Corvin's flute was mesmerising to hold. Its carving was beautiful; Raya's tentative fingers glided the length of its softly curved surface, slowing and growing gentler as they climbed the steeper incline where the pipe flared out at its open end. Her thumb lingered at its edge, rubbing a listless circle. Though its elegance was startling given its origin, it was not without imperfections, and she always found herself lingering on those little rough patches—the nicks and scrapes of tiny mistakes—and wondering where or when they might've come about. Most bore the slick arcs of claw marks. It was a beastly instrument when one looked closer, but still she found herself turning it over in her hands for the hundredth time, baffled. For those claws to leave only small mistakes behind, it must've been created with immense care.

Its appearance fitted the loftiness of the music it made, the soft, floating notes she still heard echoes of. Her eyes fell upon its narrowest end where the reed stuck out. She lifted it and took in a shallow sip of air before tension constricted her throat. Releasing the breath as a sigh, she let it sag back into her hands. It rolled this way and that in her open palms.

"Raya!"

She flinched, fists closing tight around the flute as her gaze snapped to her bedroom curtain.

"What is taking so long?" her mother snapped—bellowing from the bottom of the stairs, more than far enough away, though the tightness in Raya's shoulder's didn't ease. "We need to go now!"

"I'll be there in a moment!" she shouted back, hoping her voice wasn't too soft to hear. The flute's weight doubled in her hands. Feet hitting the ground hard as she shoved off her bed, she lunged blindly for her desk, fingers bending awkwardly as they knocked against the wood before finally latching around the curled handle of her drawer. She yanked it open and tossed the flute inside, sealing it out of view.

Her heart ran sprinting loops. She stopped for a moment, jaw clenched, as she rubbed at the spot above it. She should never have picked the instrument up again. It needed to stay out of sight. She desperately needed to scrub it from her mind, to forget, but her mind continued to wander.

She shook her head sharply and snatched up the ring she'd come for in the first place, twisting it onto her forefinger as she exited the room without a backward glance.

Her family was waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase. Once again, ceremonial garments decorated them, ready for a second rendition of Amina Shi-Sabri's trial; her mother was painted in bold swathes of purple watercolour, unreal and pristine, unmissable when flanked by Yasmin's faded, ghost-like form and the dark greys and blues that swallowed her father and brother respectively like rich shadows. Raya couldn't recall whether her father had accompanied them the first time. If he had, he'd disappeared the moment they'd received the news of its cancellation.

Now, she tried and failed to catch his eye—his gaze shied from contact, and hers found nothing to settle on, slipping like water from him to Hariq's welcoming smile before inevitably gravitating towards her mother. Rana's eyes raked her. She felt a chill in her slippered feet, wriggling upward beneath the frills of her skirt and through the roots of her tied hair before sitting somewhere in her throat, beneath her dust pouch. Her mother nodded, and the world moved again.

"Tall and proud!" Rana commanded as she swung around, dress rippling so it twinkled with violet stars. She stalked towards the doorway, and they all followed. "Let us hope a trial truly awaits us today."

Raya hoped the same, and she doubted they were alone. A trial was a sign of regularity, a chance for grace and power, a celebration of all that made this city what it was. Tehazihbith craved such a reminder today. Though Corvin had fled, the turbulence gone from Raya's life, normalcy was not an easy thing to grasp. As the Kel-Jabir company marched through the streets, a dark cloud hung over the mid-morning crowds that should not have been there. An acrid silence laced it. Tragedies were rare in a city built upon perfection and safety, and so when they occurred, they spread like wildfire and left charcoal smears wherever rumours travelled.

Hariq could not see the downturned looks and shadows cast over faces, but from the way his jaw locked and his staff struck the sand in hard rhythm, she could tell he felt it just as intensely as she did—if not more. She kept pace at his side, searching his face. Focusing on the shift of emotion she glimpsed within it was a simpler task than sifting through her own messy head.

"They were good men." He kept his murmur soft so that their mother would not catch it. "It's reassuring to know so many recognise their bravery with mourning, but it need not sour the air."

