40°49'37.0"N 47°42'45.1"E

  Q?b?l? International Airport

  20.05.2024 – 23.00 UTC +04.00

  “What’s it going to be?” Ramin insisted. A half-breed Shadow was the only one asking to save lives, risking his very own, standing between us. He held his hands raised, unwavering. Even though he knew he could do nothing if we decided otherwise.

  I could see R??id was thinking, but was he wondering the same thing? How unlikely was it to see a man of Adil, a Starling, and a Shadow collaborating to save a group of random travelers?

  He took another step closer before he said, lowering his voice:

  “Once this airport falls, we cannot outrun the witches in starling form. We need a way out,” he said.

  He did not dare say out loud what was heavily implied: a temporary alliance. So be it. I took a step closer to Ramin and him as well.

  “I can make us unseen, and you can make us unheard,” I said, “we can make a combined hex.”

  “But no means of transportation,” he retorted tensely.

  “Are you both dim?” Ramin said. We both looked at him. “This is an airport.”

  He pointed outside the store, through the now raging battlefield. Airplanes were all in their positions, waiting, some perhaps even half-boarded, judging from the light inside.

  “I don’t know what we even do if we get into one,” I said.

  “It is our best shot,” R??id said, his expression brightening up, “Starling could never catch us in an airplane.”

  “And will Adil lose your tracks?” I asked him.

  I needed to hear him say, at the very least, that his boss wouldn’t come knocking. He could lie, for all I knew. But still.

  “For sure. Well, unless we crash.”

  Ramin did not give me a chance to think about it more. He turned to the crowd.

  “Okay, listen up, everyone, you all need to gather round!”

  “No,” R??id said, and I nodded.

  There was only one way we could use our Curses together to get through this.

  “They need to form a line,” I said.

  “Can you make a path with your dust?”

  I nodded again. People needed to understand first.

  “Listen up, everyone,” I turned to the crowd. I pointed at the wide entrance of the store and the boundary of glass dust that separated us from the battlefield. “You will all have to cross through there. The path will be lit up for you, and it will show you the way. We will all be unseen and unheard, even among us.”

  R??id jumped in as well: “If you stray from the path, we cannot protect you. Once you are out, you cannot be back again.”

  Some people started whispering, double-guessing what we said.

  “Walk outside?” an old, probably Turkic, man asked.

  “To the Qar???l??” a middle-aged woman shrieked, still holding onto the three bags in her arms.

  “Are you stupid? They have guns!” a twenty-year-old man in a flower shirt said.

  People mumbled, missing the point. I continued to explain:

  “We cannot talk to you once we are out there; we cannot guide you. You will have to follow the path. Do not stray even for a step.”

  R??id looked at me. We both knew how this could go wrong in a lot of ways, and this would be the most difficult for the two of us.

  “This does not sound so hard,” Ramin tried to hype everyone up and shouted louder than the doubters. “Alright, we should line up!”

  ? ? ?

  There were exactly twenty-seven people in the store.

  Ramin would be in the front, R??id and I would be in the vanguard holding the path together. It was the only way to have a combined hex; besides, I would not dare have him outside my personal ward and vision.

  A group of five young men stood behind Ramin at the front of the line. Their words spoke of eagerness and confidence, but their eyes darted left and right, looking back at the rest, undoubtedly having second thoughts. If I were to judge by their flower shirts, they were initially in the airport to head for their holidays.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  It was the youngest among them, perhaps around twenty years old, who had volunteered to go first, and then his friends followed.

  “We all have to escape anyway,” the young man had said optimistically. “Order would not matter.”

  Behind them was a group of six middle-aged women. They did not know each other, I thought, or maybe some of them did, but they seemed ready to form a group together.

  Right after them was a family of four: two middle-school boys and their parents. The father worried me a lot; he was very shaken and hardly spoke, while the mother was commanding the two boys.

  As I walked past, heading to the back of the line, the father grabbed my arm. His eyes were shaky, wet, and darting between his two sons, his wife, and me. I could see the wrinkles beneath his mustache quiver as he spoke, tightening his grip over my arm.

  “Will I be able to see my boys?” His Azerbaijani had a peculiar accent.

  I pulled my arm away from him, but I responded, as calmly as I could.

  “Not once we start walking. They must follow the path, and they will be safe. You must, all of you, stay in the path.”

  The man shook his head.

