IMARA'S POV
I ran through the corridors with my heart pounding against my ribs. The image of Ayasha's broken body burned behind my eyelids. Her legs twisted at impossible angles, bones jutting through skin like broken branches. The sound of her neck turning, vertebrae grinding against each other in a way that made my teeth ache.
A voodoo doll. That's what this had to be. The kind of dark magic that let a witch torture someone from a distance, break their bones and tear their flesh without laying a finger on them. I'd heard stories about such things from the older women in my tribe, whispered tales meant to frighten children into good behavior.
But I'd never wondered how baby-faced Liana with her gold hair and blue eyes had survived those first nights in the tents. She should have been easy prey. Young, small, weak-looking. The kind of girl who would disappear in the darkness and be found at dawn with her throat cut.
