Rebel of the Sands (Rebel of the Sands #1)(56)

“It’s rude to stare.” A black bug crawled out of the sand, over my boot, and up my body. “And it’s rude to leave someone for dead to save your own skin.” I swatted at it, but it just exploded into ten black bugs, and then each of them into ten more until I was crawling with them, my hands slapping at my skin until it was red and painful.

“Hala, whatever you’re doing, stop it,” Shazad ordered. I’d been wrong. Her voice wasn’t sharp; it was clean, like a good cut. The bugs vanished.

Shazad had said something about a Demdji who could crawl into folks’ minds. I guessed I’d just met her. I already hated her.

“Where I come from, people take care of their own.” Hala picked at her nails as if she hadn’t just twisted my mind around.

“She was,” Jin said behind me.





twenty


Jin was awake, leaning heavily on Ahmed’s shoulder, standing on the outskirts of the light from the fire. He looked drained and tired, but he was alive. And he was looking at me. I reacted to him instinctively, my body pulling me forward like it was on a string tied to him. Like the swing of the compass needle twinned with another.

But before I could stand, there was a squeal from the other side of camp. Delila rushed forward and flung herself into Jin’s arms, babbling in a foreign language I guessed was Xichian. She started crying into his shirt. Soon all the camp was on its feet, people crowding around him. Asking questions, welcoming him back.

“Easy there,” Bahi called. “I’ve only just got him back on his feet.” Eventually folks started to trickle back to their campfires and their food, leaving Jin and Ahmed facing our small circle. Jin turned to Shazad.

“General,” Jin said. His voice was thick with disuse, but the way he said it sounded so painfully familiar. Bandit, I heard him saying in the desert.

“Don’t call me that.” Shazad embraced him with one arm, more careful of the bandages than Delila had been. “What happened to ‘I’ll just go and take a look around. I’ll be back in no time’?”

The laugh made its way round the small circle that was left around Jin as I sat on the outside. I hunted through my feelings for something to say here, in this place I didn’t belong, to Jin, who’d just become a stranger all over again. These people had stood side by side planning a revolution since the days I was shooting tin cans off the fence behind my uncle’s house.

“Better late than dead,” Hala said. She didn’t embrace him. But as the firelight danced over her golden skin, making it look molten, I saw that some of the hardness was gone from her now.

“Yes, and you have me to thank for that,” Bahi added with his mouth full. Even on his feet, he was still shoveling food into his mouth while talking. “Not that anyone has thanked me yet.”

“I thought Holy Fathers were meant to do their work for the grace of God, not the thanks of mortals.” Jin was careful not to catch my eye as he addressed Bahi.

“Well, it’s a good thing I failed my training, then, isn’t it?” Bahi gestured dramatically with the food in his hand, flicking crumbs onto Delila.

“You were bound to keep someone alive eventually,” Shazad said. “And Amani’s the one who dragged you here.” I wanted to hug Shazad and curse at the same time. Finally, Jin didn’t have any choice but to meet my eyes at the mention of my name.

Two months in the desert hung between us. All the things he’d told me and the ones he hadn’t. The secrets and lies. The understanding that I hadn’t left him this time. That in two months I’d gone from the girl who’d drugged him and left him facedown on a table just to make a break for it to the one who’d dragged him through enemy soldiers and killer ghouls to save him.

“Well.” Hala draped herself carelessly over Delila’s shoulders. “At least one of us was successful in bringing home a Demdji.” The new word was still so strange, it took me a moment to realize Hala was gesturing to . . . me. The circle went silent.

“Demdji?” I was confused.

Ahmed’s expression faltered. He said something to Jin in Xichian. Jin answered back with a shake of his head without looking at me.

“Just because I don’t speak your language doesn’t give you the right to talk about me in it.” My voice rose higher than I meant it to. I was shouting in the presence of the prince. Two princes.

“Amani,” Ahmed said gently. “Maybe you’d like to sit.”

The plate that Shazad had given me had toppled off my knees and to the ground. I’d stood up without realizing it, without knowing what I meant to do, but sure as hell that I needed both legs planted to do it.

“Maybe I wouldn’t.” I caught Jin’s mouth twitching up at the corner and my anger rose. “Lying,” I said, looking only at him, “is a sin.”

Jin finally spoke to me. “I was going to hell long before I met you.” There was something like regret in his voice.

“You don’t know that I’m—”

Jin cut me off. “Don’t fool yourself, Blue-Eyed Bandit.” His voice was flat, a stranger’s, resigned. “I knew you were a Demdji before I knew you weren’t a boy. All I had to see was your eyes.”

Traitor’s eyes.

Delila’s hair. Imin’s eyes. Hala’s skin.