Children of Blood and Bone - Tomi Adeyemi Page 0,26
neck and squeeze.
“What are you doing?” Tzain shouts.
“Showing the princess what it looks like when her life’s actually in danger!”
Tzain yanks me back by the shoulders. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
“She lied to me,” I shout back. “She told me they were going to kill her. She swore she needed my help!”
“I did not lie!” Amari wheezes. Her hand flies to her throat. “Father’s executed members of the royal family just for sympathizing with divîners. He would not hesitate to do the same to me!”
She reaches into her dress and pulls out a scroll, gripping it so tightly her hand shakes.
“The king needs this.” Amari coughs and gazes at the parchment with a weight I can’t place. “This scroll can change everything. It can bring magic back.”
We stare at Amari with blank faces. She’s lying. Magic can’t come back. Magic died eleven years ago.
“I thought it was impossible, too.” Amari registers our doubt. “But I saw it with my own eyes. A divîner touched the scroll and became a maji.…” Her voice softens. “She summoned light with her hands.”
A Lighter?
I step closer, studying the scroll. Tzain’s disbelief sticks to me like the heat in the air, yet the more Amari speaks, the more I dare to dream. There was too much terror in her eyes. A genuine fear for her well-being. Why else would half the army chase down the princess if her escape didn’t pose some greater risk?
“Where’s the maji now?” I ask.
“Gone.” Tears brim in Amari’s eyes. “Father killed her. He murdered her just because of what she could do.”
Amari wraps her arms around herself, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears inside. She seems to shrink. Drowning in her grief.
Tzain’s exasperation softens, but her tears don’t mean a thing to me. She became a maji, her voice echoes in my head. She summoned light with her hands.
“Give me that.” I motion for the scroll, eager to inspect it. But the moment it touches my fingers, an unnatural shock travels through my body. I jump back in surprise, dropping the parchment to cling to the bark of a jackalberry tree.
“What’s wrong?” Tzain asks.
I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. The strange sensation buzzes beneath my skin, foreign yet familiar at the same exact time. It rumbles in my core, warming me from the inside out. It beats like a second heartbeat, vibrating like …
Like ashê?
The thought makes my heart clench, revealing a gaping hole inside me that I didn’t even know still existed. When I was young, ashê was all I ever wanted. I prayed for the day I would feel its heat in my veins.
As the divine power of the gods, the presence of ashê in our blood is what separates divîners from maji. It’s what we draw on to use our sacred gifts. Ashê is what maji need to do magic at all.
I stare at my hands for the shadows of death Mama could conjure in her sleep. When ashê awakens, our magic awakens as well. But is that what’s happening now?
No.
I crush the spark inside of me before it can blossom into hope. If magic’s back, that changes everything. If it’s truly returned I don’t even know what to think.
With magic come the gods, thrust into the center of my life after eleven years of silence. I barely picked up the shattered pieces of me after the Raid.
If they abandon me once more, I won’t be able to do it again.
“Can you feel it?” Amari’s voice drops to a whisper as she takes a step back. “Kaea said the scroll transforms divîners into maji. When Binta touched it, all these lights burst from her hands!”
I turn up my palm, searching for the lavender glow of Reaper magic. Before the Raid, when a divîner transformed, there was no guarantee what kind of maji that divîner would be. Often divîners inherited the magic of their parents, almost always deferring to the magic in their mother’s bloodline. With a kosidán father, I was sure I would become a Reaper like Mama. I longed for the day I would feel the magic of the dead in my bones, but right now all I can feel is an unnerving tingle in my veins.
I pick up the parchment with care, wary it’ll trigger something again. While I can make out a yellow painting of the sun on the weathered scroll, the rest of the symbols are unreadable, so ancient they look older than time itself.