It was only when the familiar mix of dried fish, bread fresh from the oven and human waste hit his nose that Arran realized he had been homesick. Although the tunnels' thick stone walls kept out most sounds and smells, the bustle of a marketplace trickled through the round grids in the ceiling along with a steady beam of sunlight. The tunnel was broader here, as though this is where the Uniformists or the Exclusivists—whichever group this section had belonged to—had used this spot for secret gatherings.

Without intending to, he had stopped walking to stare up at one of the grids. A child playing with a wooden camel figurine met his gaze with large brown eyes. Rust-colored stains smudged the boy's hands as well as his toy and covered his face like freckles. Bile rose up in Arran's throat as he realized it was blood.

"What happened to you?" he whispered, casting a furtive glance in Inna's direction. She stood at the entrance to another, narrower tunnel, her arms crossed over her chest.

The boy's bottom lip quivered. "They took my maia," he sobbed. "Do you know where my maia is? Is she down there with you?"

The poor child couldn't be older than five. Arran opened his mouth, though his mind spun with a dozen different questions, but a large shadow fell over the grid and blotted out the sun. He could only see the brown leather tips of heavy boots.

"What are you looking at?" a gravelly voice asked.

Arran caught the boy's gaze and put a finger to his lips. A small, wet smile broke through on the child's face.

By the time the guard pushed the boy aside to peer through the grid, Arran was already gone.

Inna raised a brow at him. The flying carpet leaned against the wall beside her. "What was that?"

"I'm not sure." He shook his head. His earlier good mood had dissipated. The upsurge in energy had been a welcome surprise after the miserable trip to the village of Juzadi, where they had entered the tunnels. Now, however, he felt as though someone had stabbed a dagger into his stomach, twisting and turning until his vision swayed.

Inna was still watching him with that dull gleam in her eyes. Even in the gloom of the underground tunnel, her concern was palpable. Ever since he had started coughing up blood two days ago, she had treated him like a porcelain vase, afraid he would crack and break if she let him slip from her grasp for a moment. It made him want to tear his hair out.

Fighting the nausea, he placed his hands on either side of her head to trap her against the wall. A soft noise escaped her parted lips. "Don't look at me like that," he said.

"Like what?"

He leaned forward until his nose nearly brushed hers. Zazi's yellow gaze eyed him closely from the safety of Inna's shawl. "Like I might drop dead every time I breathe out."

She scoffed. Her warm breath tickled his cheeks. Instead of arguing with him, though, she jutted out her chin and pursed her lips. "We should keep moving," she said.

His surprised chuckle bounced off the walls as she pushed him away and picked up the carpet. Her steps were fast, angry, heading blindly into the darkness. He had to tug at her sleeve several times to steer her in the right direction, and even then they had to turn back more than once. She didn't speak another word to him until they had reached the right ladder. Zohra's house sat just above their heads.

He took a step aside to let Inna pass. "Ladies first," he said with a sweeping gesture at the ladder. Her eyes found his in the shadows, burning brightly, before she placed her right foot on the lowest rung.

As soon as Arran poked his head through the hole in the floor, he was catapulted back in time, to the day when he had met the mind warpers for the first time. The relief that overwhelmed him now, being back in her house after a month away from home, felt twice as strong as it had that day. He braced himself against the wall, feeling dizzy.

Without a comment, Inna slid the stone slab back in place. She had deposited the carpet in a corner of the cramped storeroom. Her hand brushed his as she filed past him to listen at the doorway. Multiple voices floated through the curtain. His first thought was that Zohra was attending to a customer, but the shrill quality of the other woman's tone didn't correspond with the calm air of mystery that characterized the fortune teller's readings. He exchanged a quick look with Inna, who shrugged and pushed the seashells aside to step into the room beyond.

The first thing he noticed was that Zohra had not one, but two visitors with brown shawls wrapped tight around their heads. Both women stood with their backs to the doorway, unaware of their entrance, yet Zohra's eyes widened as she caught sight of Arran and Inna. Her mouth formed a perfectly round O. "Arran! By the gods, you're back!"

Caught off guard, the strangers turned around as well. Arran's heart contracted painfully while he looked into their tired, familiar blue eyes, which lit up with pure happiness. Before he had the chance to open his mouth, his sister flung her arms around his neck. "Is it really you? Oh, gods, we've been so worried!"

Her grip was too tight, cutting off his airways, but he didn't care. He curled his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to breathe in the vague, delicate fragrance of flowers that always hung around her. As a child, she used to steal them from a stall and braid them into her hair, just above her right ear. "Adira," he whispered, the lump in his throat rasping his vocal chords.

A second pair of arms joined his sister's, enveloping them both in their protective warmth. Merriam sobbed in his ear. "Don't you ever leave us like that again, you hear me, Arran?" One of his mother's hands stroked his dark curls. "You headstrong boy."

