All I had to do was get up and walk away with him. He couldn’t kill my son if there was no son. It would be so much easier. All this pressure would disappear. I could bargain for Curran’s life and the city and take my aunt’s place. Become a fully realized monster.

I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. “I can’t.”

Sadness filled his eyes. “You can’t save everyone, Blossom.”

“This isn’t about saving them. It’s about saving me. If I go with you, I’d have to walk away from everything I stand for. I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to murder people or raze cities. I don’t want anyone to cringe when they hear my name. I want to have a life.”

He winced.

I reached out and took his hand. “Father, what you are doing is wrong. What you have done for these past years, what you will do after you have restored Shinar, is wrong. You bring pain and suffering. You want to resurrect the old kingdom, but the world has moved on. Shinar doesn’t belong here. It is lost. It will never be again. And if you somehow forced this world to obey your will, it would fall the way the old world of magic fell. Stay in the city, Father. Live a normal life for a little while. Come to my wedding, figure out what it is to be a grandfather. Enjoy the small things in life. Live, Father. Live for a little while without ruling anyone.”

“You would forgive me all my past transgressions if I stayed?” he asked.

“Yes. You are my father.”

If it meant that the city would survive, I would. I would take the look on Andrea’s face as she held Baby B, Julie’s tears, Jim’s flat stare, the knife in Dali’s chest, and everything I went through, and I would put it away so they could all go on living.

He patted my hand gently. “I cannot. It is against my nature. Decades ago when I had awoken, maybe. But now it’s too late. I am walking this path.”

“I’m right. Deep down inside, you know I’m right. This is a onetime offer. I won’t let you murder the man I love. I sure as hell won’t let you murder my son. You have no idea to what depths I’ll go to stop you. I won’t let you impose your will on those people you see on the street.”

“People must be led.”

“People must be free.”

He shook his head and sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Blossom?”

“Think about it, Father.”

“We are going to war, my daughter. I love you very much, my Blossom.”

“I love you too, Father.”

We sat together and looked at the city until finally he rose, drew his cloak over his head, and left, melting into the traffic.

Erra appeared next to me, her form so thin it was a mere shadow.

“Good-bye, brother,” she whispered.

Chapter 14

I STOOD IN our backyard as the sun set and tugged on the invisible ocean of magic around me.

“Take and hold,” my aunt said.

The magic flexed, obeying my will. All through the land I claimed, the magic stopped, hardening, as if the pliable soft water had solidified into impenetrable ice. It was like working a muscle. Her magic battered my “ice” wall and retreated.

We’d been at this for four hours.

“Release. Take and hold. Release. You’re doing better, but you need to think less. The magic of the land is a shield. You’re raising it. It should be instinctive, or you won’t react in time.”

Take and hold. Release.

Take and hold. Release.

“Commit!” my aunt snarled. Magic walloped me upside the head. My vision swam.

“Ow.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“That I’ll take too much.”

“Too much what?”

“Too much magic. Once I fought a djinn and used a power word against him . . .”

Erra rolled her eyes to the sky. “Mother, give me strength. Why would you do an idiotic thing like that?”

“Because I didn’t know that we have djinn blood.” That was when I learned that a long time ago one of my ancestors was an ifrit, and the presence of her blood in our bloodline made djinn immune to our power words. Which raised the question of what would happen if I ever used a power word against my father. It probably wouldn’t work. Hugh and Adora seemed to have no problem using power words against me and their brains didn’t blow up, but their blood wasn’t exactly as potent as my father’s.

Erra’s nostrils fluttered. Come to think of it, she breathed. I could see her chest rising and falling. She had no reason to breathe; she was dead. Maybe it was force of habit.

My head rang. “Ow.”

“Concentrate! What happened with the djinn?”

“My brain tried to explode. I was dying, not physically, but mentally. The magic was down and there was very little they could do for me. So I lay in bed, feeling myself die, and I reached out and took some magic to keep myself alive. It hurt the land.”

Suddenly my aunt’s face was half an inch from mine. “Listen to me very carefully. Do not do that again. If you keep doing this, it will make you akillu, the devourer, an abomination. You are a queen. Your responsibility is to defend the land, not to feed on it.”

“I wasn’t planning on a repeat performance.”

“Good, because I’ll kill you myself if you do that again. It is a sacred rule. Even at my worst, I never resorted to that. When your father’s beloved towers fell, he did not feed on the land to hold them up.”