“I don’t pretend to know their motives. When they first told me about it, my understanding was that it would go off if I was anywhere near Nasheen. I’m not sure that’s even possible, but I’m no fucking magician. And I’m… I’m just very tired. But listen. Whatever has been done… You can’t take me back to Nasheen, Nyx.”

Nyx rubbed her face. Of course not. That would be too easy. “Raine, I’d like nothing better than to see you rot here in some moldy little shit cell. But I can’t do that. The boys back home are on the verge of all-out rebellion. They’ll burn down Mushtallah if you don’t come back in one piece.”

“How is it they didn’t object to a bel dame going after me, then? Surely they’d all think as I did, that you’re here to kill me.”

“I’m not a bel dame, Raine. Fuck, how many times do I have to fucking tell people that? Nobody’s stupid enough to believe Fatima would send a bel dame to bring you back alive.”

“Fatima… Fatima Kosan? The high councilwoman.”

“You know her?”

Raine grimaced. “Oh, I certainly do.”

“She not a fan?”

“She tried to have me killed last year.”

“What?”

“Before the Queen started talks about the new government. She’s had me under surveillance since then.”

“Well… I can’t say that killing you hasn’t crossed my mind, either.”

Raine shook his head. “I understand your grievances, Nyxnissa. I forgive you.”

“You… what?”

“I forgive you. When you drove that sword through me in Chenja, I thought I would die. I had made my peace with God. I stared up at that sky and it was the most peaceful I’d been in… years. The pain… it was nothing. It just bled out of me. Fear, pain, anger… it was very liberating. There was a flash flood not long after, and it pulled me up along with it. I rode that tide for a long time. I’m not even sure how long. When I woke, your blade was still in my gut and I was still alive, washed up near a little homestead. A man named Abbas and his fourteen wives. Fourteen.” He shook his head. “And you should have seen the number of children. They took me in and called for a magician. It was another day before the magician came, and I was nearly gone by then. But as I hovered there at the edge of death, everything changed for me. I saw everything in those moments. My fate. The fate of Nasheen. The fate of the world. We have lost our faith, Nyx. What we need is to set it right again. God told me we must return to the literal word of the Kitab.”