A muffled cry of pain startles me awake.
Instinctively, I turn to Gul, whose back is slick with sweat—the sort that coats your skin when you’re having a nightmare. For a moment, I forget what I said to her earlier. I do what Papa often did for me when I was in the throes of a bad dream and wrap my arms around her, rocking her in place, whispering in her ear.
“You’re safe,” I tell Gul. “You’re safe.”
The refrain does for her exactly what it used to do for me: It quiets her sobs, turning them to deep breaths. I only register how close we are when wet lashes brush my cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m all right now.”
The words break the spell. I scramble to my feet. “We should go,” I say, my voice raw.
Gul says nothing. I hear her gently waking Kali, and then afterward, their footsteps shuffle behind me: the only sound that prevails as we continue walking through the dark. Hours pass by. Perhaps even another day. Our food is nearly gone. Just when I think we’re going to collapse of exhaustion or thirst, Kali lets forth a startled gasp.
“Do you see?”
I frown. I’m about to ask if she’s imagining things when I see it. Initially a pinprick, then a beacon. An overhead light that’s almost painful to the eyes when we get close.
“A ladder.” Gul’s hand brushes its rough stone edges. “Thank the goddess.”
More like thank the person who had the foresight to have it made, I think. Only that person might be Prince Amar—and for some reason I don’t like thinking of him at all. Or remembering the way he looked at Gul.
Kali goes up the ladder first. “Come on. It appears safe.”
Gul goes up next and then I follow.
My eyes squint against the sun, directly overhead us, marking the middle of the day. Though which day it is, I’m not entirely sure. As Amar said, we’re a couple of miles from the Aloksha riverbed, dry save for the tiny puddles of water left behind by the few rain spells this month. Rocks jut out everywhere like teeth. My mouth burns. Just my luck to realize how starved we are for water in the midst of land so dry it might as well be a desert—even though the real Desert of Dreams is still probably several miles away.
“I don’t think we’re too far from Sur,” Kali says. “Perhaps we can—” Her voice cuts off abruptly, and she presses a finger to her lips.
A moment later, I hear it as well. The sound of hooves, followed by a horse’s sharp neigh. Without another word, we race toward a rock, which we duck behind, squinting at the dust rising from a distance. Kali and Gul unsheathe their daggers. I, on the other hand, look around and pick up the largest rock I can find. It could be Indu, bringing the horses Kali talked about. But it also could be a group of Sky Warriors out hunting for us.
A high-pitched voice rings in my ears:
Rooh was born without a heart
Some say without a soul
But when he ripped his chest apart
He found a girl of gold
Gul and I rise to our feet as one, racing toward the cloud of dust. A pair of Ambari stallions pause a few feet from us, but the third horse keeps cantering forward, its coat glistening like rubies in the afternoon light. Gul throws her arms around the red horse and begins sobbing—a mare, I realize, from Jwala. Kali isn’t as weepy, but she races to meet the stallions, stroking their noses and calling them by their names.
The rock I picked up earlier clatters to the ground. For the first time that week, I feel something that could be close to relief.
38GUL
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I tell Agni now, stroking her mane.
You will always see me, foolish girl. Even if you don’t want to.
I laugh, though at this moment it must sound more like another sob, because Cavas looks at me again, alarmed. Kali on the other hand is checking on Ajib and Gharib, examining their hooves and their eyes. She unties a bag from one of their saddles—a waterskin that she offers to Cavas and then to me. I gulp down the fresh, cool water and then hand the skin to Kali, who does the same.
“Bless Ruhani Kaki,” Cavas says, opening another bag. “There’s food here as well.”
We tear into cloth bundles containing khoba roti and bottles of mango preserves—once Kali rations them out. No meal has felt so filling, has tasted so good. Guilt twists my insides. Regardless of the secrets she kept from us, Juhi did care. Juhi, who, along with Amira, has probably been captured by the Sky Warriors by now, if not outright killed.
I glance at Cavas, who is offering a bit of his own roti to Agni. He has unwrapped his turban, and I see his hair for the first time: black and straight, the fringe falling over his eyes. I study the hollowed planes of his face, his aquiline nose, the shadow of a beard over his chin. As if sensing my gaze, he looks up, but I turn away before my eyes meet his. It’s my fault Cavas’s father died. My fault that Cavas is here now, on a path he never would have chosen for himself.
You are too hard on yourself, Agni says through the bond that connects us. You didn’t bring the boy or his father to the king’s palace.
Perhaps. But I still feel responsible. Just as I do for the power that had burst out of me like fire in Raj
