40. Epilogue

Two years later

The marketplace of Sha"Hadra was unfathomably hot. The warm desert breeze fluttered the stripped fabric blanketing the street, casting the shoppers in shadows. It did little to stave away the heat, and most stall owners still fanned themselves with large leaves routinely gathered from palm-like trees that grew just outside the city limits. The melding scents of fresh flowers, dyed leathers, and barrels of ground spices were heavy on the air.

And that was what Kalia was looking for.

Shirin had become quite the prolific chef in her days since leaving The Mark of Malice, something she had discovered when she had access to more than Doc"s fish stew. Chicken, beef, all types of vegetables…Shirin had conquered them all. And every tiny bit was helpful, considering how much they had to make to feed the children of Sha"Hadra.

Rahmi and Kalia had filled all seven flying carpets with coins, gems, and jewelry from the Cave of Wonders. With a few crew members in tow, they had slyly sold them around the capital city to pay off the madam and barter transportation back to Sha"Hadra. With the remaining coin, and there was more of it than Kalia knew she could spend in a lifetime, they bought an abandoned mansion on the outskirts of town. Had remodeled it and turned it into a refuge for the orphaned children that lived on the streets, making it into a safe place for them to find food and shelter. To learn how to read and write, to learn trades that would serve them as they turned into adults.

It was everything Kalia wanted as a child, everything she could have hoped to bring back to her home city.

And the view of the mountainous dunes, the desert flora that peppered those hills, the sand meeting the horizon in a haze of golden orange…those things weren"t so bad either.

"I"m going to find the flour, Kalia!" one of the children yelled out, her excited voice piercing through the low chatter of the street-goers. One of her friends followed, and they giggled as they ran off together.

"Be careful!" Kalia shouted at their retreating backs, watching as both girls" brown braids bounced against their shoulder blades, their sandals slapping against the stone. "Meet us back here as soon as you"re done!"

It had taken time for Kalia to release the guilt she felt for her mother and brother"s deaths, those feelings roaring to the forefront as soon as she stepped foot back in her hometown. She didn"t realize how much she pushed down until she walked those familiar alleys. She struggled with how to cope for weeks, helpless and floundering. It wasn"t until a young boy attempted to pickpocket Rahmi that the idea came to her, and she began to foster relationships with the orphaned youth of the city.

It took weeks, months even, of reaching out for them to begin to trust her. But Kalia kept building their trust, using that foundation her friends had taught her. Eventually, it paid off.

And she found that Rahmi enjoyed it just the same. He took some of the youth bordering on adulthood under his proverbial wing to teach them how to carve wood and make leather. His smile grew daily as he watched them excel in what he taught, and three of the older ones finally sold enough leather bags and specially made wooden furniture to fund a marketplace stall of their own. One that Rahmi helped them oversee.

"Those girls seem very devoted to you," a voice murmured behind Kalia. "Are they yours?"

Kalia turned with difficulty, the alleys of the marketplace strained with the number of tourists racing from the capital to enjoy the warm season and found herself looking into a set of stone-colored eyes. "No, they aren"t mine," she replied, narrowing her eyes at him. "Why?"

The man shrugged, his muscular shoulder lifting and dropping. "I"ve been curious, Kalia Abada, about the life you"ve made with your husband since leaving The Mark of Malice. I found that I had some time to come and find out."

Kalia swallowed, and something pulled behind her navel as she took a step closer to the man. "How do you know my name?" she asked, her gaze roving his face. It was almost too perfect. His square-cut jaw was too sharp, his muscles too pristinely sculpted beneath his clothing, his frame too tall, and his eyes lit too brightly in the shadows. And suddenly she got the feeling that this man wasn"t human.

He smirked. "I"ve known about you for quite some time now. Kalia Salam, now Abada of course, the destroyer of the Luminaria and the one who freed the djinn. Your reputation does proceed you—"

Kalia felt a hand wrap around her forearm, felt her being tugged behind the body of a wide-shouldered man. She was bathed in his scent— leather dye and spices that now replaced the brine and ship wax— and glanced around Rahmi"s elbow to see that he gripped the hilt of his blade in his hand.

"What are you doing here, Liddros?" Rahmi growled, his cutlass halfway out of the sheath tied to his hip. It was one of the only things he brought to Sha"Hadra; the rest was sent to a watery grave at the bottom of the Aeglecian Sea.

Kalia gaped up at the dark-haired man who was now smirking at her husband. Liddros? The God of the Sea? He bent his head toward Kalia as though to say in the flesh before he slid his gaze back toward Rahmi.

"I just came to see what you"ve been up to since your curse was broken," Liddros said, reaching over to pinch some ground spices in the barrel next to him. He lifted it to his nose, sniffing briefly before flicking the herbs from his fingertips. "I"m always curious to see what my former captains are doing."

The shop owner eyed Liddros carefully, though he seemed to know better than to say anything. The god certainly had that air about him.

"You still have a captain on the seas," Rahmi noted, not removing his hand from the hilt of the cutlass. "Why don"t you find a way to torture him? You have no business here."

Liddros"s eyes flashed, though that smirk remained planted on his lips. "Jace certainly is my only captain…for now, at least."

