Chapter 3

I remember my wedding day: my father leading me forward with my first moon's blood stained on a white handkerchief, just thirteen and sacrificed as bride to the Ghoul King Malkira to protect our own borders from being consumed by Malkira's armies. After all, that was the fate of all the surrounding kingdoms, citizens enslaved and crops gone to leave nothing but graveyards and burnt minarets and the restless dead riding desert winds. Malkira had offered my father a choice: his daughter or his death, and my father was only too happy to oblige.

I remember Malkira's face, nothing but a skull with pussing eyes in their sockets and a long gray tongue lolling out over spiny teeth. Malkira took the handkerchief and licked up my moon's blood and his eyes turned red, and he hissed in desire, and my father was pleased. The Ghoul King had accepted the sacrifice and would spare his lands. I was in chains, as befitting an offering, and though I kicked and screamed my father pushed me to the cold ground and Malkira grabbed me with his rotting hands and tore my abaya off until I was naked. He would have taken me there in front of my whole stony family and his undead army had not Ghazal broken free from his cage, snapped my bindings with his beak, and taken me away to his birthplace of Lotan on his back.

I remember onion green eyes crying silently at my debasement. I remember a spell spoken by a mysterious master magician to break Ghazal's bindings, only one I and the wind could hear.

It had been Izad's voice like music in my mind, though his lips were bound by the flesh of a phoenix. So what he was saying was true: he had been freed from his servitude to the Ghoul King. In fact, he had freed me.

"You were the one who freed Ghazal," I say slowly, drawing out every syllable.

Izad smiles kindly – as kind as a scarred, noseless necromancer can be. "I saw your debasement, Rani. I could not let such a girl of Allah's talent and masterwork be defiled by Malkira. It was in that moment Allat slit the bindings on my lips: we are both masters of words, mine of magic, yours of entrancement, and your father was an idiot to not see the power of poetry within you. Allat sees potential in you, dearest Rani. She speaks to me when it rains on the oasis and there are moonbows in the well water. So I ask you again: my service – and the slaughter of Malkira and his ghouls – all but for a poem."

"I accept your offer, Moonkissed Izad. That is what I will call you when I sing your poems on my sitar. So you say Malkira is on the borders of Lotan. When does he plan to strike?"

"At dawn."

"How many ghouls?"

"A thousand and one. Each one tattooed with one of Scherezade's stories. I suppose that is to woo you."

The kohl around my eyes burns – I could swear I am allergic to Malkira's idiocy. "How laughable. His intention?"

"To claim his bride."

Ghazal and I share a long look.

"I am mighty and wind wild," Ghazal chirrups. "I can take out dozens at a time, but the dead do not rest. They will keep attacking until they are dismembered, and even then they will fight on. I will need Rani with her phoenix-fletched arrows on my back to guide me – we always hunt together. But we need Israfel's tears to quiet the ghouls for good, for that malakh weeps into the fiery lakes and slakes the thirst of all restless spirits. As you well know, only Israfel's tears can put a ghoul to rest. Pray tell, do you have enough to whet my talons and beak and quench Rani's arrows? What about your scimitar?"

Izad draws blue vials from his pockets. "Only the most heartfelt tears ethically sourced from the ever-weeping archangel. I told him your story, Rani, and he cried a new river in Paradise. I am told it is chill enough to put out an Ifrit's fire – not that we will test these tears on any," he says mostly to Daja, whose trembling has greatly subsided. "Tell me Rani – your friends here: the peris, the dakinis, the djinn – will they fight for you?"

"Absolutely."

"How many dead lay in these sands?"

"Countless."

"Then our army is complete."