Zohra was the last to embrace him, after Merriam and Adira had finally found it in them to let him go. "Welcome back, monkey." He chuckled at the smile in her voice. When she pulled back, she glanced past his torso at where Inna still dawdled in the doorway. A sad expression had slipped across the princess's face, although she was quick to hide it as the room's focus turned to her. Zohra grabbed both of her hands and squeezed them. "Thank you for bringing him back in one piece."

Only then did the rest of his family realize who exactly stood in their company. "P-princess Serafina," his mother sputtered. She bowed her head. Adira followed her example, though not without wiggling her eyebrows at Arran first. He rolled his eyes.

"It is nice to meet you both," Inna answered with a polite smile. "Arran has told me quite a lot about you."

Merriam eyed him out of the corner of her eye. He cracked a grin, hoping she wouldn't hear the nervous hammering of his heart. "Forgive me for asking, Your Highness, but how did you and my son meet?"

Inna's eyes flitted to his for a second. Her question was clear, How much should we tell them?

Arran clasped his mother's shoulder, dragging her attention back to him. "Why don't you sit down, maia? I'm afraid we're going to be here for a while longer."

"It's not like we have a home to go back to now," Adira mumbled, staring at the floor. She arched a brow at Arran's curious look. "Some weird figures in black cloaks have been watching our house ever since you disappeared. They started following us around too whenever we left the house to go to work. Zohra has offered us her spare bedroom to escape their vigilance. We use the tunnels under this house to move around the district, although those creeps still show up at seyine Falita's shop at working hours."

"We have to take the back door now," Merriam grumbled. She took a seat on the sofa. Her fingers tapped her hip as she studied her son. "I suppose you have something to do with that as well?"

Arran scratched the back of his neck, trying to find the right words to begin his story. "Well, it's—" He swayed on his feet.

Inna was behind him in an instant. She laid a warm hand on the small of his back to support him. "Are you all right?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

"I'm fine," he panted. But he was not. He doubled over in agony and gripped his stomach as a soft moan pushed out of his mouth. "Habi Onshra."

Several pairs of hands rushed to his aid, pulling him towards the sofa. Inna called for medicine and—a bucket? Probably a good idea. The world rotated around him while his stomach roiled and a buzz filled his ears. He felt so weak. As though the energy that had driven him onward before had fled his body, its purpose served. Fingers fluttered across his heated forehead, which was beaded with sweat.

"What's wrong with him?" Merriam breathed. She sounded far-off, muffled and distorted, like he was underwater.

He didn't hear the reply. Rolling over on his side, he gripped the bucket placed at Inna's feet and emptied his stomach. Even dazed with sickness, he noted that the bucket's contents were a strangely red color.

When it was over, he fell back into the cushions. He wouldn't have felt so spent if he had run around Primsharah's perimeter. "Quick thinking," he croaked, patting Inna's hand with his eyes shut.

"Gods, Arran." A cool, wet cloth brushed his mouth and forehead. "Is more coming?"

"I don't think so."

A moment of silence. Adira was the first to break it. "You vomited up blood." Her voice quavered.

"I take it you didn't find a cure to the curse, then," Zohra sighed.

"What curse?" His mother, panicked.

"All right, just stop there for a moment." With a significant effort, Arran propped himself up onto his elbows, fighting the lingering vertigo. "That's not a good place to start."

Zohra kneeled down beside Inna and handed him a glass of a greenish potion. "Here, drink this first. It'll settle your stomach."

He gulped it down all at once. At first, the liquid burned in his stomach, sending more bile up his throat, but the flames extinguished as fast as they had sparked. His body began to feel pleasantly numb. He sank back into the cushions. "Thank you."

Zohra nodded, her face grave. Before she could say anything else, however, Merriam shoved her aside to grab one of Arran's hands. Her palms were clammy with sweat. "Zohra," she hissed without taking her eyes off her son. "I swear by all the gods in the heavens, if you don't start explaining what's going on right now, I'll shake the answers out of you." She looked like a startled camel, a ring of bloodshot sclera encircling her eyes.

Wincing, Arran opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Inna silenced him with a slender finger on his lips. "Let me do the talking for now," she said, trading a meaningful glance with Zohra. Merriam's shoulders stiffened. Inna kept her steady gaze trained on her and Adira as the story spilled from her lips.

She told them about Rabyatt and the gift he had offered her father in exchange for marriage to his daughter. She told them about Arran's deal with the Cult to steal the Amulet of Doom, which had been protected by a curse that gradually stole his life. Merriam began sobbing at that last part, and Arran had to comfort her for several minutes before Inna could resume her monologue. Adira merely stood motionless like a ghost, her mouth a grim line that slashed across her delicate features.

