Freedom's Slave by Heather Demetrios

Author:Heather Demetrios
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

27

ZANARI CROUCHED BEHIND A LOW SAND DUNE, HER EYES glued to the portal. It was nearly impossible for her to remain silent, to sit still. She felt as though she’d been swimming in a sea of emotion for the past ten hours. Joy and adrenaline and guilt and fear and fury roiled within her. She’d lost her brother but gained Phara. She was leaving Arjinna behind—maybe forever—and now all of Earth was hers to explore.

But first, she had to kill a few slave traders.

She leaned forward as several figures emerged from the shimmering cut between the realms that bled chiaan like a wound. Zanari turned to the rows of Brass soldiers who stood in a shallow valley of sand behind her, waiting for her signal to ambush the traders. A shadow crossed over the moonlit sand and she looked up: Noqril, returning from his reconnaissance. He landed before evanescing behind a large dune, so that the smoke wouldn’t be visible; then he made his way to her, crouched low.

“How many?” Zanari whispered as he came to join her.

“Ten traders, but they’re being guarded by a battalion of Ifrit,” Noqril said, breathing heavily. He’d been in the air for hours, going between Earth and Arjinna to keep track of the traders.

“Godsdammit,” she muttered. “What do you think?”

“We’ll likely suffer casualties, but we’ll get the bottles in the end,” he said. “It’s your call.”

How many times had Zanari seen her brother in this exact situation? Weighing the balance of lives lost to lives saved. It had never been easy for him—it kept him up nights—but she’d had no idea how heavy that burden felt. It was a physical weight on her heart. She glanced at the jinn behind her. How many would lose their lives tonight?

“All right,” she said. “We have to do it.”

Noqril nodded. “I agree.”

Zanari stood, her chiaan pulsing inside her, and sent sparks from her fingertips—the signal to charge. A cloud of jade evanescence swirled beneath her feet. Behind her, she could see the evanescence of her fellow soldiers, every caste represented. This—right here—this was why she’d finally had to leave Arjinna. The tavrai saw the Ifrit and Shaitan in their midst as necessary evils, but to Zanari and the Dhoma, they were equal and their sacrifices honorable.

The evanescence took her, and seconds later, Zanari was at the portal and launching herself at the nearest slave trader, an Ifrit in expensive leathers and with teeth made of gold. He cried out, dropping his sack of bottles in the sand as he scrambled away from her.

“Not so fast, brother,” she called.

Zanari threw laser-sharp daggers of chiaan at his back and he fell to the sand, the wind knocked out of him. She slit his throat and had already turned to the next trader before his body went still.

Zanari became a maelstrom, a frenzy of blood and sand and cries of rage. You are a sword, nothing more, she chanted to herself, again and again. The thought of dying so close to Phara, without the healer even knowing she was there, was too horrible to contemplate.

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