The Fire Queen (The Hundredth Queen #2)(76)

Coils of shadow shoot out from the torn incantation in the vizier’s hands and splay across the chamber like crooked, grasping fingers.

I gawk at Ashwin. He finished the incantation. He must have memorized it.

A malevolent chuckle echoes around us, and more darkness slinks in from the fringes of the chamber. Ashwin steps over to me, paling with fright. Vizier Gyan’s guards try to flee, but they are lost in the voracious shadows. They scream as spiny threads of the dark whip out, strangling their cries to helpless gurgles.

Vizier Gyan scrambles back to the door, but the shadows seize him with grasping claws. The ground trembles, and cracks snake up the wall from his feeble attempts to retaliate. I lose sight of the vizier and his dying soldiers in the blinding dimness, and then the trembling stops.

Shadows eclipse the light, smothering my senses in bone-chilling obscurity. Despair crawls far inside me and expands into my bones. We are lost to the evernight.



I exhale a startled breath at the sudden night, and the darkness stirs. Something shifts nearby. A hand grasps mine, and a shaky voice speaks my name. Ashwin. I clamp down on his fingers, struggling to sit up.

The balcony door flies open, ushering in harsh daylight. I squint and see the figure of a finely dressed man standing in the doorway. Sunlight falls over one half of his familiar face.

“Father,” Ashwin gasps.

“My son.”

My veins run to ice. It’s him. It’s his voice.

Ashwin drifts to Tarek in a daze, meeting him at the end of the bed. Their resemblance is astounding, but no more will I mistake Ashwin for his father. His younger face lacks malice, whereas Tarek’s is cold and unfeeling. Even with those dissimilarities, Tarek is not as I recall. He has a different air about him that pulls my hairs on end.

Tarek embraces Ashwin, clutching him by the shoulders.

“How . . . how have you returned, Father?”

“You asked the gods to defeat your enemies and reclaim our empire.” Tarek opens his arms wide, indicating the fallen soldiers and vizier. “The gods heard your prayer.”

My sense of wrongness festers. The gods would not send someone deceased back into their prior mortal state. The spirit would return to a new form, not the same. This isn’t Tarek, my instincts scream.

The door flings open.

“What’s happening in my palace?” Sultan Kuval bellows. He scans the dead soldiers, his departed brother-in-law, and, finally, he spots Tarek. “It . . . It cannot be.”

Tarek—or whatever it is—stalks over to him. “You’ve betrayed us, dear Sultan, and schemed to take our land. The gods revealed all while I was in the Beyond.”

Sultan Kuval recovers from his shock enough for him to shout, “Guards!”

Palace guards charge in armed with machetes. Tarek throws out a hand, and blue fire explodes from his fingers, slamming the soldiers into the wall and knocking them out. A second onrush of guards enters. Tarek tosses them aside with another blast of the same blue flames.

His ruthless display of power and his otherworldly azure fire startles the sultan. He freezes alone inside the threshold. Tarek closes in on him with slow, purposeful steps.

“I helped your son,” says Kuval. “I gave your people refuge. I—”

Tarek’s hand darts out like a snake’s tongue, grabbing the sultan’s thick chin. Sultan Kuval shrinks away from him. “Look at me when you lie,” Tarek says, dead calm.

Sultan Kuval lifts his gaze and pales. “No, please. No!”

Tarek pushes his powers into him. Cold flames dry away Kuval’s skin, and he crumples to the floor in a heap. The air scents of freeze-burned flesh. Tarek faces his son. “Spread the word that the sultan is dead.”

My gaze pleads with Ashwin. Don’t leave me.

He casts a worried glance my way. “Perhaps Kalinda—”

“My kindred stays.” Tarek’s order is definitive. Gooseflesh prickles up my arms. He has not looked at me once, but he is aware that I am here. “Did you forget my command, son?”

“No, Father.” Ashwin bows and hurries out.

I am alone with Tarek, and as in my nightmares, I am powerless.

Tarek’s unfeeling gaze meets mine. As he strolls to me, I compare my memory of him to this man. He is an impeccable replica, uncanny in his rare beauty, a compromise of masculinity and pampered imperious deportment. Except for his eyes. His irises blaze blue with an inner fire that dries out my mouth. He sits next to me on the mattress and twirls a strand of my hair around his fingertip. Even his hands are as I remember, always touching and taking.

“Did you miss me, love?” His voice is a dangerous purr.

“You aren’t Tarek.”

A smirk reveals his amusement. “I am a stronger, purer form of you, dear Kalinda. By now, you must have heard the tale of Ki and her lover, the demon Kur.”

“That’s a myth.”

“All myths are grounded in truth.” He winds my hair even more, tugging sharply at my scalp. “Ki and Kur were lovers, and together they fathered a child. Their son inherited his father’s powers. The same venom burned in his blood as did Kur’s. They named him Enlil. Ki pretended Enlil was Anu’s son so the sky-god would not smite down the infant. Anu took the child in and raised him, not knowing his son, the fire-god, was the offspring of a demon.”