The news about the Shah's weakened state of mind and a possible coup by a foreign power didn't come as a surprise; Zohra confirmed that more guards than ever patrolled the streets, striking fear into the hearts of the people. Last week, a merchant's crew had been hanged for docking a ship and unloading its goods five minutes after curfew at the moon's hour. The Copper District's black market had been burned to the ground by sorcerers in service to the Shah, killing over a dozen people. Zayr, Arran's supplier of enchanted objects, had been among the victims. The market was now run from the underground tunnel system and moved to a new location every three days.

Arran thought of the little boy with blood on his hands who had cried for his mother. In their absence, the situation had grown worse than they'd expected.

When Inna was done—she had skipped the part about the djinn as well as the World Artifacts' true nature—she bit her lip and gave him a questioning look. Arran knew what she was thinking. She may have finished talking, but one piece of the story was still missing.

A dry cough made him spit up more blood in the cloth Inna had used to wipe his forehead. Slapping away his mother's gentle, helping hands, he pushed himself into a sitting position. Merriam recoiled as Zazi slid out of Inna's shawl to curl up on his lap. The snake watched her with vigilant eyes, as if to prevent her from robbing him of his feeble courage. He would need it to speak the truth scorching his tongue.

"Maia," he began, his voice quiet. His deft fingers produced a copper coin from the seam between the sofa's cushions. He flipped it over and over, hiding it in his sleeve and flicking it out again. It had a calming effect. "There's one more thing you should know. In Rasir, I met a man, an adviser to the Shah, who had information about baba." That was putting it lightly. He scrubbed a hand over his face.

Merriam grew very still. Her lips parted and shut again. Her finger drew restless circles on the back of his hand.

He steeled himself for the impact of his next words. "Baba is alive. And I met him."

The sound of shattering glass sliced through the deafening silence. Adira swept the shards of Zohra's broken face into a corner with her foot, a guilty expression on her face. "Sorry," she muttered.

Merriam was the only one who hadn't flinched at the noise. Arran's leg bounced up and down in anticipation of joyful tears, shocked outcries or weeping. Any kind of emotion, really. Not this mute stupor, her face blank as a statue's.

"Maia?" he prodded her shoulder with a finger. No response.

"Merriam." Zohra sank down on the little space left on the sofa. Without warning, her hand lashed out to slap the other woman across the face. Merriam blinked, an angry, red splotch already blooming on her cheek. Zohra lifted her gaze skyward. "At last."

"I ..." Arran's mother was breathing fast now, irregular and uncontrolled. She put a hand on her chest. Her wedding ring gave a silver wink in the light that poured from the window. Arran clenched his teeth; his parents hadn't even been able to afford real gold rings.

"How ... Where is he?" Her weak voice broke on the last syllable.

"In Rasir," Arran replied. "He's the adviser I mentioned before. He works for the Rasirian court now."

"Impossible." Her nails clawed at the sofa's worn fabric.

Adira stepped forward and nearly tripped over the coffee table. Her fingers flexed beside her thighs, as though she couldn't quite grasp the truth laid out before her. "Are you sure?"

He scoffed. "Gods, Adira, no matter how many years have passed, I can still recognize my own father. Besides, I spoke to him. It was definitely him."

"This is too much," his mother whispered. Her whole body trembled. When Arran searched her face, he jerked back at the ferocious glare in her eyes, which had taken on the nearly black shade of an ocean's deepest waters. Even more disconcerting was that they were fixed on the princess.

Arran's instincts urged him to shuffle closer to Inna. "Maia—"

"No!" Even Zohra jumped at the harsh crack of Merriam's voice. "No, I won't have it. You come barging into this house, a stranger to this district, and bring me my son with one foot already in the coffin and news about a lost husband on the other side of the desert. How do you expect me to deal with any of that?"

Spittle flew from her mouth. Inna defied her gaze, though her balled fist pressed against Arran's leg. Arran reached out to his mother in an attempt to calm her down, but she leapt off the sofa to avoid his touch. She bristled like a rabid dog.

"This is your fault," she hissed, pointing a threatening finger at Inna. "It's your fault, princess—yours and your whole cursed family's—that my son has to steal for a living. It's our ruler's lack of a political backbone that made it so easy for a foreign, warmongering organization to infiltrate our city and communities. And instead of staying put and actually making an effort to fix the problem, you fled like a coward. You abandoned us to clean up the royals' mess. And look how well we've been doing, Your Highness." Her mouth quirked into a cruel, bitter smile.

For the first time since he had met her, Arran watched Inna crumble under the sharp dagger tips of Merriam's words. Shame was written all over her face, and she was too stunned to conceal it.

