He could hear the Sparrow screaming when she took off her fingers, could still feel the immense satisfaction the first time he'd heard it, but the screaming hadn't stopped for the past few hours, and the throbbing headache that followed was beginning to wear down his control.

Rhykal drew a breath and grimaced at the pressure in his chest that expanded instead of his lungs. There seemed to be a fist of some kind around his heart since the night he'd decided to let her fall into the river. It was squeezing tighter now, making it difficult for him to think, to breathe. Something had to be done about it. The distraction was putting his life at risk, especially with the woman from Al Sana and the prince chasing him.

They would chase him still, despite the warnings given. The moment the Bharavi had cut off her fingers and took control of the situation, the woman from Al Sana would be hunting him down out of spite, and the prince would do anything to see him die a thousand times, never mind the consequence. Love was like that. It made one suicidal, unpredictable, sometimes for the sake of your lover, most of the time for the sake of your own heart.

And love was there, whether or not the prince was aware of it. Anyone could hear it in the screams that never made it out of his throat, or the hammering silence that kept him on his knees afterward. Love was unmistakably there, in the unconcealed hatred that followed him and her as they stepped out of the cave. It would follow them for as long as they lived, that hate. Djari iza Zuri had seen to it, by crushing that love with her foot and burning it to the ground when she made her way out of the cave.

To save him or the Sparrow?

Does it even matter?

Rhykal breathed again, this time, the pain behind his ribcage doubled. Two women now, both willing to die to keep him alive for their own ideals, never mind what he wanted, what damage they left behind, or what happened to him afterward. Two selfish women, one seeking to bind him in chains for some stupid prophecies tossed about carelessly by an oracle, the other to keep an oath intact. So he could be used like a tool, a weapon without consent. So they could both die a fucking hero.

He stared at the Bharavi from across the fire, watched the way she was tending her wound without a shred of regret on her face, and realized how much they resembled each other without needing any physical appearances to match. His mother had looked like that on the night of the raid, when she stared at the damage, at her daughters' mutilated bodies, at him as the soldiers beat her to death, telling––demanding––her son to live. There had been no room for alternatives, no indecision, no choices left for him to make. Then or now.

Chains.

He scratched the skin around his wrists. The cuffs were gone, along with the marks they created. The weight and the itch were still there, left behind by his mother and the Bharavi.

One was already dead, the other still living.

***

Djari jolted at the sound of something screeching from afar and adjusted herself quickly. She resumed the pointless task of fumbling with her bandage, gave a performance of someone completely unaware of the danger that had been dancing around the fire, and prayed that he couldn't see through her pretense.

In the dark, not too far away, Rhykal was staring quietly at her through the flames. He hadn't spoken a word since they left the cave, but words weren't always needed to detect an atmosphere that had turned toxic. He seemed to be turning over a thought in his head, holding it in the light like a predator trying to decide how to bring down a chosen prey, and when. He scratched at his own wrists often, the same way those men had fidgeted in the Djamahari.

Somewhere between the crackling of the woods and the leap of the open fire, she could almost hear it again––the absentminded jingle of keys in someone's hand, the rhythmic tapping of a knife against a palm, impatient footsteps that paced back and forth, back and forth before they decided––

She slammed shut her eyes, tried to shake away both that thought and the imagined maggots that began to crawl on her skin, didn't make it far before a familiar scent hit her nose. It was there again, circling her like vultures waiting to pick off her flesh––the pungent mixture of sweat, blood, and stomach acid from someone's hunger being driven close to the limit. And all of the sudden her senses were put on alert, the same way an experienced gazelle was put on alert being hunted the second or third time. Danger had a smell to it, a weight you could feel on your shoulders, your skin, especially when you had experienced it once or twice.

She looked down at her hands, found them trembling and quickly hid them inside the cloak. As if in response, a gust of wind came through the canyon, circled the fire, made it crackle louder, harsher, setting another piece of wood alight.

Rhykal flexed his shoulders, stood up, and came for her.

***

The Sparrow screamed again as he rose to his feet, a word this time, then some kind of plea. Rhykal grabbed the fool by the neck, shoved him somewhere behind the bars his mind had constructed, locked him in and threw away the key.

