Ali prodded a stone torso with his foot. The artist had certainly taken great care to exactly depict spilled intestines.
Get out of here. Now. Gripping his zulfiqar, Ali carefully edged away, turning back the way he’d come.
Just in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, something large skitter away.
Ali spun, but it was already gone, vanishing into the darkness. He waited, but there was no sound save his pounding heart and uneven breathing. Whatever was out there beyond the black was silent. Waiting.
Watching. Ali pulled free the iron knife Wajed had given him. A weapon in each hand, he stayed light on his feet, pushing past the pain in his ankle.
He still wasn’t ready.
A scaled tentacle lashed out, hitting Ali in the stomach and sending him flying. He’d only just landed in the sand, the wind knocked from his lungs, when he saw them—two demons lunging from the abyss. One was a sea scorpion the size of an elephant, with the horrifying upper half of a dead-eyed, purpling man. The second was equally monstrous: a horned viper with a spider’s legs and batlike wings.
Ali rolled just in time to avoid the scorpion man’s tail. Its stinger plunged into the flooded sand next to his head, the wicked, blade-sharp scythe dripping with poison.
He scrambled to his feet, narrowly avoiding a rake of the viper’s serrated legs, which would have ripped open his belly. The demons, monsters—whatever the hell they were—had taken Ali off guard.
But they would not catch him.
A blazing zulfiqar in his hand for the first time in months, Ali felt the despair and grief and utter helplessness that had gripped him since his city had fallen—since his father had banished him, since the marid had tortured him, since he’d awakened to the reality of living in a broken world in which his hands were tied in a thousand ways—fall away. The marid wanted a fight?
Fine.
Ali bellowed in rage, answering the viper’s hiss and the scorpion man’s awful moan, and threw himself at them.
He ducked the stinger again, then kicked the scorpion man in the chest, lashing out with his zulfiqar at the viper. It reared faster than his eye could track and then seized his injured ankle, dragging Ali to the sand.
This time the stinger didn’t miss.
Ali screamed as it pierced his shoulder, the burning pain of the poison like being flayed with a thousand iron knives. But more in fury than fear, he struck out with his zulfiqar, slicing through the scorpion man’s tail and severing the stinger, still embedded in his shoulder. The demon screeched as a spray of salty blood gushed from the wound.
Ali dropped the zulfiqar, ripped the stinger from his shoulder, and flung it at the viper’s face before retrieving his weapon. His left arm was numb, and he tripped over his own feet, battling a wave of wooziness. The scorpion man was squealing, wheeling and bucking about like a half-crushed insect as blood spurted from his tail.
The horned viper came back, though, whipping around Ali’s lower half and squeezing hard. Ali tried to wriggle free, gasping as the beast pressed the air out of him. His one working arm still free, he shoved the zulfiqar against the viper’s scaled hide. It sparked and smoldered as the two of them howled in their death match.
“STOP.” The rumbling voice was familiar enough by now that a mix of relief and apprehension was rushing over Ali before he even saw Sobek charging across the flooded sand.
The scorpion man pulled at his snarled beard, chittering and wailing.
“He is not an invader,” Sobek snapped. “He is kin.” Sobek seized the scorpion man’s tail, but instead of hurting him, a rush of water erupted from the Nile marid’s hands, pouring down the monster’s hide. In moments, his stinger was restored.
Sobek came for Ali next, untangling the horned viper trying to asphyxiate his descendant as though the beast were an inconvenient weed. There was something almost paternal about the annoyed exasperation with which he dragged Ali out of danger, and the reminder of the bond between them—the history Ali was still struggling to accept—made him want to throw up.
That could have also been the poison.
Sobek gripped his arm, sinking his claws into Ali’s skin and sending a burst of coolness surging through his body. Ali fell to his knees, and his zulfiqar sputtered out, but relief was already coming—his injuries gone in a flash. The puncture the scorpion had punched into his flesh sizzled like boiling water and then healed, leaving a new scar. Ali touched it, his fingers meeting rough hide. The patch of skin Sobek had healed, about the size of Ali’s hand, looked as though it had been replaced with Sobek’s own scales.
He didn’t have much time to consider it. The Nile marid had let go of Ali’s arm only to seize him by the chin, yanking him back to his feet. Sobek’s yellow eyes searched for the spot on Ali’s temple where Suleiman’s seal had been marked. It had started fading when Nahri took the ring, the few glimpses Ali had caught of his reflection in the water down here showing it was now gone for good.
Sobek’s eyes narrowed to reptilian slits. “You fool. That ring was your only hope of salvation with Tiamat.”
Ali wrested free of Sobek’s hand. “It wasn’t worth my people’s magic or my city’s safety.”
The marid’s expression twisted, snarling teeth layering with a disappointed grimace.
Then movement in the inky void shut them both up.
The ground shivered beneath Ali’s feet, ripples dancing across the flooded sand. The stone warriors trembled, a pair tipping over and smashing together, then breaking apart in an explosion of
