Movement drew Dara’s eye. A skinny length of cord that must have been held in place by the frame jerked swiftly out of sight. Odd.
He’d only just stepped back when there was an explosion outside the window.
Dara stumbled, shielding his eyes against the sudden flare of light, the stool tilting and falling with his movement, depositing him ungracefully on the ground. There was the acrid aroma of gunpowder.
Ah. The trap.
Another blast and a metal ball the size of his fist shot through the window he’d been hoping to fly through, smashing into the opposite wall and raining dust over his head. Irtemiz yelped, ducking beneath her uninjured arm.
The door to the room burst open. The two Geziri guards stood there, outlined in the blazing light of the corridor’s torches.
Dara felt a moment of sorrow looking into their doomed faces. He’d been a soldier and knew the feeling of being thrust into a battle you had no choice in fighting.
They’d taken his warrior, though, and made a snare of her. So his sorrow was short-lived.
He lunged forward, drawing his knives before the men could take a breath. They were dead in the next moment, falling to the ground while clutching the throats he’d opened. It didn’t matter—shouts and the sound of pounding feet were already drawing nearer.
A second shot came through the window, ending any hopes of escaping that way. Dara spun back on Irtemiz, tossing her a knife.
“Run,” she begged him. “Leave me, please.”
“Not happening, little one. Hold tight.” With a knife in one hand and his ax in the other, he charged out the door, beckoning for her mat to float after him.
A volley of arrows and bolts greeted his emergence, but Dara had been expecting the attack and froze them in the air.
Over a dozen warriors blocked them in, arrayed across the three corridors. The majority were Geziris, some still wearing tattered uniforms from the Royal Guard.
“It’s an ifrit!” one of the soldiers cried, aiming a crossbow.
An older man snarled. A nasty gash split his face, a wound Dara suspected would never heal. “That’s not an ifrit,” the man said. “It’s the bloody Scourge. He takes the demon’s form now.”
Dara stared at them, almost pleading. He didn’t want to kill more men. Creator, he wanted to stop being the Scourge that destroyed lives, the cursed enemy in the hearts of more children of murdered fathers. “Let us leave. I do not wish to kill you.”
“You had no problem butchering our brothers in the Citadel.”
“You cannot defeat me,” Dara said plainly. “You will all die, and it will be for nothing.”
The man lifted his zulfiqar, the copper blade looking diminished without its flames. “No one is letting you leave, and you might find we’ve our own tricks now.”
Dara’s heart sank. Resolve was growing in their faces, as the shock of confronting a monster from legend became the urge to revenge themselves on the very real man who’d murdered so many of their friends.
“So be it,” Dara said quietly. He snapped his fingers.
Their arrows and bolts—still hanging in the air—hurtled back at them.
The majority were prepared, raising shields or ducking, but a handful fell. Dara didn’t wait, hurling himself on the rest and cutting through their line with ease. They were simply not as fast, not as strong. They were good, well trained, and brave.
But they weren’t him, and so he slaughtered them.
He returned to Irtemiz, stepping past the steaming corpses. He could already hear more men coming. “Let’s go,” he said, hopping on the front edge of the floating mat like he might have on a horse cart. “Hold on to my belt. I’m going to need my hands free.”
The mat shot forward on the air. They zoomed through the corridor, dipping and diving around corners and over the heads of more warriors. Too busy trying to fly and steer, Dara didn’t have enough strength to freeze the arrows that zipped by, so he drew his bow, shooting anyone and anything that moved.
Finally, a square of trees and dark night: the courtyard open to the sky. Dara urged the mat faster, cutting through the air.
They had no sooner escaped the cramped corridor than he heard a shout and the scrape of metal.
Acting on instinct, Dara threw himself over Irtemiz, provoking a pained gasp from his wounded friend. A moment later, a heavy net landed on them both, and it was his turn to scream. Fitted with iron studs—broken nails, barbed clippings, and scavenged razors—the burning metal pierced his skin, the fire flickering out where it touched.
They crashed to the ground, and Irtemiz groaned, crying out as her broken body took the jolt. Dara tried to free himself, but the motion only pushed the iron studs deeper into his body.
An arrow tore past his shoulder, another barely missing Irtemiz’s head. There was a blast of a rifle and an explosion as its projectile shattered the tile near his foot.
Trapped. The real trap. And now he was about to have warriors shooting at him with everything they had, desperate to take him out before he could murder them all.
Dara met Irtemiz’s frightened eyes. He’d failed her and her fellows before, sending them alone into battle during an invasion he knew was rushed.
He wouldn’t fail her again. He threw himself off Irtemiz, rolling away, the net tangling his limbs as more barbs pierced his skin. Dara reached for his magic, commanding the mat beneath her to rise. The palace. Manizheh.
“Afshin, no!” Irtemiz cried, but she was already gone, the mat soaring up and away.
Dara got no reprieve, nor did he care. Irtemiz was safe.
Which was good—because everyone else here was going to die.
Dara ripped the net away with his bare hands, the links melting and snapping. He bellowed in pain—Creator, it