Kalia couldn"t help but read the meaning behind the statement, and an anger she hadn"t felt in months swirled inside her veins. "What do you mean for now? Will you make more captains to find your souls for the king? That"s disgusting—"

Liddros"s eyes glided over to meet hers, and Kalia tempered the shudder that prickled the back of her neck. His smirk only deepened. "I"ve always liked you." He paused to shake a finger at her, still stained red from the spice he had pinched. "I think you"re good for him. However, your propensity to speak out of turn is concerning. It would be best if you were more careful—"

"Are you threatening her?" Rahmi hissed, loud enough that a few shoppers stopped to watch the confrontation.

"Of course not," Liddros replied coolly. "And I would consider removing your hand from your cutlass before the palace guards cart you off. I would hate to see the life you"ve made for yourself cut short because you cannot swallow your anger."

Kalia glanced around to find two palace guards close by, each of their gazes wandering over the shoppers" heads. She flicked her glare back to Rahmi, laying her hand gently on his forearm. His ease at her touch was barely noticeable, though his hand rested on the blade"s pommel rather than the hilt. Liddros seemed pleased enough.

"To answer your question, no, Kalia. I am not making more captains. Though it is certainly more nuanced than that." Those stone-colored eyes, so unnatural in human form, bored into her. "There are things set into motion that will change the foundations of this world. Only one captain to go."

Kalia searched his stare, not backing down from its intense scrutiny. "You led us to the Luminaria, didn"t you? You had no intention of using it to set yourself free."

Beneath her hand, Rahmi"s forearm stiffened again. "I thought you sent me to retrieve it for you. For us."

Liddros canted his head. "Do you truly believe I could free you when I couldn"t free myself? I merely planted the tools and plucked the strings of time, all the while hoping that the result would fall into my lap. And fall into my lap, it did. You both should be grateful, too. It led you to one another, did it not?"

"Kalia! Rahmi!" a high-pitched and sharp voice waded through the crowd. "We got the flour! We found it!"

Despite her burning anxiety, Kalia set a smile on her face, turning to look down at the two girls who appeared at her hip. Their cheeks were flushed, and one of the girls lifted the flour sack, a triumphant grin on her lips. "And thank the gods for you both. Shirin wouldn"t know what to do without either of you."

The two girls beamed at one another.

Liddros stooped to eye-level with them, and the movement was preternaturally graceful despite his bulk. "I heard you"ve been a big help to Rahmi and Kalia as of late. I"m sure they are extremely grateful for you both."

"They are," one of the girls, Aisha, said with pride. "We help all the time. Shirin in the kitchen. Elodie with reading, though I"m not very good at that yet. I used to help Alaric, and he let me try on his eye patch once, but Kalia said he went to live with his boyfriend a few weeks ago. I met him. He was tall."

"Indeed," Liddros said, arching a single brow. "Then you will allow me to present you with something to remember an old friend by." He reached behind his back, producing two toy-sized pirate ships from thin air. Both were finely carved from a block of dark wood, and Kalia saw a name etched delicately into the side of each one: The Hangman"s Revenge.

Both girls squealed with delight as they took the toys from Liddros. "Will it float?" Aisha asked, bobbing it through the air as though it were floating on the sea.

"I sure hope so," Liddros responded as he stood. "What kind of ship would it be if it didn"t?"

"Do you think Thomas would take us to the oasis to play with them?" the second girl, Dareen, pleaded as she turned toward Rahmi. "Please, please?" Aisha also turned to look at Kaliaeye level, her brown eyes wide despite the sun that peered over the edge of the stripped fabric above them.

"I guess we"ll need to go home and find out," Rahmi responded with a smile. Kalia knew he could never say no to the children, especially the younger ones. It set a yearning in her chest, imagining that man with a child, their child.

Kalia turned back to Liddros, starting when she saw he had disappeared. Rahmi glanced at her, unease settled in the depths of his eyes. It mirrored her own. "Let"s head home," Kalia called to Dareen and Aisha, who had run to the nearest alley entrance to play with the toy ships in their hands. "Elodie and Shirin would love to see your new things."

Both girls sprinted ahead of them, pushing through the crowd as Rahmi snaked an arm around Kalia"s waist to pull her tight to his side. "What do you think that was about?" she asked, squeezing through a gap in the shoppers as they headed to the market"s exit.

"I think we would be dead on this street if it were for anything other than what he voiced," Rahmi responded, finally taking his hand off the pommel of his cutlass.

"And Jace?" Kalia went on. "The third captain?"

Rahmi nodded. "And may the gods have mercy on his soul if Liddros has nothing better to do than watch him." He paused to plant a kiss on her temple. "Come on, let"s go home. I"m sure the boys have tormented Searles enough in the hours we"ve been gone."

Kalia smiled at the thought. Searles still wasn"t comfortable around the children, though he stuck around anyway to help with the ongoing renovations of the house. It helped that he began to court a local woman who had stolen his attention a few months back.

"I think the flying carpets are enough distraction that Searles had some assistance." She imagined the tassel-waving carpets with children clambered on them, laughing as they zoomed around the dunes, their toes tickling the sand. More importantly, it was safely out of sight from the guards. Even Elodie"s tiger, who had grown to full size in the last year, lazed around as the children played with his tail.

Their family was patchwork and odd, filled with people who had lived for centuries and were still navigating a fresh start. It wasn"t perfect, and there was still much to do, but Kalia knew that the man by her side would be the one to see them through it. To guide them through every storm, with her as the light to his darkness.

His ruehi. Her captain.