"Heir" by Sabaa Tahir, Chapters 27-36

“I’ve brought you a passel of Martials.”

The killer’s stare felt as heavy as a harrow plowing furrows into the earth.

Cero had no qualms about throwing her into the flames of Tiral’s temper.

“The children need stability. We can get the young ones out quickly, if Tiral comes. As for the clerics — he’s jailed us, tortured us. He’s destroyed —” Noa took a breath, chin quivering as she looked toward Dafra’s skyline, bereft of the cloister’s steeples.

Sufiyan doled out the bread and cheese that Loli had packed, and after tucking an extra blanket around Sirsha, Quil checked the perimeter of the camp, looking for signs of pursuit and attempting to avoid copious piles of goat dung.

Each time, it felt as if she were on the cusp of something, and if she only stepped into the air, the currents would bear her.

“It is worth being frightened of.” Sirsha could hardly lift her voice above a whisper, thinking of how Loli had died. Of how dangerously cavalier R’zwana was.

The girl smiled, a leering rictus.

“Ahhhh,” Holy Div sighed, as if consuming a delectable meal.

He thought of last night, the warmth of her skin, the arch of her neck when she’d thrown her head back, the languor in her body when she sank into his arms, spent.

One of the others chortled.

Div’s simulacrum dissolved and she collapsed into a seething, snarling mass of tortured gray shadows.

“The last vestiges of the First Durani’s magic,” she said. “Haunting us still..."

“How will we beat back your enemies? How will you defeat the false Tel Ilessi, Tiral?” Mother Div entreated.

“You have imprisoned innocents in the Tohr and killed them with your own hands. Most foully, you have claimed the mantle of the Holy Tel Ilessi. You have blasphemed against Mother Div and thus do I declare you apostate and transgressor. For this, you deserve death.”