Summary
Inan sends a message to King Sara that a maji killed Kaea, omitting that Inan himself was that maji. Suppressing his magic, Inan continues to Ibeji, where he picks up on Zélie's scent. He kicks down doors to find her and even cuts a man while interrogating him. Evading Inan, Zélie, Tzain, and Amari leave the desert and arrive in the Gombe River Valley, a lush forest. They swim in the water and discuss what stories future generations will tell about them if they succeed in restoring magic. Tzain and Amari flirt, and Zélie finally relaxes. However, as soon as she lets down her guard, she is suddenly pulled into Inan's dreamscape. Inan arrives moments later, alone and fatigued.
Rather than run, Zélie decides to fight. Amari attempts to reason with Inan, appealing to their shared traumatic memories of King Saran forcing them to fight. However, Inan believes magic destroyed his mother, and, bound by duty and obsession, he attacks Zélie. Inan and Zélie both fight to kill; equally matched, they move into the forest. Tzain and Amari follow, debating how to stop their siblings. Amari senses others in the woods, and suddenly, masked assailants bind Nailah and Tzain and knock Amari unconscious, dragging them deeper into the forest. Inan and Zélie pause and rush to help their captured siblings, but the strangers capture Zélie in a net. When Inan seizes his opportunity and raises his knife to kill her, Zélie transfers her memories of the Raid to him by touching his chest. "Seeing her for the first time: the human behind the maji," Inan frees Zélie. He decides not to follow in his father's footsteps and commits to creating an Orisha that doesn't oppress divîners.
Panicked about her missing brother, "something snaps" in Zélie, and she attacks the masked guard repeatedly, taking out her fear and rage on him. After stopping Zélie, Inan convinces her to work with him, as their interests align; Zélie wants to rescue Tzain, and Inan wants the scroll. They walk in silence to the part of the forest where the divîners made their camp. Though Inan suppresses his magic, he experiences flashes of Zélie's emotions and memories and envies the strength of her love and the brightness of her childhood before the Raid. When they arrive at the camp, Zélie and Inan argue over how to proceed; she wants to charge inside without a plan, and he intends to call the guards. They reach a stalemate, as Zélie threatens to reveal Inan as a maji if he calls the guards, and Inan refuses to use his magic to help Zélie break into the camp. Zélie calls an animation from the dirt, scaring and impressing Inan. They then practice sparring with the animations, but Inan refuses to use his magic, though, in Zélie's company, he removes his helmet, exposing the white streak of his hair.
With tentative mutual attraction, Inan and Zélie argue over whether or not severing the maji from magic was a good policy; Inan believes that no one should have magic, but that his father was wrong to oppress the divîners. Zélie thinks the only way to free the maji is to restore magic, as losing power and suffering persecution are inextricably linked. In a burst of emotion, Zélie admits that she is always afraid and breaks down crying. She accuses Inan of not understanding the world his father created, and Inan asks her to help him understand. Zélie reveals to Inan that she has the sunstone and will be able to conjure hundreds of animations. Inan confides in her that he hates himself and his magic, which he thinks "poisons" him. Zélie takes the pawn from Inan and explains that it is majicite, which hurts him. Inan discards the sênet piece and promises he will let Zélie and Amari take the scroll and restore magic.
Zélie hides while Inan approaches the gate, holding the sunstone as bait. Dozens of archers defending the base refuse to release Tzain and Amari. Zélie sprints from the woods and catches the sunstone, using it to summon powerful animations; for the first time, "the sight of magic is thrilling" for Inan. However, the archers shoot Zélie twice. When Kwame, a Burner, charges toward her, Zélie drops the sunstone, and Kwame picks it up; his power magnifies to an unstoppable degree. Inan, trying to protect Zélie, charges toward Kwame; a burner killed King Saran's first family, and the sight is triggering for Inan. At the last moment, Zu emerges and calls Kwame off, claiming that Inan and Zélie are on their side. Inan carries Zélie inside, and Zélie finds herself strangely comforted by him.