The Bharavi stiffened as he approached but didn't move from the spot. Couldn't, he supposed. She had been through this before, once, if the fool's memory served him correctly. Once was enough to paralyze victims, but never enough for them to deal with it. He knew that from experience, knew exactly what she was feeling at this very moment, knew it well enough to find great satisfaction in seeing that fear.

He wondered how much louder the Sparrow would beg, how viciously he would trash and scream if he were to repeat that same incident, wearing this pretty face she trusted, this skin. If it would hurt the same way when he had to watch the man give those men and women pleasure with his hands, his mouth, behind those same bars. He might be able to get rid of the imposter for good, if she were to die this way. It might free him from them both––his last two enemies who had been keeping him alive by their chains.

He took the final step that brought him within an arm's reach of the Bharavi. She made a sound that didn't quite escape her throat, stared up at him with eyes that saw someone else, somewhere else. He probably looked like that the first few times new customers had arrived. His limbs, too, had been paralyzed, cuffed by the sheer terror of old tortures coming back to life before new ones even began.

And then she snapped out of it. Raw, red fear sprang back into her eyes like someone had slapped her awake from a recurring nightmare. She scooted back, scrambled to her feet in panic, set off running in the opposite direction. Didn't make it far before he tackled her down on the sand, face-first. The Bharavi whimpered something as she tried to claw her way out from under his weight, made it half a pace before he dragged her back by the ankle, flipped her over, kept her down.

And there, he saw it: the panic on her face, in her eyes, kicked to life by sheer terror and a survival instinct. It should have been like this. There should have been fear and terror on his mother's face, on the Bharavi's...

"Do you still want to protect him now?" he said, fist closing in around her throat, finding himself rewarded by the rising speed of her pulse. "Still willing to die for that oath? For prophecies? For pride?" The way my mother did? To put these chains around my wrists, my ankles, my life?

She turned away and squeezed her eyes shut. He grabbed her face with his free hand, forced it back into place, made sure she could hear him loud and clear.

"Oh, no you don't," he said, surprised he managed to hear himself talk behind all the noises the Sparrow was making. "You don't get to turn away from it. You are going to look at me, at this face, and watch what I do with these hands, this body. Both of you are going to watch. Both of you are going to pay."

'You will survive... you will find water...' his mother's words, fading now, behind the screams and cries of the Sparrow that escalated to new heights.

'... the key to our freedom...The flint that will set fire to the Salasar...' That prophecy too, was crumpling, weeping underneath him now. He could see it being torn to shreds before he even closed his fist around her clothes, the vision his mother had died trying to serve, the destiny he hadn't asked for that had been dragging him in chains and brought the Sparrow to life.

It ends now.

Today.

Tonight.

***

The sound of her tunic being ripped apart matched the one in her memory. The hands on her skin didn't feel like Hasheem's. That smile on his face belonged to someone else, from somewhere else. She couldn't remember what her attacker had looked like; she had been too afraid to hold that picture to the light, to let it solidify in her memory. Now that face was about to be replaced by her sworn sword's, and stored permanently in her mind. From here onward no effort would stop her from remembering the person in her nightmare. This time the memory was going to be Hasheem, smiling as he took pleasure from her.

No, not pleasure. Somewhere among the panic that gripped her she knew it wasn't pleasure Rhykal was seeking. It was satisfaction he wanted, a release from the pent up need to inflict pain on someone, to punish. She realized then, that whatever was about to happen this time, she wouldn't be living with it. This time he was going to kill her when it was finished. This time she was going to die.

Her and Hasheem both.

Something sprang to life at that thought, something like a surge of energy that filled her limbs in a heartbeat, something with more conviction than taking flight, stronger than fear.

She heard herself scream then, a cry that tasted more like rage than horror, driven by an urgent, desperate need to survive. She thrashed and fought under his weight, found something hard and sharp among the bundle of his clothes at chest level, snatched it free and slashed it blindly at his face. Drew blood.

