One of her tentacles shot out, snaking around Ali’s leg and ripping him from Sobek’s grip. He yelped in surprise, the flooded sand growing small in the distance as he was passed up Tiamat’s vast body, overwhelmed by the blur of dazzling scales and the briny smell of rotting marine life.
The last tentacle deposited him onto a massive, webbed paw, its claws rising around Ali like lethal saplings. Tiamat drew him close to her gruesome face and grinned, revealing brackish teeth. This close he could see that great scars marred her body, perhaps the remnants of some long-ago battle.
Such fuss for something so small, she said by way of greeting. I hope you are worth being awakened.
She ripped into his mind.
Ali was driven to his knees, clutching his head as Tiamat wrenched open his life before his eyes. This was not Sobek or the monsoon marid idly flipping through memories like a bored student might study a book. This was everything at once, a blur of faces and laughter and pain. Climbing trees in the harem and weeping for his mother. The thrust of a dagger through his stomach on a cold night and Darayavahoush strangling him in the infirmary. The smell of blood, always blood. Anas’s blood in the arena sand, shafit blood drying on Ali’s face, Lubayd’s blood spilling from his lips, copper-flecked blood dripping from his father’s ear. Emotions. Passions. Lusts and hungers and things so long forgotten Ali wasn’t entirely sure they were even his.
Sobek lunging from the Nile to save him from Qandisha and guiding him through the currents. The monsoon marid seizing him; Ali seizing Nahri. Nahri tumbling with him to the bed, her hands running down his body. Her hands cutting into his chest. The seal ring, wet with blood, on her thumb where it belonged …
Tiamat abruptly turned over her hand. Ali plummeted to the sand, landing hard on his back.
He gave it back. The amusement had vanished from her voice.
You let him leave your waters with it, and HE GAVE IT BACK.
Ali gasped for air, catching his breath just in time for Tiamat to press her clawed paw against his chest, pinning him to the flooded ground. The salty water washed over his face.
Mortal, do you know what I would have given you for that ring? You wish to travel the currents? I would have devoured your enemies and seated you on a throne of their bones. I would have given you such power that you could have broken your world and re-formed it in the light you so desperately crave.
Sobek grunted, a low warning sound that would have made every hair on Ali’s back stand on end if Tiamat hadn’t been crushing him to death. The Nile marid was almost all crocodile now. “He has fulfilled his ancestor’s pact. He is under my protection.”
Tiamat made a sound that could have been her version of a snort—a horrible clacking coming from her monstrous mouth. You and your pacts, Sobek. She put more weight into her paw, and Ali writhed, certain his chest was about to collapse. Have you ever seen how protective a crocodile can be over its eggs, mortal? How swiftly that can change?
“He is kin,” Sobek insisted. “He can see the currents and shape our magic. The blood debt that binds us from striking back at the Nahid’s champion marks him as well.”
Tiamat laughed but then released Ali. He rolled onto his side, choking and coughing.
Kin? Have you read his mind? He thinks of us as hell-bound demons and monsters. He despises you for what you did to his ancestors. He told the Nahid he wanted to crawl out of his skin when he learned you were part of him!
Sobek didn’t flinch. “He is young. He will come to understand.”
And is that what you wish, Sobek? That I give him back so you may have another daeva pet to keep company with in your lonely river? Why don’t we see what your cousins think?
Tiamat shifted, shaking the ground, and then a burst of light rushed down her finned back and through the spine of her tail, glowing faintly beyond the curtain of blue water like signal fire along a mountain chain. More marid were emerging from the depths now, clustering closer.
Ali climbed to his feet, his body and mind aching. “What’s going on?” he asked Sobek.
“They are communing.” There was open longing in the Nile marid’s expression. “She is sharing your memories among them.”
The prospect of even more creatures gaining access to his innermost thoughts made Ali’s stomach turn. “Do you not join them?”
“No.”
Sobek’s voice was cutting, but Ali pressed him. Deadly family history aside, the Nile marid was his only ally down here, and there was still so much Ali didn’t know. “Why not?”
Sobek gave him a look so vicious that Ali stepped back. “Because I disobeyed her.”
Ali didn’t get a chance to question him further. Tiamat was already moving for them again. My children remind me that you came with offerings. Shall we see what you have brought to buy your life?
With a burst of water, Ali’s ship appeared before them. Tiamat dragged a claw down its neck, splitting it like a hawk might rip open a rabbit. The hold burst, jewels and incense and precious resins spilling forth. One of her tentacles rooted through the piled treasure, tossing precious objects this way and that as though it weren’t a life-altering fortune on the sand.
Trinkets, she dismissed them all, burying in a spray of mud a chest of gold that could have bought an army. What good will sparkly baubles do in my realm? I was awakened from my sleep to deal with you, and all you’ve done is disappoint me. She snatched at the chest of books.
“No, don’t—” Ali spoke up, finally finding his voice before her.
Tiamat paused, and Ali glanced up to see a wild grin on her terrifying
