Twelve
“I don’t understand,” Fatima said, looking up at her brother. “Why would anyone take Leila from you?”
“Clearly, as a pawn of some sort,” Malik replied. He had spent his rage already, shouting at the universe — or at least into the empty rooms of the house he shared with Leila — and now he felt weary and strangely hollow, as if some essential part of himself had been taken away, and he was only now beginning to realize it. “I have to believe that Adam’s disappearance and her kidnapping are connected somehow.”
“You know for sure she was kidnapped?”
Malik wanted to retort that he didn’t know what else it could be, with that glass broken on the floor and all trace of his Chosen gone. As he looked down into his sister’s weary face, however, he reined in his impatience. She was suffer
