by Tomi Adeyemi
I will not be that type of king.
I let go of her wrists, but inside I let go of so much more. Father’s tactics. His Orïsha. Everything I now realize I don’t want to be.
My duty has always been to my kingdom, but it must be for a better Orïsha. A new Orïsha.
A land in which a prince and a maji could coexist. A land where even Zélie and I could be a “we.”
If I am to truly fulfill my duty to my kingdom, that is the Orïsha I must lead.
“Our,” I repeat, forcing confidence into my voice. “We need each other. They took Amari, too.”
Her eyes search me. Hoping. Fighting that hope at the same time. “You held Amari at sword point ten minutes ago. You’re just after the scroll.”
“Do you see the scroll?”
Zélie looks around for where she tossed her pack before our fight, but even when she spots it her face falls. They took her brother. Her ryder, her ally. And the scroll we both need is gone.
“Whether I’m after my sister or that scroll, those men have both. For now our interests are aligned.”
“I don’t need you.” Zélie narrows her eyes. “I’ll find them by myself.” But fear drips from her skin like sweat.
Her fear of being alone.
“Without me, you’d be knocked out in a net. Your only clue to their camp would be dead. You really think you can take these fighters on without my help?”
I wait for her to concede. She only glares.
“I’ll take your rare bout of silence as a no.”
She stares at the dagger in her hand. “If you give me a reason to kill you—”
“It’s amusing that you think you could.”
We face off as if we’re still fighting, an invisible staff pressing against an unseen sword. But when she can oppose me no longer, Zélie walks back to the boy bleeding in the dirt.
“Okay, little prince. What do we do now?”
My blood simmers at her pet name, but I force myself to brush it aside. A new Orïsha has to begin somewhere.
“Hold him up.”
“Why?”
“For skies’ sake, just do it.”
She cocks an eyebrow in defiance but drags the poor bastard up. His eyelids flutter slightly and he moans. An uncomfortable heat prickles the air between us as I step closer.
I take inventory of the masked figure. Both hands broken. More wounds than I can count. He hangs like a rag doll in her hands. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t bleed out.
“Listen here.” I grab his chin, forcing him to look into my eyes. “If you want to live, I suggest you start talking. Where’s our family?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
AMARI
THE STABBING ACHE comes first, pulsing through my head with an intensity that stirs me awake. The burns follow soon after, stinging from the endless cuts and scratches peppering my skin.
I blink my eyes open, but the darkness remains; they’ve tied a tweed bag over my face. The rough fabric sticks to my nose as I breathe in too deeply, a futile attempt to keep myself from hyperventilating.
What is the meaning of this?
I pull forward, but my arms hold me back, wrists bound against a column. Wait, not a column. I shift to explore the rough surface. A tree …
That means we’re still in the forest.
“Tzain?” I try to call out, but my mouth is gagged. The fried pork rinds from dinner churn in my stomach. Whoever these people are, they’ve taken every precaution to protect themselves.
I strain to hear another clue—running water, the shift of other captives. But no other sounds come forth. I’m forced to mine my memories for more.
Though I can’t see, I close my eyes, reliving the surprise attack: Tzain and Nailah disappearing in woven nets, the acidic stench that turned everything black. So many masked figures, quick and silent, blending with the shadows. These strange fighters are the culprits.
They took all of us down.
But why? What is it these people want? If their aim was to rob us, they already succeeded. If they desired our deaths, I wouldn’t be breathing now. This has to be something different, an attack shrouded in a greater aim. With enough time, I can decipher it. Plot a way to escape—
“She’s awake.”
I tense, keeping still as a female voice speaks. Something rustles as footsteps near. The faint smell of sage hits me when she gets closer.
“Should we get Zu?”
This time I catch a drawl in her speech, an accent I’ve only heard from the nobles hailing from the east. I picture Father’s map of Orïsha in my mind. Besides Ilorin, the only eastern village large enough to garner nobles in the palace is Warri.
“Zu can wait,” a male voice answers her, his speech carrying the same eastern lilt. The heat rising off his body hits me in a wave when he nears.
“Kwame, don’t!”
The bag is ripped off my head so hard my neck jerks forward. The pounding in my head surges with the flood of lantern light. My vision blurs as I fight against the pain to take everything in.
A divîner’s face fills my gaze, dark brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. A thick beard highlights his defined jaw. As he gets closer, I catch a small silver ring pierced through his right ear. Despite his menacing expression, the boy can’t be much older than Tzain.
Behind him, another divîner stands, beautiful with her dark skin and catlike eyes. Long white locs travel down her back, tangling over her arms when she crosses them. A large canvas tent surrounds us, built around the trunks of two mammoth trees.
“Kwame, our masks.”
“We don’t need them,” he replies, breath warm against my face. “For once, she’s the one in danger. Not us.”
Another body sits behind him, bound to a large tree root, head hidden behind a tweed bag. Tzain. I exhale as I recognize his shape, but the relief doesn’t last. A stain bleeds through the top of Tzain’s bag, thick and dark. Cuts and bruises mar his skin; transporting him here must have been rough.
“You want to speak to him?” Kwame asks. “Tell me where you got this scroll.”
