Hero at the Fall (Rebel of the Sands #3)(29)

I turned, ready to face the next opponent. Instead I saw the Sultan standing a few feet away from me, his arm braced around Hala, holding her firm against him, a knife at her throat. Just like I’d held her while she wore the illusion of Leyla’s face.

She was helpless, her golden skin covered in clinging iron dust, turning its sheen a mottled grey. I’d never seen anyone look so furious and so frightened at the same time.

I held the gun pointed towards him. It didn’t shake, even though my heart was hammering out a violent beat.

‘Go ahead. Kill me,’ the Sultan taunted. ‘Then what, Amani? With our enemy at the gates and a city without a ruler or an heir, how do you think that will end? Conquest or civil war?’ He was right and I knew it. But my gun wasn’t pointed at him anyway. I was aiming at Hala.

Because we had a deal. She’d made me promise. An unbreakable Demdji promise.

Last night, in the dark, in our shared room, we’d agreed that if it all went wrong, neither of us would leave the other to be used against the rest of us. The Sultan could do a whole lot more harm with a Demdji under his control than just hanging girls from the palace walls.

It had reminded me of a thousand and one conversations Shazad and I had in our tent back in the rebel camp. It felt safer to talk in the dark somehow. Like we could confess anything there. Trust each other with our lives.

I caught her eyes, dark in her beautiful golden face. Her lips moved ever so slightly. Do it.

Now in the cold light of dawn I wondered if it had been a trick, her Djinn side showing itself as she fooled me into agreeing to this. As if either one of us might surrender her life for this. When really she knew only one of us truly risked dying here. When she knew she had no gun, no fight in her if this went wrong, when she knew she was going to throw herself at the Sultan to spare me. When what she really wanted was assurance that I wouldn’t leave her behind to be used again like she had once been.

My hand started to shake, and I saw the sunlight dance over the end of my pistol.



The Sultan was saying something else, something I didn’t hear. All I could see were Hala’s lips moving, mouthing what she wanted me to do. She couldn’t speak into my mind, not with the iron still clinging to her skin. But I could almost hear her all the same.

I was running low on time, but still I hesitated until the last possible moment, my mind scrambling for any other way out of this. I wasn’t going to pull the trigger until I absolutely had to.

In the grip of our enemy, on the brink of death, Hala rolled her eyes at me. And I heard her words from earlier, clear as a bell in my head.

Oh, don’t tell me now is when you decide to turn coward on me. Your guts are one of the things that I actually like about you.

And then the bells in the great prayer house chimed. That was our signal and that meant I was out of time. There was no other way out of this for Hala. I had to keep my promise.

Everything happened at once.

I sucked in a deep breath and held it.

Hala smiled.

My finger squeezed the trigger.

I closed my eyes, too. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t miss.

A gunshot echoed around the cavernous gold dome just as hands closed over my feet. I felt the floor give way below me, like it was turning to water. I couldn’t help it – I opened my eyes for a fraction of a second even as I sank quickly through the floor. Even as the moment that it would be too late rushed towards us. I had to see. I had to make sure I hadn’t broken my promise.

She was slumped in the Sultan’s arms, red blood smearing her still-smiling face. Her fingers dragged on the floor. Only eight of them. That was how I knew she was dead. If she was living she would be trying to hide that wound, one way or another. Like she always did.

For a moment as I sank, my eye caught on the broken Abdal. And I realised Hala looked the same, her glowing gold skin like their polished bronze. If she’d been left alive she would have been just like them, a thing to be used. A mechanical Demdji.

The floor rushed up and I shut my eyes again, like Sam had always taught me. When I hit solid ground again, I opened them. I was standing in the dark, broken only by the faint flicker of an oil lamp by Sam’s feet.

We’d found the tunnels Leyla had told us about last night and worked out an escape route, a way to get out when Fariha was safe, one the Sultan wouldn’t be able to anticipate. The floor was stone, which meant Sam could pass his arms through it and pull us down through the floor and out of the prayer house into the tunnels below. We’d marked the spot on the roof of the tunnel, figuring out which tile above corresponded to it. We’d been standing exactly where we needed to stand to get to safety. To get out of there alive. If it wasn’t for the iron-dust bomb.

Sam opened his mouth, a question in his pale eyes. Hala? But before he could ask it, I shook my head quickly.

He understood.

She had died so that others could live. So that we could save them. So that other girls wouldn’t die while we were gone. Maybe she had even walked in there knowing one of us had to die. Deciding it would be her. So that we could live. Escape.

So we did what she had died for. We ran.





Chapter 10

The Girl Made of Gold

Once there was a woman so greedy she gave birth to a daughter made of gold.

The Girl Made of Gold knew what it meant to be used. By a greedy mother. Then by a greedy husband. But the Girl Made of Gold had a secret: she could remake the world in the mind of others.