“Whose blood?” Lilia asked. She took a step back.

“Not you,” Zezili said. “You and your little friends here, we can spare them. We’ll just need a few hundred from the camp. They’d have died anyway. I have orders to kill them. What I’m offering you is a chance to live and save the rest. Take it or leave it.”

Zezili had never been a good negotiator.

“You’re not going to hurt these people,” Lilia said.

Isoail sighed. “I’m sorry, child, but sacrifices have to be made. It will take the blood of many just to open a gate and keep it open, but you’ll find your mother. Your true one.”

“Sometimes, a few have to die,” Zezili said, “so a lot more can live. I like my country, little girl. I like having you all around to do the work. We saved you from yourselves. Now I can save you again, but only if you’ll cooperate.”

“You’re not saving me,” Lilia said. “You’re saving your way of life. It has nothing to do with me, except in how much you can control my people.”

“I tried to make this easy,” Zezili said. She nodded to Jasoi and the squad of women with her. “Take these ones out of the camp. I’ll call in the legion and clean out the rest.”

“You need bodies?” Lilia said. “I’ll give you bodies.” Zezili hardly heard her.

But she certainly felt the blast of heat that knocked her from Dakar.

“No,” Lilia said. Her rage had been bubbling since they crossed the camp to meet the legionnaires. Now it burned white-hot, so vicious and hungry that it blurred her vision. Beyond the little group of legionnaires were hundreds more. Row upon row of them. Dorinahs who had been murdering her people forever, for a thousand years or more. They had cast out Gian and corralled Emlee and Cora here. How many uprisings had there been over the centuries? Thousands, surely. But it was these women who put them down. Who kept them slaves.

They would not touch one more.

Something opened inside her. A blazing red haze cloaked her vision. Lilia gasped. Her lungs opened. Air rushed in, more than her poor asthmatic lungs had ever been able to draw – air and something more, something hot and vicious that burned beneath her skin like fire.

Fire.

“You need bodies?” Lilia rasped. “I’ll give you bodies.”

She breathed out. Pressed her hands forward. She expelled the burst of bloody power from her body.

For a moment, her vision cleared. She dropped her hands. Nothing was different. Was she having some kind of hallucination? Was she ill?

The first line of legionnaires circling the camp burst into flame.

The wave of heat was so intense, it blew Lilia back onto her rump. The legionnaires mounted next to them were blown off their dogs.