At the other end of the field, my father raised his hands. The earth split, swallowing the enemy.

The two armies collided. A sword landed next to me. I grabbed it.

“This is also you,” Erra said next to me. “This is the wrath of Shinar. They who thought they would murder us, take our cities, and eat our children, they met our anger and it consumed them. It consumed us too, but not before we obliterated their very memory from history. We wiped them off the face of the planet. It is as if they never were.”

Around me the battle raged. My father spun in the center of a magical maelstrom. Behind him the earth shuddered and broke loose. A creature of metal and magic, a beautiful golden lion a hundred feet high, burst onto the field. My aunt twisted and sliced the head off an invader. It went flying.

“This is what you are asking me to betray,” Erra said into my ear.

I closed my eyes and imagined the weight and warmth of a child in my arms. When I opened them, my son looked back at me with Curran’s gray eyes. The battle was gone. We sat in the pavilion again.

I held my son out to Erra. “This is what I’m asking you to save.”

She took the child from me and looked at his face.

“I just want him to live a happy life,” I told her. “The war is terrible. It will never end, as long as my father is allowed to be free. He can’t stop. Maybe a part of him wants to, but even if it does, he doesn’t know how. Someone has to end it.”

A woman appeared behind us, regal, tall, her wrists heavy with golden bracelets, her flowing dress a deep emerald green. Black kohl lined her eyes, her eyelids and lips dusted with gold. Semiramis reached down, took my son from Erra’s hands, and smiled at him.

•   •   •

THE GARDENS FADED. The grip of the magic released me, its pain an echo in my bones. The arcane inferno died down. Semiramis withdrew, revealing Erra.

“He created an order of assassins to kill me,” she whispered. She had seen sahanu in my memories. There was something almost vulnerable in her face.

My grandmother reached for her, wrapping her ghostly arms about her daughter. Magic swirled around them.

“I know,” Erra whispered. “I understand.”

She turned to me, all tenderness vanishing from her face like a mask jerked aside.

“You will do two things for me. Once this is over, I will choose the burial place for myself and my mother. You will move us there.”

“Done.” I would’ve done it anyway.

“And you will abandon the city.”

“What?”

“You will agree to never rule the land you’ve claimed.”

I opened my mouth. Everything inside me rebelled at the idea. It was my city, my land, my people, mine . . .