The blood freezes in my veins when he waves the parchment in front of my face. Skies. What else did he take?
“Itching for your blade?” Kwame seems to read my mind, pulling the bone dagger from his waist. “Couldn’t leave your boyfriend with a weapon like this.”
Kwame cuts the gag binding my mouth, unflinching even when he nicks my cheek in the process.
“You have one chance,” he says through gritted teeth. “Don’t bother lying.”
“I took it from the royal palace,” I rush out. “We’re on a mission to bring magic back. I’ve been tasked by the gods.”
“I’m going to get Zu—” the girl behind him starts.
“Folake, wait.” Kwame’s tone is sharp. “Without Jailin, we need to go to her with answers.”
He turns back to me, narrowing his eyes once more.
“A kosidán and a noble are on a mission to bring magic back, yet not one maji is with you?”
“We have a—”
I stop myself, sifting through all the information he revealed with his simple question. It brings me back to the luncheons in the palace, times when I had to search for the truth behind all the smiles and lies. He thinks we’re alone. That means Zélie and Inan must have gotten away. Or they were never taken. It’s quite possible they’re still safe.…
I cannot decide whether this should give me hope. Together, Zélie and Inan could find us. But at the rate they were fighting, one of them might already be dead.
“Run out of lies?” Kwame asks. “Good. Tell the truth. How did you find us? How many of you are there? What’s a noble like you doing with a scroll like this?”
A scroll like this?
I dig my nails in the dirt. Of course. Why didn’t I notice right away? Kwame didn’t bat an eye when said I wanted the scroll to bring magic back. And though he’s a divîner, touching it for the first time doesn’t make his magic react.
> Because this isn’t the first time he’s held it.…
In fact, it might just be the thing he and his fellow masked vigilantes are after.
“Listen—”
“No,” Kwame cuts me off, and moves to Tzain, ripping the bag from his head. Tzain is barely conscious, his head lolling to the side. Anxiety grips my chest as Kwame holds the bone dagger to Tzain’s neck.
“Tell the truth.”
“I am!” I shriek, pulling against my bonds.
“We need to get Zu.” Folake backs up to the entrance of the tent, as if distance absolves her of this horror.
“We need the truth,” Kwame yells back. “She’s lying. I know you see it, too!”
“Don’t hurt him,” I beg.
“I gave you a chance.” Kwame tightens his lips. “This is on you. I won’t lose my family again—”
“What’s going on?”
My eyes snap to the tent’s entrance as a young girl enters, her fists clenched. Her green dashiki sits bright against her coconut-brown complexion. Her white hair settles around her head, big and fluffy like a cloud. She can’t be more than thirteen, but Kwame and Folake stand to attention in her presence.
“Zu, I wanted to get you.” Folake speaks quickly.
“I wanted answers first,” Kwame finishes. “My scouts saw them by the river. They had the scroll.”
Zu’s dark brown eyes widen as she grabs the parchment from Kwame and scans its weathered ink. The way she runs her thumb over the symbols gives me all the confirmation I need.
“You’ve seen this scroll before.”
The girl looks at me, taking in the cuts on my skin, the shallow gash on Tzain’s forehead. She fights to keep her face blank, but the corners of her lips turn into a frown.
“You should’ve woken me.”
“There wasn’t time,” Kwame says. “They started moving. We had to act or they’d be out of our range.”
“They?” Zu asks. “There were more of them?”
“Two others,” Folake answers. “They got away. And Jailin…”
“What about him?”
Folake exchanges a guilty look with Kwame. “He still hasn’t returned. There’s a chance he’s been taken.”
Zu’s face falls. The scroll wrinkles in her grasp. “You didn’t go after him?”
“There wasn’t time—”
“You don’t get to make that call!” Zu rasps. “We don’t leave anybody behind. It’s our job to keep everyone safe!”
Kwame’s chin drops to his chest. He shifts and crosses his arms. “The scroll was in play, Zu. If more guards are coming, we need it. I weighed the risk.”
“We’re not guards,” I cut in. “We’re not part of the army.”
Zu glances at me before walking up to Kwame. “You’ve put us all in danger. I hope it was fun playing king.”
Though her words are harsh, each is filled with sadness. With her thin brows pinched, she looks even younger than she really is.
“Gather the others in my tent,” she instructs Kwame before pointing to Tzain. “Folly, clean and bandage his head. The last thing I need is him getting an infection.”
“What about her?” Folake nods in my direction. “What do you want us to do?”
“Nothing.” Zu turns her gaze on me, unreadable once more. “She’s not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
INAN
SILENCE SURROUNDS US.
Thick and heavy, hanging in the air.
The only sound between Zélie and me are our footsteps as we trudge up the tallest hill in the forest. It amazes me that with the soft soil and weighted nets, the masked figures didn’t leave more tracks. Whenever I stumble on a path, it seems to disappear.
“This way.” Zélie takes the lead, scouting the trees.
Following the advice of the masked boy we interrogated, I search the trunks for the painted symbol of his people: an X with two diverging crescents. According to him, following the discreet symbols is the only way to discover their camp.
