Ashwin rips the chain free from his neck and holds it out beside him. “Come any closer and I’ll crush it.”

Vizier Gyan signals to his soldiers. They manhandle the vessel from Ashwin and pass it to the vizier.

No, no, no.

The vizier gazes at both powers in his hands. I fear he will take them and go, but he hesitates. Can he hear the call of the Voider? He opens the Zhaleh and flips to the incantation. He runs his fingers over the page, enthralled. Desire builds in his greedy gaze. He desires the power of the Voider. He seeks the promised favor for himself.

But the incantation is written in ancient runes. His lips start to move, and a warning blares inside me. “You can read runes?” I ask.

He smirks, an arrogant twist of his lips. “I’ve studied the language of the gods. Haven’t you?”

Ashwin yanks himself from the guards’ grasp, his expression distraught.

Vizier Gyan lifts his palm from the book, his stare firm with resolve. “I don’t think I will pass this on to Hastin after all.”

He has succumbed to the call of the Voider.

I tense to attack, but I have no powers to stop him. My abilities were expended in the arena, and my sheathed daggers are hanging off my bedpost. I can almost reach them with the foot of my leg that is not broken, but I cannot sit up to grab them.

Vizier Gyan lays the book at the end of the bed and flips open the vial. Ashwin springs at him, but the guards drag him back. The vizier drinks the blood, and then, with his lips stained crimson, he reads the incantation. “Fire to smoke and smoke to—”

“One scream and the palace guards will be here,” I cry, drowning out his voice. He pauses, but darkness flows out of the open book like black fog. “What will Sultan Kuval say when he finds out you’re betraying him?”

Vizier Gyan sets the vial beside the book and grabs my throat. “Don’t be noble, Burner. I have drunk the blood and spoken the first words of the incantation. I cannot be stopped.”

Choking for breath, I kick the bedpost with my good leg and foot. My toes knock down my daggers, drawing the attention of the guards. Ashwin rounds on the nearest one, slamming him in the chest with his shoulder and seizing the sword. Lifting the blade against the second soldier, Ashwin backs up against the bed. His free hand darts out and rips the page with the incantation on it from the Zhaleh, and then, with the same hand, he fists the discarded vial.

Vizier Gyan lets up on his grip slightly. I gasp, gulping in air, and his crazed gaze snaps to Ashwin. “You waste your strength, boy.”

Ashwin tosses the khanda on the floor. Thunderstruck, I watch him take the incantation in both hands to rip the parchment in half.

The guards move to charge the unarmed prince, but Vizier Gyan waves them off. “Give it to me or your kindred will die.”

Ashwin scans the loose parchment. It smokes, though I see no flames. “I want justice for bhutas too,” he says. “But this is not the way.”

“Where was justice when Tarek was slaughtering my people?” the vizier yells, his bloodshot eyes frenzied. “Where was mercy when my sister was killed? My legacy is of the gods. Your legacy is of treachery and butchery.”

“I love my empire,” Ashwin proclaims.

“Your empire has fallen.” The vizier’s grasp remains on my gullet. I dare not move to oppose him. He is overcome with the call of the Voider, desperate to finish the incantation. Leaving it unfinished will drive him mad. He growls, “Give me back what belongs to my people, or I will grind the kindred’s bones to powder.”

He means his threat, and Ashwin cannot stop him. Ruining the incantation is a temporary diversion. The darkness is coming; the fog rolling off the parchment is inescapable. Vizier Gyan will unleash the Voider, and we will lose more than the empire—we will lose the world.

Ashwin’s face falls. He has foreseen the same devastating future.

“Gods, forgive me.” He tears the incantation in two and drops the pieces.

Vizier Gyan lunges for the fluttering sections. While he is down, Ashwin licks the bloody rim of the vessel and says, “Fire to smoke, and smoke to dark. Let the light fall and the night rise. Shadows be one. Darkness open the Void and awaken the evernight.”

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.”

“That isn’t true,” I say, harnessing boldness in my faith. “Anu bestowed man with fire powers in honor of Enlil, not Kur.”

“The other bhutas are descendants of the wretched sky-god. But you . . .” Tarek hisses near my ear. “You and I share the same venomous demon blood.”

I shake my head, rustling the pillow. My powers are god-given. Brac would have told me if Burners were descendants of Kur, or does he know? This is a Janardanian myth. Perhaps Brac has not heard of this, or, like me, he scoffed at it.