It froze him for a moment, stopped him from what he was doing to process what had happened. Rhykal raised his hand to wipe the blood off his right cheek, looked at the red smear on his finger, then at the object in her hand.

Saw the pendant and began to scream.

***

It sprung him out of the cage, broke the bars that held him back––the sight of Djari's bone arrow with his blood on it. Memories––both his and Rhykal's––came flooding into him all at once, pulling him to the present, dragging him back to the past, so fast he could no longer tell them apart as he watched. His head was spinning, pounding with pain from all the noises that tried to topple one another. The sound of soldiers raging through their settlement on Raviyani, the screams of people being burned alive, his mother's last words, Djari's cries for help when they took her, the promise he'd made one night, the way she drew back her bowstring, the sound her arrow made as it went through his skin and stopped short of his heart.

The other, unintended arrow that went right through it and never left.

He clutched at his chest, at the sharp, searing ache that struck him all of the sudden. His vision went white for a moment, before a raw, raging pain exploded. It grew and grew, it intertwined with the noises that had been escalating in volume, in intensity. His heart was a torture device working at full speed to force something out of him, squeezing and pushing harder and harder toward a release.

And then it broke, it shattered to pieces, the final, last remaining wall that had been keeping him caged––keeping them both caged. His eyes flew open, and everything spilled out of him in a series of screams manufactured from every pain, every torture ever inflicted all rolled into one.

***

The man in front of her broke into sobs, into shouts, cries, and screams that tried to strangle one another out of existence. Hasheem or Rhykal, it was now impossible to tell them apart even for her. He pulled at his hair, clutched at his heart, scratched at his own skin until it bleeds, like someone trying to peel it off his flesh, his bones. She watched, with a different horror running up her spine, as the man––the two men––fought for dominance, for existence.

One of them crawled his way toward a dagger left by the fire, grunts and whimpers choked into silence by a squeeze of an invisible hand that kept yanking him back. A loud growl squeezed through the closed up windpipe, seemed to add momentum to his last lunge at the blade, got him far enough this time to snatch it off the sand.

He turned to her, face twisted into something ugly, gritted teeth chattering violently as they came apart and bit down again. Soft gray eyes she had come to know by heart pleaded as the strangled word slipped free. "Run."

Hasheem scrambled onto his knees, gripped the knife with both hands and angled the tip over his own heart. Rhykal choked him back again, fighting to pry the blade off his fingers, to turn it around. Their eyes were on her now, two different men, two different needs: one killing for his right to live, the other to end it all.

"Run!" Hasheem screamed again, tears streaming down his face as he begged her to flee, in fear, in horror, in full knowledge of what might happen if he were to fail.

But she knew, knew it deep in her gut, in her heart, with unquestionable certainty no matter how irrational it might be, that Hasheem was going to win this fight. That the moment she left he was going to drive that knife through his heart. He was going succeed and die, taking Rhykal with him.

She drew a breath, curled her hands into fists, and made a decision.

Run, something, someone was yelling at the back of his mind as he stepped toward the Bharavi. Whether it was his own thought from a distant past, or the Sparrow shrieking for the girl to flee, it was hard to tell. Everything felt the same, from the sound his boots made as they fell on loose sand that matched the soldier's that night, the initial terror on the Bharavi's face that looked like his mother's as the Rashai raiders approached, and the way neither of them moved from the spot.

The way they both decided to die, for duty, for faith, for whatever it was their gods and oracles had said, to keep him alive, to tie him by the ankles with their corpses, to dictate where he belonged...

'You will survive... you will find water...' His mother's words from that night, finding its way back to wind around him again.

'Whether he lives or dies,' said the Bharavi, with the same audacity, the same conviction, 'is my choice to make.'

They rolled into one––the weight of helplessness, the guilt of being alive, the raw rage of having his life decided by someone else. It became the force that propelled him forward, toward the girl who was now the last set of shackles that bound him hands and feet. There was comprehension on her face, in her eyes, a recognition of what was about to happen as he stood over her. The same recognition on his mother's face before it was replaced by a deadly conviction to save him.

Run, the voice in his head screamed louder, screeching to a painful pitch. RUN, Djari.

***