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  “Stay in the path. Yes,” he said, and turned to his wife, speaking quickly in a language I did not recognize.

  “Stand in the damned line!” R??id said, and I turned to find him shouting at a man.

  There was a dispute with the last of the nine men behind the family. An old man wearing a white shirt insisted he had to be right after the family I was speaking with, until a short man said worryingly:

  “What if the old man trips and falls, and we all stumble on him? We all die!”

  R??id tried to find a compromise and rearrange the men, but, besides a man in his forties, somehow overweight and with a kind smile, no one wanted to be in the back of the line.

  As I took my position at the back of the line, another one of Hokum?’s screams echoed. Glass was raised from the ground outside the store, hurled somewhere outside our field of vision from the store. Gunshots were heard in response.

  “Perhaps the army will get here and save us from the Qar???l?,” a thirty-year-old man shouted, still holding onto his suitcase.

  R??id shook his head negatively. We both knew if the military reached this store and found us alive, they would trust no survivors to tell the story of two Cursed and a half-Shadow.

  “You can stay here if you want, and try your luck,” I said, “but we have to go now.” Intensified gunshots, somewhere in another terminal perhaps, but coming closer, further accentuated my command. There was no time to spare.

  R??id and I sat at the back of the line, as everyone quickly assumed their positions. I saw the father who had grabbed my hand before, quickly kissing his son’s head, who stood on his front.

  I heard some of the women pray. That was good. Whatever could keep these people’s spirits alive for the trial ahead was useful.

  “Let my hand trap your whisper,” R??id said.

  I glanced at him with my peripheral vision. There was a hint of shame in his voice. Perhaps, because he had already done that violently in the past, when he tried to kill me.

  R??id placed one of his hands on my back, almost embracing me, and his other hand in front of my mouth.

  I nodded with consent, and I whispered.

  Show us the path.

  I felt my breath taken away, not by wooden, but rather gentle hands. Not depleted by oxygen but guided away by other lungs.

  “Sh,” R??id shushed reassuringly, and as he did, he released my breath again, to fly through the line of people in front of us. The wall of glass and sugar dust lit up. From the very front, Ramin looked right back at us. R??id and I nodded in unison, and he stepped through the golden whirl of dust at the store’s exit.

  The young men behind him followed, then the women and the family of four. Then the men in front of us, led by the man who had previously pondered staying back.

  And finally, we crossed the boundary. The golden divide of our combined Curses was now levitating in front of us, creating a path amidst the chaos. Bullets crossing diverted, witches fighting avoided it, and hexes turned into autumn leaves as they hit its wall, keeping everyone inside safe.

  R??id and I could see and hear everyone. This was our Curse to bear after all, and within our wards. I could hear the women in the front; they still somehow prayed in unison, although they could not hear each other.

  “They might make it,” R??id said.

  “This is not how a Hex of Lot goes,” I said.

  I had to remind myself that this would still be the only real chance of survival for everyone, because I knew it would be cruel.

  Yes, if we reached any of the airplanes, these people would have a real chance of escaping.

  And with them, Ramin and I.

  Q?b?l? Airport would never be the same after that night; that was for sure. The two covens had abandoned any pretense of respecting the laws of the non-Cursed and going unnoticed. Followers of Starling were using lethal hexes, whispers flying in all directions.

  I was tempted for a moment by that; maybe if I grabbed a whisper and responded to it, be led back to my coven – maybe I would be given a chance to clarify everything and remain under its protection. I wondered if R??id next to me was under the same temptation. His allies were tactically moving across the airport, carrying military guns and hexes by multiple tactical Curses. He had even arrived with them; he was no deserter like me, but he was serving a mission I did not understand.

  “Why are you helping us?” I finally asked.

  Amidst the chaos, our silent procession of civilians was following a golden-lit path through the chaos, unseen and unheard by the two fighting covens. Our combined Curses had shaped this hex, quite masterfully so.

  “That Shadow cannot fall back into Starling’s hands,” he said frowning.

  “This fight has nothing to do with him though,” I said.

  When I first caught a glimpse of Hokum? and Starling’s flock heading here, I had thought Starling had sent her and her minions to seek us. But since the fight with the Men of Adil had broken out, I had rejected that notion: no one had even attempted to find us.

  Sure, if we did end up falling prey to her hexes she would delight, but if her purpose was to find us, she would have at least covertly tried to seek us out. It must have been pure bad luck, us being here, in the middle of another turf war.