“Laia—” He appears uncertain, then grabs me in a hug. “I love you. Fight. Win. I’ll see you when it’s all over.”

“Laia!” Elias calls out as Darin disappears into the camp. Afya and Gibran are beside him, and a platoon of Tribespeople and Scholars armed with longbows waits nearby. “It’s time. We’re the last.”

“Rehmat?” I say quietly, jogging toward Elias. But the creature does not appear.

We wind through the trees, the last of a thousand soldiers Elias has already dispatched. The path we follow takes us east, angling upward before ending at a sheer cliff that drops sixty feet to the river. To our left and right, hundreds of Tribespeople and Scholars wait, bows at the ready.

Skies know how the Nightbringer cleared the way for Keris’s army. Perhaps he manipulated the forest, like Elias. Perhaps he had his jinn clear a path. Whatever the case, the enemy Martials approach a narrow strip of shallows along the river, the only place they can cross without boats.

And just close enough to the cliffs to leave them exposed to our arrows.

“Do not shoot,” Afya breathes from my left. “Only the longbows have the range.”

Though my aim has improved, I heed her advice. In any case, I am here to watch for the Nightbringer. To spy on him when hopefully, he cannot do the same.

Though the sky above is clear, the forest from which the Martials will emerge is cloaked in mist. And before our eyes, the mist thickens.

“What in the bleeding skies is that?” Afya points to a thick bank of cloud, rolling up along the river from the south. There is a sulfuric fetor to it, and it is completely at odds with the wind, which blows in from the north, favoring our arrows.

“The Nightbringer,” Elias says. “He knows we’re here. Runner!”

A young Scholar appears immediately at Elias’s side. “Call the wind efrits,” he says. “Tell them they’re to scatter the fog.”

The boy disappears, and now the fog has enshrouded the river below. We hear splashes in the water, but looking down is like looking into a bucket of milk.

“They’re crossing,” Afya hisses. “We have to do something.”

“Not yet,” Elias says. “We wait for the efrits.”

Trails of stinking mist approach the ridge where we’ve taken cover, and we hear shouts now, orders given as Keris’s army makes its way across the shallows. From there, they will travel along a cleared area that runs in a strip between this ridge and the jinn city. And then, up the short escarpment to battle our troops.

I fidget as the minutes drag on. “Elias—”

“Not yet.” His pale eyes are trained on the mist. The soldiers shift uneasily, and he calls down the line, “Steady.”

Then a whoosh over our heads, and the shrieks of the wind efrits as they arrow through the mist, swirling and ripping and tearing, scattering it as a child scatters fall leaves.

Elias lifts his hand and signals for the archers along the ridgeline to nock and aim. The cloud thins enough that we see men below, crossing the river in large groups.

Elias swings down his arm, and the thrum of a thousand arrows launching at once sings through the air. One of Keris’s men shouts a warning, but waterlogged as the soldiers are, they cannot raise their shields in time. They drop in waves. Elias lifts and drops his arm again, before signaling to fire at will. Another wave of soldiers goes down, and then another.

We could stop them right here. Perhaps a thousand Tribal longbows are enough to finish the Martials. To make Keris crawl back to Navium, licking her wounds. To make the Nightbringer think twice.

Then a knife, its hilt still glowing as if fresh from the forge, whistles out of the sky and lodges itself into the chest of the person standing beside me. Afya.

She grunts and steps back, staring down at the blade in surprise before crumpling into my arms. No, oh skies, no.

“Afya!” Gibran screams and gets his arm around her in an instant. “Zaldara, no.”

“Get her to triage,” I say. “Quickly. It didn’t hit her heart. Go, Gibran!”

But the clouds above burn orange and then a deep angry red as jinn streak out of the sky. Umber, with her fiery glaive, is among them. She thuds to the earth not thirty feet away, flattening the trees around her. Afya and Gibran both go flying as her glaive sweeps out, setting fire to two dozen of our soldiers at once.

