‘If I’d wanted to,’ Bahadur repeated knowingly. ‘Fathers will always do what they can to protect their children. I can do a great deal when I need to.’

‘Well.’ I cleared my throat. I had no business crying when I was alive. ‘I suppose bringing me back from the dead goes some of the way towards making up for seventeen years of not doing a whole lot.’

Bahadur surprised me with a laugh. It was a deep and honest sound, and I liked it. And suddenly, stupidly, I wished I had more time to hear it. That I could have a father who would sit across from me and talk to me like this whenever I needed one. And for just a second, I felt that bone-deep wanting I hadn’t felt in a long time. Since leaving Dustwalk. The one that came with longing for something you feared you might never have. The price I paid for being alive now was that after today, I might never be called daughter again. Djinn couldn’t be regular fathers, after all.

‘And the rest of them?’ I looked away quickly, worried he might read what I was thinking in my traitor eyes, like Jin had an uncanny ability to do. ‘When they find out we’re not dead …’ Will they punish you?

Bahadur brushed my words aside. ‘My kind do what they can to keep from crossing paths with yours. We hope the day that we all have to will never come again. I hope that even more since your brother’s death.’ His eyes had a faraway look. He knew, I realised, what Noorsham had done. ‘We fight separate wars. And now it is almost time for you to return to yours.’ I could feel that he was right. The strange sense of suspended time that had hovered around us was fading. The world was leaking in around the edges.

Under my hand, I felt Jin take a shuddering breath. His eyes snapped open, and he stared at me, blinded by the light pouring down the well of the vaults now. ‘We’re not dead,’ I blurted out as he focused on me. ‘We’re still alive. Both of us.’

Jin searched my face, eyes wild, hand reaching up to me. ‘Now would be a terrible time to start lying to me, Bandit.’

And then suddenly I was laughing and crying and kissing him as I helped him sit up. I turned around, looking for my father. Wanting to say something else – I wasn’t sure what. But he was gone. There were only dust motes dancing in the light where he’d been crouched a moment earlier.

I felt something like invisible hands tugging at my clothes. And I remembered what he’d said. It was time to go back to the fight.

Chapter 46

We were the enemy at the gates of the city.

Jin and I emerged on to the palace walls to find a real battle below us. Our people weren’t on the defensive any more. They were attacking.

The Sultan’s unnatural wall was gone, and the city ramparts were scattered with bronze bodies – fallen Abdals, their spark vanished with Fereshteh’s release. The Sultan’s soldiers made of flesh and blood were scrambling to get into position, reaching for their weapons. More rushed through empty streets towards the palace. We matched them in numbers, but they still had the higher ground.

A scream from above drew both of our heads up. Izz flew overhead, releasing something from his claws, a bomb that struck the wall, exploding as it landed, taking stone and soldiers with it but still not shaking the gates open. The Rebellion needed a way in.

I reached for the desert.

And there was no pain. No struggle. My power flowed easily, like it was breathing a sigh of relief as it invaded my whole body.

Involuntarily, I touched the smooth skin of my stomach. My father had healed that old wound, too, along with the new one.

But it was more than the absence of the ache. For the first time ever, I felt my power like it was part of me. Truly in my soul. Not a weapon at my fingertips but like another heartbeat.

I didn’t so much as twitch my fingers as I grabbed full hold of the desert. Of my desert. I was the desert. And it would answer to me.

I pulled with everything I had, raising the sand like the surge of the sea. It crashed into the Eastern Gate, splintering the stones, scattering soldiers and opening the gates.

I flooded the city with the Rebellion.

The streets turned into a battlefield as we raced down from the palace walls. We were unarmed except for my gift, and Jin hung behind me as we entered the fight.

A soldier turned as we rounded a narrow corner, his gun rising to meet us. I moved faster than he did, the sand around his feet surging up around him, blinding him, choking him.

Jin shifted past me. In one swift motion, he knocked the soldier in the face, grabbing the rifle out of his hands.

Suddenly there came a gunshot behind us. Jin and I turned as one. But the bullet hadn’t been aimed at us. Sprawled on the street was a man in a soldier’s uniform. Above him in a window was a girl in a gold khalat, her hair tied back off her face, a gun in her hands. She was shaking, and her eyes looked wide with the shock of what she’d just done. She’d just saved us.

Her gaze met mine, and she gave me a small nod. I felt a surge of hope. The Rebellion hadn’t been extinguished inside the city while we were gone.

We had to get back to the rest of the battle.

Shazad’s plan had been to split the Sultan’s soldiers up, divide them among the streets and alleyways, where numbers wouldn’t matter and we could push them back until the palace was in reach.

We started to see the first signs of fighting on Red Reed Way, the thoroughfare that led through the city from west to east.