"So now I'm just supposed to accept that you abducted my boy on a tour along the desert's jewels and only return him now that he's too sick to go on? Now that he's about to die, barely crossed the doorstep to his home? Hell, I didn't think so."

"She didn't abduct me," Arran squealed, a treacherous warmth tainting his cheeks. He felt a child all over again under the chastising burn of his mother's fury.

She ignored him. Her shoulders slumped, as if the strength had left her body along with the tirade. She looked lost, standing in the center of the room, her back bent under the weight of her pain. Arran hesitated, torn between wanting to care for his mother and defending Inna against her wild accusations. Relief flooded through him as Adira made the choice for him and wrapped an arm around Merriam's waist.

"Come, maia," she crooned in a soft voice. "Why don't you lie down for a moment? It'll help you put things in perspective."

Merriam emitted a sound that tore through every fiber of his being. She buried her face in her hands, frail and docile while Adira led her out of the room. The world went silent in their wake.

Arran slipped his hand into Inna's. Her skin was icy cold. "Are you all right?" he asked.

Her throat bobbed. "She's right about many things, you know. We never should have left."

"If we hadn't, we probably wouldn't have figured out the truth," he countered. "You know that. And I would still have believed my father to be dead." His eyes glided to Zohra. Her wrinkles had become deeper, more pronounced, compared to when he had last seen her. "About that. I haven't told maia, because she's already stressed out enough." He made a face. "But my father wrote us letters from Rasir. They never reached their destination, though."

Zohra raised an eyebrow. "Speak your mind, misha. What do I have to do with that?"

"Inna told me what you said to her about my possible futures. Zohra, did you hide my father's letters to make sure that she and I would meet?"

"Straight to the point," she muttered, a faint smile playing on her lips. She didn't even seem offended. "No, those letters never passed through my hands. I'll admit it wouldn't have been beyond me to burn them if I'd thought it would save your life, but I swear I didn't even know your father was alive until ten minutes ago."

"But you knew there was a possibility?"

"There's always a possibility."

He believed her. But who then was the culprit if it wasn't Zohra? Who had separated his family?

She leaned forward to grip his other hand. "What's your plan now that you're back?"

"We ..." His mind needed a second to catch up with the rapid change of subject.

"I can't go back to the palace," Inna said. "Not yet. My father's lackeys will have me arrested on sight."

"There must be a way to lure the Cult away from the Shah," Arran pondered. "Long enough to steal the fake Sphere and undo the spell that controls your father's mind."

She tilted her head, her forehead creased, her gaze distant. Arran could see the beginnings of a scheme forming behind that beautiful face. "A mob in the city could keep the Cult busy for a while. While the citizens keep the guards busy, we can sneak inside the palace to find Rabyatt and my father. Zohra, do you think the people might be persuaded to rebel against the palace?"

Zohra's eyebrows shot up. "The black market is the main income of many citizens in the Copper District, hence the warehouse's destruction was perceived as a direct attack on the poorest families in this city. They have been restless ever since."

"The market," she mumbled, nodding slowly. "I should go there. I should talk to them. Make them understand this new situation."

"You shouldn't go alone," Zohra warned her. "They'll be skeptical. By now you must know that people in this area are not particularly fond of the royal family. They may not believe you when you say you want to help them."

"I'll go with you," Arran offered. "Most merchants and clients at the market know me. They'll believe me."

"No." Inna shook her head. "You're too sick. I won't risk harming your health even more unless it's absolutely necessary, and I'll still need your help to get into the palace, so—"

"I wasn't asking," he growled. She frowned and her eyes bored into his, but he refused to yield. He pushed himself up from the sofa, relieved when he didn't stagger. "Zohra's potions will keep me on my feet for now."

"Arran—"

"You said so yourself, Inna. This is as much my mess as it is yours. I'm coming with you."

The two women shared exasperated glances. Yet, before they could retort, Adira slipped out of the shadows to join them. Arran started; he hadn't even noticed her presence.

"I'm coming too," she said, straightening her shoulders. "The Shah may not be the best ruler Primsharah could hope for, but at least he didn't meddle with the little we have. This Cult ... They'll only bring more misery upon us."

Brother and sister formed a united front against the princess's weak protests. Arran smiled at Adira, who gently nudged his arm. Leaning aside, she whispered under her breath, "So you've decided to woo a princess after all, big brother."

He flushed. "Shut up."

Inna stood up, lifting Zazi onto her neck as she did. "Fine. But if I have to carry you back home, Arran Dir Aktha, I'll have Zohra put a sleeping spell on you that will leave you in a coma for days. She seems to be quite good at those." She grimaced.

Arran grinned. "Whatever you say, princess. Now, allow me to introduce you to the thugs and criminals of the Copper District. After you."