“Retreat!” Elias calls, and we expected this. I know we did. But I am still unprepared for the swift deaths the jinn mete out. The way they tear through our troops like wind through paper. A score of our men go down. Two score. Five score.

“Run, Laia!”

“Afya—Gibran—”

“Run!”

Elias pulls me away, rage in his voice. Instantly I know his anger is born of fear, for here I stand, unmoving as death inches closer.

But though Umber is before me, though she could strike me down with her glaive, she only snarls and turns away. Elias windwalks me through the trees and back to the jinn grove, even as the soldiers we have left behind trickle from the woods.

Our camp is an organized sort of chaos, and Elias is instantly barking orders. The catapults are loaded, the sea efrits hovering above them to defend them from the jinn. The war machines are aimed not at the approaching army, but at the Sher Jinnaat. We will hurl not fire or stones, but massive blocks of salt, to keep the jinn in the city from joining their brethren and deciding the battle before we’ve had a chance to fight it.

“How many down?” the Shrike calls to Elias.

“Nearly two hundred on our side,” he says. “Perhaps a thousand on theirs.”

“We sent the messenger as you requested,” the Shrike says. “Keris sent the head back. Body tied to the horse.”

“Soul Catcher!” Rowan Goldgale materializes before us. “The Martials are here. The Nightbringer—”

Elias grabs the Blood Shrike, already drawing her scim for battle.

“Don’t give Keris an inch, Blood Shrike. She’ll have something up her sleeve. She always does.”

The Shrike smiles grimly. “And who is to say I don’t, Soul Catcher?”

He grins at her, that old Elias smile, and with that she is gone. The sky is alight, the jinn among us, raining down hell on the army, trying their best to destroy us before we can fight back.

Elias turns to me, but I shove him away. “Go,” I say. “Hold them off.”

“Laia—”

I leave him, because if I say goodbye, I am already giving in. I will see him again. I will.

The camp is madness now, but I am not afraid. For Umber could have taken me down, and she did not. The Nightbringer wants me for himself.

An old calm consumes me. The same calm I felt before I rescued Elias from execution, and before I broke into Kauf. The calm of delivering Livia’s child in the middle of a battle. A calm born of the knowledge that I am as ready as I can be.

I plunge into the trees west of the jinn grove and make my way up to a small plateau of rock that looks out over the Sher Jinnaat. The rock is impossible to miss. Especially for a jinn watching the battle from above.

When I reach the plateau, Rehmat’s gold glow appears before me.

“I am here, Laia.”

“Thank the skies for that,” I say to Rehmat. She comes around to stand in front of me, and there is something almost formal about how her hands are clasped before her. She tilts her head, a question offered without words.

I nod, and she flows into me, joining my consciousness so completely that it takes my breath away. I am her and she is me. And though I know this is the way it must be, though she limits herself to but a corner of my mind, I chafe against her presence. I hate having someone else in my head.

We move to the edge of the promontory and peer down. Keris’s army has reached the escarpment and hurtles up it. The first wave of soldiers is impaled on the pikes there, but the army is not held back for long.

Umber swoops into a dive, incinerating the pikes, and Keris’s Martials are through, throwing themselves at Elias’s forces.

My eyes sting as I watch. So many dead. Who they fight for does not matter, because we are all the same to the Nightbringer. He has manipulated us into hating each other. Into seeing the other side as he sees us. Not as humans, but as vermin, worthy only of slaughter.

But where is that creature? Nowhere to be seen, though his jinn wreak havoc.

Enough of this. Every second that passes means more people dead, which is exactly what he wants.

The scythe is heavy on my back. Too heavy. I unsheathe it. Wan light glints upon the black diamond blade before the sun disappears behind a cloud. Rain threatens, and I stare at the approaching storm. If only it would break upon us, for the jinn hate the wet. But the sky does not open.

“Come on then, you monster,” I hiss, hoping the wind will carry my words to him. “Come for me.”

“As it pleases you, Laia of Serra.”

That deep growling voice. The voice of my nightmares. The voice that has taken so much.

I turn and face the Nightbringer.

LIX: The Soul Catcher