Page 83 of Children of Blood and Bone

Half a moon, I remind myself.Half a moon to do this right.

If we’re going to recover the sunstone in time for the solstice, we need to get it tonight.

The door budges a millimeter and I gasp. We’re close. I can feel it. A few more knocks and it’ll fly open. A few more pushes and the stone is ours.

“Hey!”

A guard’s voice booms through the air. We freeze in response. Footsteps pound against the stone floors, thundering toward us with frightening speed.

“Over here!” Amari gestures to a section just past the sunstone’sdoor, lined with cannonballs and crates of blastpowder. As we crouch behind the crates, a young divîner dashes into the room, white hair glowing in the dim light. In seconds he’s cornered by the announcer and another guard. They skid to a halt when they see the half-open door to the sunstone.

“You maggot.” The announcer’s lips peel back in a snarl. “Who’re you working with? Who did this?”

Before the young boy can speak, the crack of the announcer’s cane cuts him down. He collapses to the stone floor. As he screams, another guard joins in the beating.

I flinch behind the crate, tears stinging my eyes. The boy’s back is already ripped raw from former beatings, but neither monster lets up. He’ll die under their blows.

He’ll die because of me.

“Zélie, no!”

Tzain’s hiss stalls me for a second, but it’s not enough to stop me. I burst free from our hiding spot, fighting my nausea when I see the child.

Angry tears cut through his skin. Blood streams down his back. He clings to life by a thread, one that frays before my eyes.

“Who the hell are you?” the announcer seethes, withdrawing a dagger. My skin prickles as he nears me with its black majacite blade. Three more guards run to his side.

“Thank gods!” I force a laugh, searching for the words to fix this. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

The announcer narrows his eyes in disbelief. His grip tightens on his cane. “Looking for me?” he repeats. “In this cellar? By the stone?”

The boy moans, and I flinch as a guard kicks him in the head. Hisbody lies motionless in a pool of his own blood. It looks like a killing blow.But why can’t I feel his spirit?Where’s his last memory? His final pain? If he went straight to alâfia I might not feel it, but how can anyone pass in peace after a death like this?

I force my gaze back on the snarling announcer. There’s nothing I can do now. The boy’s dead. And unless I think of something quick, I’m dead, too.

“I knew I’d find you here.” I swallow hard. Only one excuse will do. “I want to enter your games. Let me compete tomorrow night.”

***

“YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!”Amari exclaims when we finally enter the safety of the sands. “You saw that bloodbath. Youfeltit. Now you want to be in it?”

“I want the stone,” I yell back. “I want to stay alive!” Despite my fire, the image of the beaten boy crawls back into my head.

Better that. Better whipped to death than blown apart on a ship.But no matter how hard I try to convince myself, I know the words aren’t true. There’s no dignity in a death like that, whipped to his last breath for something he didn’t even do. And I couldn’t even help his spirit pass on. I couldn’t be the Reaper he needed if I wanted to.

“The arena’s crawling with guards,” I mumble. “If we couldn’t grab it tonight, there’s no way we can steal it tomorrow.”

“There’s gotta be something,” Tzain jumps in. Grains of sand stick to his blood-covered feet. “He won’t keep the sunstone here tonight after all this. If we figure out where he stores the stone next—”

“We have thirteen days before the solstice. Thirteen days to cross Orïsha and sail to the sacred island. We don’t have time to search. We need to get the stone and go!”

“The sunstone won’t be of any use to us when our corpses line thearena floor,” Amari says. “How will we survive? The competition leaves everyone dead!”

“We won’t be playing like everyone else.”

I reach into my pack and pull out one of Lekan’s black scrolls. The white ink glistens on its label, translating intoReanimation of the Dead. The incantation was a common practice for Reapers, often the first technique new maji mastered. The magic grants its caster the aid of a spirit trapped in the hell of apâdi in exchange for helping that spirit pass on to the afterlife.

Of all the incantations in Lekan’s scrolls, this was the only one I already knew. Every moon, Mama would lead a group of Reapers to the isolated mountaintops of Ibadan and use this incantation to cleanse our village of trapped souls.

---