Silverwalker! the Nixie shrieked. I shall smash you from the Worlds.

The floor itself seemed to tilt and shift but Sami never stumbled. Reaching into her right pocket, her fingers ran over the cool surface of the stone. As the long icy strands of the Shadow Nixie began to curve around her legs, Sami closed her eyes, touching the bright place inside herself, and slipped the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.

“NO,” the Nixie roared, releasing Sami. Frenzied, it clawed at the air. “Remove it. Remove the stone!”

Now a tremendous white, opaline bolt cracked through the room, lashing the stone hilt of the mermaid’s dagger.

The enormous sculpture began to shake seismically, shattering sheets of concrete, marble exploding like panes of glass. The air filled with dust; rocks rained against the walls and burst the windows. A sound like the earth itself was turning and groaning rose into a bellow, wild, infuriated, mad, and terrifying.

Sami and the Flickers ducked just as some vast green gleam swooped overhead. For a moment, all she could see was the flaming green light, green scales, a wilderness of tangling blue and sea-green color, like living water rapids, which Sami finally understood was hair. She looked up, the room illuminated by the wash of green and blue and silver. She saw two powerful arms, a mouth like a red gash; a being rising thirty feet tall, the top of its great head nearly brushing the vaulted ceiling, its grand shoulders and torso wrapped in golden silks, its hips tapering into a glowing fish tail that slammed and pounded the floor, rocking the foundations of the castle. The great thing twisted, screeched and wailed horrifically, writhing as if it believed it was tangled in nets, its eyes shut tight.

Ashrafieh seized Sami’s arm, squeezing. She’s entranced. Her mind is ensnared in a state of capture.

Another deep tremor like that of an earthquake ran the length of the castle, sending vibrations up the walls and across the floor. Now Sami felt more than power; she felt rage. She was enraged for the mermaid imprisoned in stone, for the creatures large and small who had been tormented by this horrid being, and she saw all of this imprisonment in her own grandmother, broken and failing, and bound to her own form of prison in the Actual World.

Sami turned back to the Nixie and watched it seething and bubbling like a burned syrup, covering the ceiling and back walls. It is over, Sami thought to the creature.

You are over, the thing hissed, and sent out bolt after bolt of hot white lightning.

In the past, Sami might have cowered or hid in fear, but now she walked closer, the sapphire stone burning on her finger. With each step, she felt herself growing in height and dimension. The ring began to hum, the vibrations once again singing in a high, singular voice. Removing it, Sami discovered the stone turned in its setting. Moving it carefully with her fingertips, Sami found the back of the gemstone that had faced the inside of the setting was cut and colored with the image of a wide blue eye. She rolled it until a round pupil and blue iris stared directly out of its gold setting. The Genie’s Eye.

It shone, a golden beam cutting through the Nixie’s murk. In response, the Nixie deepened; it spat out flames and seething bolts. They lashed Sami’s body yet no longer held any heat or substance. She closed her fingers around the ring and felt the Nixie’s frozen misery and hatred encircling her skin, then shattering into fragments. The creature’s madness, greed, and fury scattered like drops of mercury.

You’re reflecting the Nixie! Dorsom thought-cried.

Rebalancing her! Natala joined in.

The Nixie intensified its electrical strikes, throwing out stronger and louder bolts, its center even denser, but along its edges, the immense cloud trail was growing translucent and pale. “No,” the Nixie roared in an ice-cold voice, thundering against the walls. “You will never destroy me.”

A shuddering moan rose up from the mermaid. Sami whirled around and without thinking tossed her ring to the creature. Though the Ifrit’s eyes were still shut tight, she caught the ring, then popped it into her mouth and swallowed.

The mermaid awoke. She sucked in a whooshing breath and opened her eyes: one was diamond bright, the other was sky blue. The Nixie’s thunderhead contracted and balled against the ceiling, a tight, curdled cloud, crackling with sparks of lightning, shrieking. Sami walked right up to it, batting at it with her hands—it was nothing more than smoke and noise. She waved her fingers through its substance, fanning it away.

Mine. It was not so much a word as an instinct that rumbled from the mermaid. Sami nodded and stepped aside. Now the mermaid swept a webbed hand through the air, snatching the cloud—tiny gusts of shadow puffing out between her fingers.

“RELEASE ME,” the Nixie shrieked. “RELEEEEASE.”

Instead, the mermaid opened her crimson mouth so Sami spied a row of pearlescent, pointed blue-white teeth, and poured the Nixie down her throat.

And for a moment after that, there was nothing but silence.