The men he spoke of had belonged to a midnight hunting party, one tasked with capturing a key piece of the trial they were about to witness. The mages leading the party had returned largely unscathed along with half of their escorts, but the rest had—as the survivors told it—been brutally killed out on the sands by a member of the beastfolk. Following the attack that had delayed Amina's trial originally, that made this the second beastfolk incident in that many days, and that was a chilling thought. Raya wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't know," she said, throwing a bouncing glance at her shiningly dressed mother and the parade of jewellery and chatter they were steadily being absorbed into. "Is it not... inappropriate to be participating in such an occasion so soon after their deaths?"

The cloth shielding Hariq's eyes creased as he pondered the thought. "I believe, if they had the power to decide it for themselves, they would prefer that their memories be honoured with celebration rather than sadness and grief." There was a stilted edge to his words that chafed uncomfortably against Raya's skin, though he sounded as if he were speaking honestly. "They sacrificed much for this trial. It's only right it takes place when it should, to make what they did worthwhile."

Raya swallowed her unease and forced a shallow, flickering smile, hoping the pretence it played leaked into her words. "I'm sure you're correct." Her gaze flicked to scan the thick crowds bunching in all around. She slid closer to her brother, hands clasping one another behind her back, neck and shoulders aching from their stiff upright posture.

The throng of people, ready to burst the narrow seams of the city, finally relaxed as its edges began to spill out into the open space of an arena. Their pace slowed to sluggish, intermittent steps as the first to arrive jostled to find their seats. The arena was shaped like a huge bowl, its centre sinking a round pit beneath the ground while its edges rose up smoothly and imposingly in four sleek arcs. Gaps left in between the stands allowed entry from all corners of Tehazihbith. Unperturbed by the noise and clamour, Raya's mother strode inside, beckoning them to follow her in swift ascent of the stand to their left. The heat of moving bodies crammed into the space and brush of their sweeping clothing against Raya's arms stirred an ashy, squirming feeling around her pulse, sticky on the back of her neck. Fighting not to freeze, she looped her arm with Hariq's and set her mind on helping him up the steep steps, grateful at least that most skirted around the two of them as soon as they caught sight of his covered eyes. The second glances tossed at her brother—the narrower stares, snagged somewhere between judgement and pity—she would've gladly done without, though knowing he would be oblivious to it all supplied some relief.

Eventually, they caught up to their mother and took their seats upon one of the stand's higher tiers. Yasmin scooted an inch closer the moment she was seated, making certain their thighs lightly touched, flashing a sheepish half-smile from beneath the shadow of her headwrap and a searching glance Raya did her best to ignore. She straightened her back and feigned immense interest in the scene below.

The altitude granted an expansive view of the arena. The stands were steadily taking on the appearance of a patchwork quilt, speckled with vibrant colour; by the minute, more families were trickling in to fill the remaining empty seats and blur the scene into one solid blanket. The patch of sand they surrounded was, in contrast, noticeably empty. Pale sunlight scattered the sand, illuminating chinks of colour mixed into it: emerald greens and liquid blues and fierce reds, fragments of dust purposefully placed and glinting their impatience. The lone figure amid it all showed evidence of a similar feeling. Restlessness wriggled in the bounce of her step; she paced directionless spirals, feet swinging back and forth to kick at the sand and hands fiddling constantly with the clasp of her white cloak.

A rattling crash stopped the girl in her tracks, however. It must've echoed far more noisily down in the pit, but Raya still flinched, gaze chasing the sound until it locked onto a cage shoved into the furthest left corner of the arena. A hulking, inhuman shape slammed itself against the bars, its rumbling growls making the bars ring and shivering through the loose sand. The pair of men standing guard either side of the cage jumped to attention, whirling their slender white blades to jab at the bars. The beast reared backward, tossing a grey mane as its growls deepened, showing its teeth. Stormy black eyes prowled from one guard to the other.

Instinctive fear slithered within Raya's chest at the sight of the beast's crowded jaws. Then her mind caught up, and the sensation chilled thrice over, sapping the air from her lungs.

"Meag," she breathed.

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