless without my Demdji powers, without any bullets. Unable to stop it. Unable to do anything.

‘Ahmed!’ His name ripped out of me. Through the crowd. Over the din of people calling out, pressing forward, calling for his head, for his freedom.

I was too far away for him to hear me. Too far away to reach him. But somehow from the block his head tilted up just as the axe swung high. He looked straight at me. His eyes met mine.

The low rays of the sun struck the iron of the axe, turning it into a blazing light as it reached its pinnacle.

But the sun didn’t stop. Time didn’t stop. The world didn’t show any sympathy for my grief.

The axe fell. It turned from sunlight to iron. To blood.

Chapter 51

I didn’t cry until I was safe.

I wasn’t even sure how we got back to the Hidden House. All I knew was a hand leading me through streets that had turned to chaos as soon as the axe fell. Through a world that had stopped making sense. Jin. He could’ve been leading me to the executioner’s block and I wouldn’t have known until I was looking up at the crowd with the axe hanging above me.

But then we were through the doors, into the safe haven of the Hidden House, where we’d all been together only two nights before. Sara was waiting inside the doors, a screaming baby on her hip. Her lips were moving, but I didn’t hear anything she said. Jin pulled me past her. And it came on like a punch to the gut. My knees gave out below me on the stairs.

I sobbed. For all the dead. For all the losses. For the things that had been taken away. It was seared into my mind forever. The blade. The blood. The eyes.

The look in his eyes as they met mine across the crowd.

A second before he died.

And it was my fault. Mine and someone I trusted. Someone I thought was innocent.

The scream came on so sudden and violent that I had to stuff my sheema into my mouth to keep it from being heard through the walls of the house. It tasted of sweat and sand and of Jin’s skin somehow.

I could hear the sounds from the next room. Voices dropped low, tentative with uncertainty and thick with grief. What was left of the Rebellion. The folk who’d escaped the attack at Shazad’s.

The murmur was soothing. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall.

Too many people had traded their lives for someone else’s now.

Bahi had burned to save Shazad.

Shira had walked to the executioner’s block for her son.

Rahim had thrown himself on the mercy of his merciless father for Leyla.

My mother had bowed her head to a noose for me.

I thought about revenge and about love and about sacrifice and the great and terrible things I’d seen people do. I thought about how many people I’d seen lay their lives down for the Rebellion, over and over.

I thought about the moment the axe fell. The eyes locking with mine a second before the light left them.

The stairs creaked with a new weight next to me. I knew it was Jin without opening my eyes. I knew before he leaned his weight into my side. Before he laced his hand with mine, running his thumb across my palm in a slow circle.

‘We’re not done yet.’ My voice scraped out. Almost gone but still there. I finally opened my eyes.

‘I know.’

*

The low murmur of voices died with our entrance, leaving nothing but the chanting in the streets below. A constant thrum like a heartbeat. Good. Silence was death. And the Rebellion wasn’t dead yet.

And every eye in the room was on me. Rebels I knew well and rebels I didn’t.

Hala’s golden hands were wrapped around a steaming cup someone had given her, dark hair all over her face. Sara sat in a corner, her son asleep in her arms, staring through the shutters into the street below and blinking back tears. Sam was running his finger around the rim of an empty glass, over and over. Maz was wrapped in a blanket, shaking violently, blue hair sticking up at all angles. Tamid was stitching the wound in Izz’s arm from where the bullet had torn through his wing, obviously grateful for something to do.

There was only one spot left free, at the head of the table. Half of the people in the room were sitting on the floor rather than take that place. I felt Jin tense behind me as he saw it.