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Elias grabs the Blood Shrike, already drawing her scim for battle.
“Don’t give Keris an inch, Blood Shrike. She’ll have something up her sleeve. She always does.”
The Shrike smiles grimly. “And who is to say I don’t, Soul Catcher?”
He grins at her, that old Elias smile, and with that she is gone. The sky is alight, the jinn among us, raining down hell on the army, trying their best to destroy us before we can fight back.
Elias turns to me, but I shove him away. “Go,” I say. “Hold them off.”
“Laia—”
I leave him, because if I say goodbye, I am already giving in. I will see him again. I will.
The camp is madness now, but I am not afraid. For Umber could have taken me down, and she did not. The Nightbringer wants me for himself.
An old calm consumes me. The same calm I felt before I rescued Elias from execution, and before I broke into Kauf. The calm of delivering Livia’s child in the middle of a battle. A calm born of the knowledge that I am as ready as I can be.
I plunge into the trees west of the jinn grove and make my way up to a small plateau of rock that looks out over the Sher Jinnaat. The rock is impossible to miss. Especially for a jinn watching the battle from above.
When I reach the plateau, Rehmat’s gold glow appears before me.
“I am here, Laia.”
“Thank the skies for that,” I say to Rehmat. She comes around to stand in front of me, and there is something almost formal about how her hands are clasped before her. She tilts her head, a question offered without words.
I nod, and she flows into me, joining my consciousness so completely that it takes my breath away. I am her and she is me. And though I know thisis the way it must be, though she limits herself to but a corner of my mind, I chafe against her presence. I hate having someone else in my head.
We move to the edge of the promontory and peer down. Keris’s army has reached the escarpment and hurtles up it. The first wave of soldiers is impaled on the pikes there, but the army is not held back for long.
Umber swoops into a dive, incinerating the pikes, and Keris’s Martials are through, throwing themselves at Elias’s forces.
My eyes sting as I watch. So many dead. Who they fight for does not matter, because we are all the same to the Nightbringer. He has manipulated us into hating each other. Into seeing the other side as he sees us. Not as humans, but as vermin, worthy only of slaughter.
But where is that creature? Nowhere to be seen, though his jinn wreak havoc.
Enough of this. Every second that passes means more people dead, which is exactly what he wants.
The scythe is heavy on my back. Too heavy. I unsheathe it. Wan light glints upon the black diamond blade before the sun disappears behind a cloud. Rain threatens, and I stare at the approaching storm. If only it would break upon us, for the jinn hate the wet. But the sky does not open.
“Come on then, you monster,” I hiss, hoping the wind will carry my words to him. “Come for me.”
“As it pleases you, Laia of Serra.”
That deep growling voice. The voice of my nightmares. The voice that has taken so much.
I turn and face the Nightbringer.
LIX:The Soul Catcher
The troops from Antium do not wish to fight. I see it in their eyes, feel in it their spirits as they lock shields to face Keris’s cavalry, roaring up the escarpment.
If I have my way, they won’t fight for long. But I must get to Umber. She is the Nightbringer’s second, commanding the other jinn in his absence. If I could get her to listen to me, we could end this madness.
The air grows heavy and strange. As if some unseen hand presses up from the earth, seeking to tear through it. The maelstrom, I fear, is close.
Umber streaks across the front of the escarpment, laughing as she incinerates the stakes we’ve laid to deter Keris’s troops. Our soldiers cry out first in anger, and then in fear as the ground rumbles and shakes beneath them—Faaz using his powers to throw them off balance.
“Rowan!”
