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Excerpts

Once, in the oldest of days and times, there were four kingdoms: the kingdom of Men, the kingdom of the Djinn, the kingdom of the Elyoud, and the kingdom of Beasts. I say once, but they are kingdoms still. They are not, nor have they ever been, united, though only two are sworn enemies: the Djinn and the Elyoud, who will have no alliance or consortium with each other. 

The kingdoms of Men and Beasts ever been their jointed battleground, their jointed enemies or allies, for Men have something in their nature to afford them a sort of kinship with either race, and while Beasts are a kingdom unto their own, they intersect and are, in many cases, vassals to Man, Djinn, and Elyoud.

Once, in the oldest of days and times, there was also a famed poet. His name was Bilal, and he had a voice so beautiful it softened the heart and elevated the minds of his listeners, tamed wild beasts so that they would sit docile at his feet, and called to all manner of birds wishing to improve their music through attendance on him or who were simply enchanted by his song, such as that empress of birds, the anqa’ of the sun, for his voice was the closest in beauty and power to hers. ❞

Cormac listened quietly to this report, and the only indication of his rage was the wreaths of fog coiling around his feet like cats, which swelled and billowed behind him like a cloud before he hissed out a breath and it quieted to nothing more but tendrils of mist, cold and spreading across the floor. Wren braced herself against the reach and touch of it, felt a grim sort of perverse pleasure at the way Threader flinched, the way the others fidgeted, discomfited.

“The traitor must have been a shifter too,” Tamsin concluded. “The runners all agreed the smoke didn’t do anything to her, and she didn’t have a gas mask.”

“How did she slip under our radar?” Cormac asked.

Tamsin swallowed, lifted her chin, said evenly, “We don’t know, sir.”

Cormac said nothing.

“The overseer was the first killed,” Jacks volunteered into the charged silence. “Everyone said he was in charge of the hiring. So no one knows how a shifter got past him. Sir,” he added belatedly, as Cormac’s pale eyes slid from Tamsin to fix on him. 
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“Hm,” Cormac said. The mist on the floor thickened into a carpet, opaque enough to hide the sight of their own feet underneath it.

Chronicles of Mourra

To Halah, it reminded her of the rare expeditions of her youth, when she’d accompany her grandfather to the mountains, where he would retreat to his dwelling there for quiet contemplation (though it was not very quiet with his granddaughter chattering to him and demanding he tell her stories).

It was something about waking up before the sun and watching the stars fade, something about putting out the fire and packing their hasty camp and leaving behind nothing but footprints and soft grey ash, something about the road stretching out before them, that brought it all back to her.   

It reminded her of a song, though she couldn't remember the words, only the melody, which she hummed, half under her breath as they tramped through springy grass and along stony hills, the birds chirping from within the scrubby vegetation. The land folded in on itself outside Qarun’s limits, rising and falling unevenly, raggedly, as though some great animal had torn it up and it had settled like that, with great gouges and strange towers of stone and earth and grass and bush, worn by ages of wind and water.
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It reminded Halah of one of her favourite stories, featuring the great battle between the Anqa bird and the King of the Jewelled Serpents.

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❝ Eventually, Ilyas ventured to make conversation with her, though he began rather abruptly. “Did you have another dream?”

She blinked out of her anxious reverie, looking up at him. “Pardon?”

“Last night,” he explained, “You came to the palace. Was it—did you dream that I was trapped?”

“Oh,” Halah said and hesitated a moment too long before she said, “Yes.”

Ilyas squinted at her and she bit her lip and looked away. “Sometimes,” she said, slowly, “Sometimes I don’t...only have dreams?”

“No?” Ilyas asked.

“I don’t talk about it,” Halah mumbled, running her fingers over the crown of Qusaiy’s head, wondering absently if he was too hot. “It’s...it’s not normal. It frightens people.”

Ilyas was silent for a beat, and then he said, “I’m not frightened. But...you don’t need to tell me if you’d rather not. I’m grateful you were there. I owe you my life, and so does the prince. That’s enough for me.” ❞​​