The shrine of Sidi Yahya was no longer a sanctuary; it was a tomb for the living.
Layla sat on the edge of the damp cistern, her knees pulled to her chest. The small bag of salt Amira had given her sat in her lap, a heavy, useless weight. She had been counting the drops of water falling from the cracked ceiling.
One. Two. Three.
She had counted to a thousand. Then two thousand.
The midnight hour had come and gone. The moon had been swallowed by the storm clouds, plunging the ruin into a darkness so absolute it felt like being buried alive.
"He is coming," she whispered to herself, her voice trembling. "The horse threw a shoe. The patrol was slow. He is coming."
But the wind brought no sound of hoofbeats. Instead, it brought the sound of the bells.
They had started an hour ago—a relentless, iron clangor from the city walls that made the ground beneath her vibrate. She didn't know what they meant, but she knew the language of Damascus. Bells at this hour did not announce a celebration. They announced a hunt.
She stood up, wrapping her thin cloak tighter around her shivering frame. She walked to the broken archway and looked South, toward the desert, toward the camp.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The horizon was burning.
It was not the sun rising early. It was a ring of torches—hundreds of them. They formed a perfect, tightening noose around the location of the Al-Fayid camp. Even from this distance, she could hear the faint, insect-like hum of shouting men and the screaming of horses.
"Khalid," she breathed.
She took a step out of the shrine, her sandaled foot hitting the wet grass. She had to go to him. If he was there, trapped in that ring of fire, she had to—
Run, little bird, Amira's voice echoed in her memory.
If she went there, she would be caught. She would be returned to her father, to the Pasha, to the cage. If she stayed here, she was a ghost waiting for a man who might already be dead.
She sank back against the cold stone of the archway. She couldn't move. Fear, cold and paralyzing, rooted her to the spot. She stared at the distant flames, watching them squeeze tighter, and for the first time, she realized that the blue silk she had bought, the blue thread she had hidden, was not the color of hope. It was the color of a bruise.
At the Al-Fayid camp, the world had dissolved into noise.
The Pasha had not sent the regular city guard. He had sent his personal regiment—the Janissaries of the Damascus garrison. They were men of iron and discipline, mounted on heavy warhorses that trampled the sand into concrete.
They did not attack. They encircled.
They formed a wall of steel and fire three rows deep around the tents. Torches sputtered in the rising wind, casting long, demonic shadows that danced across the terror-stricken faces of the Bedouin women and children huddled in the center of the camp.
A man rode forward from the line. It was the Captain with the broken nose, his face a mask of vindictive triumph.
"By order of the Governor!" he bellowed, his voice carrying over the wailing of the children. "This tribe is under arrest for treason and the murder of Yusuf Bey!"
Inside the circle, the Bedouin men stood with their swords drawn, but their hands were shaking. They were shepherds and skirmishers, not soldiers. They looked at the wall of muskets and heavy cavalry, and they saw their end.
"Surrender the murderer!" the Captain screamed. "Or we will burn every tent and salt the earth beneath them! No one leaves alive! Not the sheikh, not the babe at the breast!"
The threat hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
The circle tightened. The horses stamped. The torches hissed. And in the center, the Al-Fayid waited for the slaughter to begin.