“The rifts… are a myth.”

Sariya smiled, a gesture that revealed perfect ivory teeth. “They are all too real, Kamarisi, and they are spreading. The boy, Nasim, was reborn of a man named Khamal. He was one of the Al-Aqim, one of those who broke the world. And I am another. My name is Sariya Quljan al Vehayeh.”

Hakan blinked. His eyes were slow to open. His breath was shallower than it had been only moments ago.

“Fear not,” Sariya said. “The end has not yet come. There is more yet to do.” He didn’t understand what she meant, but at the moment he didn’t care. All he could think about was his life being snuffed out here on the cold tiles of the kasir, the place he’d thought safest for him in all the world. “The antidote,” he said.

“Ah, this?” She opened her other hand. In her palm rested a glass phial. She made no move to render it to him. Instead, she kneeled on the balls of her feet, as he had done-or thought he had done. “You will have it, Kamarisi, though it bears a price.”

“What…” His fingers were numb. It was all he could do to force his lungs to draw breath. “What is it?”

“Something you will gladly pay… I wish to help. I wish to guide you eastward.”

“Why?”

She smiled, and when she did, she became more beautiful a woman than he’d ever seen. “My reasons are my own. Suffice it to say there is a jewel in the crown of Anuskaya I would have back.”

He could no longer feel his lips, nor his fingers nor his toes. He tried to take a deep breath, but could not. His lungs refused him. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a weak groan. His mind was alive with fear-he was too young to die; there was so much yet to do-but his body cared not at all. It seemed content to take its final rest.