Amari awakens in the forest, bound, gagged, and with a bag over her head. Her divîner captors, Kwale and Folake, question how she got the scroll. Not satisfied with Amari's explanation, they then fetch their leader Zu, a skilled, young maji girl. While attempting to escape from her bindings, Amari recalls witnessing her father and Kaea beating a young servant boy in the palace dungeon. Before Amari can escape, Zu enters, heals Tzain, and questions Amari about the scroll. Amari explains that she received the dagger from Lekan and was on her way to try and restore magic. Zu doesn't understand why a noble like Amari would try to fix magic, so she leaves Kwame to torture Tzain to get information out of Amari. Amari, already guilt-stricken over Binta's death, begs Kwame to hurt her instead of Tzain.
Folake informs Kwame that an army is attacking with a maji, and Kwame leaves Folake with the bone dagger to watch Tzain and Amari. However, when Folake sees Tzain's bloodied form, she becomes ill and leaves the room. Amari breaks through the ropes binding her. Folake bursts into the tent, and Amari tackles her. When Amari gets the dagger and thus regains the upper hand, she knocks Folake unconscious instead of killing her; like Inan, Amari refuses to be like her father. Though Tzain is barely conscious, Amari refuses to leave him behind. Tzain and Amari stumble into the tent where Zu heals Zélie. Zu explains how she was the first to touch the scroll and then assembled a community of divîners escaping persecution. Zu apologizes for mistrusting and torturing Amari and Tzain and promises to help restore magic. Folake, Zu, and Kwame offer to accompany the group to the island. Zu suggests celebrating the Àjọyò before they leave, a celebration honoring the Sky Mother and the birth of the gods and goddesses, which Zélie had not celebrated since childhood, as King Saran banned the Àjọyò.
Analysis
As Inan's obsession with Zélie, and his shame over his maji identity, grows, his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. He puts aside his morals and aversion to violence and maims innocent people for information on Zélie whereabouts. Fear of unworthiness and disappointing his father consumes him. Inan's descent into violence parallels his sparring with Amari. Though Inan did not want to hurt his sister, King Saran compelled him to try and prove himself, and in doing so, Inan harmed Amari.
Zélie, Tzain, and Amari finally relax when swimming in the Gombe River Valley. As seen earlier in the text, water represents power and life. The three discuss what legends future generations will tell about them if they restore magic; this conversation exemplifies the motif of stories and legends. Zélie, Tzain, and Amari listened to the stories of wise figures, like Mama Agba and Lekan, before setting out to restore magic. Through those tales, they connected with their identities and became empowered to actively create a story.
When Inan and Zélie fight, they represent the monarchy and the maji struggling to destroy one another. Like the monarchy, Inan's power fades due to his obsession with destroying magic; like the maji, Zélie's power grows, fed by her rage. Inan only sees Zélie as a person after experiencing her memories; empathy is only created between them by sharing stories. Storytelling is a prominent theme throughout the text. Just as Lekan's stories of the gods empowered Zélie to become the mamalawo, Zélie's story convicts Inan to follow his conscience and oppose his father.
When Zélie attacks the masked assailant and loses control of herself, she continues the cycle of violence. This outburst parallels King Saran's oppression of the maji. Because he lost his family to violence, Saran became afraid and angry and took out those feelings on the maji. Inan removes his helmet in front of Zélie, revealing the white streak in his hair, though he hid from Kaea, whom he knew his entire life. This act demonstrates that Inan can be himself around Zélie because she accepts his magic, the part of him that King Saran and Kaea fear.
Zélie reveals that she has the sunstone. She also explains that Inan's pawn, which he clutches for comfort during moments of insecurity, is made of majicite, a material that damages maji. The sunstone and the pawn contrast; the sunstone, made from the Sky Mother's soul, magnifies a maji's powers, whereas the pawn, made of majicite, diminishes magic. The sênet piece, given to Inan by his father, represents Inan's blind obedience to the monarchy. His role as prince and captain, which he thought brought him comfort, actually harms him. If Inan were the son his father wanted—a kosidán—obedience to the crown, represented by the pawn, would have benefited him. But since Inan is secretly a maji, serving the monarchy is against his best interests. When Inan casts away his sênet piece, it represents him changing his allegiance from the monarchy to the maji.
Zu has Amari and Tzain tortured to protect the divîner community. Though Zu considers violence, especially the monarchy's violence against divîners, to be fundamentally wrong, when it comes to protecting her community, she permits it. Zu's leadership style recalls Mama Agba's philosophy of the staff, which claims that violence can be used as a tool to protect life.