“There’s another one.” Zélie points to the left, changing the direction of our path. She climbs with an unyielding resolve, but I struggle to keep up. Slung over my shoulder, the unconscious fighter weighs down my frame, making each inhale a battle. I almost forgot how much it hurts to breathe when I have to push my magic down.
Fighting Zélie, I was forced to let go. I needed my full strength to gain control. Now it takes everything in me to block my magic again. No matter how hard I fight, the risk of feeling Zélie’s pain lingers. A constant and growing threat—
My feet slip on the soil. I grunt, digging my heel into the dirt to keep from sliding down the hill. The slip is all my curse needs.
Like a leopanaire escaping its cage, the magic breaks free.
I close my eyes as Zélie’s essence rushes in like a crashing tidal wave. First cold and sharp, then soft and warm. The smell of the sea surrounds me, the clear night sky mirrored bright against its black waves. Trips to the floating market with Tzain. Hours passed on a coconut boat with Baba.
There are parts of it, parts of her, that light something inside me. But the light only lasts a moment.
Then I drown inside the darkness of her pain.
Skies. I push it all down, push every part of her and this virus away. When it’s gone I feel lighter, though the strain of suppression causes sharp pains in my chest. Something about her essence calls to my curse, bringing it up at every chance. Her spirit seems to hover around me, crashing with the force of the turbulent sea.
“You’re slowing me down,” Zélie calls back, nearing the top of the hill.
“Do you want to carry him?” I ask. “I’m more than happy to watch him bleed on you instead.”
“Maybe if you stopped suppressing your magic, you could handle the extra weight.”
Perhaps if you closed your wretched mind, it wouldn’t take so much energy to block you out.
But I bite my tongue; not every part of her mind is wretched. Laced in the memories of her family is a fierce love, something I’ve never felt. I think back to days sparring with Amari, to nights spent flinching from Father’s wrath. If Zélie had my magic, what parts of me would she see?
The question haunts me as I grit my teeth to finish the final ascent. When I reach the top, I set our captive’s body down and walk until the hill plateaus. Wind whips at my face, and I yearn to take my helmet off.
I glance at Zélie; she already knows my secret. For the first time since getting this miserable streak, I don’t have to hide.
I unlatch my helmet and savor the way the cool breeze runs over my scalp as I approach the hill’s steep edge. It’s been so long since I could remove my helmet without fear.
Below us the forested hills of the Gombe River Valley spread beneath the shadows and moonlight. Mammoth trees fill the land, but from up here, one unique symbol makes itself clear. Unlike the random spread of trees throughout the forest, this grove is arranged, forming a giant circle. From our vantage point, their special X is just visible, painted onto some of the trees’ leaves.
“He told the truth.” Zélie sounds surprised.
“We didn’t give him much of a choice.”
“Still.” She shrugs. “He easily could’ve lied.”
Between the circular formation of trees, a secret wall has been erected, formed from mud, stones, and crisscrossed branches. Though rudimentary, the wall sits high, reaching several meters up the trees’ trunks.
Two figures armed with swords stand in front of the wall, guarding what must be their gate. Like the boy we interrogated, the fighters wear masks and are completely clad in black.
“I still don’t understand who they are,” Zélie mutters under her breath. I echo her question. Besides their location, the only other thing we learned from the boy was that his people were after the scroll as well.
“Maybe if you hadn’t beaten him half to death, we could’ve gotten more answers.”
Zélie snarls. “If I did
n’t beat that boy, we wouldn’t have found this place at all.”
She stalks forward, starting her trek down the forested terrain.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To get our siblings back.”
“Wait.” I grab her arm. “We can’t just storm in.”
“I can take two men.”
“There are far more than two of them.” I point to the areas around the gate. It takes Zélie a moment to see through the shadows. The hidden soldiers are so still they blend completely into the darkness. “There are at least thirty of them on this side alone. And that doesn’t count the archers hidden in the trees.”
I point to a foot dangling from the branches, the only sign of life in the thick leaves. “If their formation matches the feet on the ground, we should expect at least fifteen of them up there as well.”
“So we’ll attack at daybreak,” Zélie decides. “When they can’t hide.”
“Sunlight isn’t going to change how many of them there are to fight. We have to assume they’re all as skilled as the men who took Amari and Tzain.”
Zélie scrunches her nose at me; I hear it, too. Her brother’s name sounds strange coming out of my mouth.
She turns; her white curls glow in the moonlight. Her hair was straight as a blade before, but now it bunches in tight spirals, twisting further in the wind.
Her curls remind me of one of her young memories, back when she was a child and her coils were even tighter. Her mother chuckled while trying to comb Zélie’s hair into a bun, magically summoning dark shadows to hold Zélie in place as her daughter struggled.
“What’s our move?” Zélie breaks through my thoughts. I return my focus to the wall, letting the facts of battle wash away all memories of Zélie’s mother and her hair.
“Gombe is only a day’s ride away. If I leave now, I can bring back guards by morning.”
“Are you serious?” Zélie steps back. “You want to bring the guards into this?”
“We need a force if we’re getting into that camp. What other choice do we have?”
“With the guards, you have a choice.” Zélie jabs her finger in my chest. “I don’t.”