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The snakes raised me, I want to hiss, but it hurts too much. I only came here to find you. To kill you.
“So you did. But for seventeen years, you thought about me more than anyone, even your sister. I gave you purpose. I shaped you.”
I am delirious, I decide. I bite down on my collar, stemming the rising tide of pain as I lunge uselessly for my spear. Angma doesn’t even have to move. The shadow worms fold tighter around my arms, restraining me.
This is hardly the epic fight I envisioned I’d have with the Demon Witch.
“You blame me for taking your mother away from you, but it is not my fault she died. You blame me for taking your sister from you, but I have kept her secret. I’ve protected her.”
“I protected her.”
“On Sundau, yes.” Angma wears a sideways smile I’ve never seen on my sister’s face. “But from the rest of the world? You did not have the foresight to consider anyone but me an enemy—until it was too late.”
Understanding chills me. For years I dreaded Meguh, yet I didn’t consider him a threat. Has Angma always known what a monster he was? Is that why she positioned herself as the queen of Shenlani?
“Enchanters, demons—even gods—would have come for her,” says Angma. “Extracting that pretty pearl from her heart would have been an easy task when she was a child. Hokzuh would not have hesitated.”
“You want to kill her too.”
“I must. Or she will kill me,” replies Angma. “The pearl has driven us to war.”
I see my error now. All these years I’ve spent training to hunt, to fight and kill, to become strong so I could protect Vanna, when it was Vanna who should have been training. She was always the only one with the power to kill Angma.
“You were taught by legend to fear me,” Angma continues, “but legends are steeped in untruths. You think I took the pearl because I wanted to live forever, to rule all of Tambu? No. I was a healing witch, Channari.
“I had a daughter. She was curious as a bird, and clever. Cleverer than her mother. Brave too. She wasn’t afraid of spiders or snakes—or tigers.” A pause. “You reminded me of her when I first came to you. You saw a fearsome tiger and stared me down instead of running.
“One day my little girl fell sick, and nothing I did would make her better. Until I chanced upon Hokzuh’s pearl.
“It was like a piece of broken obsidian,” Angma says wistfully. “That’s why I picked it up—I thought I could sell it or use it to decant my medicines. But at night it spoke to me. It told me it could make my every wish come true. And so I wished my daughter to be well again, and I devoured the pearl, as it bade me to.”
“What happened to your daughter?” I ask.
“She was healed,” replies Angma, “just as the pearl promised. I was overjoyed.”
“But then?”
“Over the next few days, I grew ravenous. I’d always been poor, and during the worst monsoons, I’d gone a week without food…but I had never known a hunger like this. Rice would not fill the emptiness in my belly, nor meat nor leaf nor drink. It depleted my senses and installed a monster in its place.”
I shiver, remembering this part of the legend. “You killed your own daughter.”
“I did.” A muscle throbs in Angma’s cheek. Her voice breaks. “I did.”
I feel sorrow only for her daughter, not for Angma. “The pearl lied to you.”
“The pearl does not lie. It shapes the truth as it sees it. I asked for my daughter to be well, not for her to live a long life.”
“I imagine you’ve learned to be more careful with your words,” I say coldly.
Angma lets out a bitter laugh. “Since then, the pearl has granted my every wish. Except when it comes to you.”
Me?
A beam of faint golden light seeps through the dead grass under my feet, traveling slowly toward the shadow worms that lock around my ankles. I hold my breath, a tickle of hope rising inside. Angma will notice it before long. I have to keep her talking.
“Me?” I say aloud.
“Look at me, Channi. On my honor, I will not bespell you.”
