“Jalal—”
“Why do you always close your eyes before you aim?”
“Because . . .” Shahrzad hesitated. “I—”
What is the harm?
“I learned to shoot in a place where the sun played tricks on the mind. You could not rely on it if you wanted to aim well. So you had to practice until you were good enough that you only needed its light for the blink of an eye.”
Jalal braced both palms on the yew of his longbow. A slow grin spread across his sun-drenched face.
It unnerved Shahrzad. And made her want to provoke him.
“That was much better,” he said loudly. “You know, not everything has to be so difficult, Shahrzad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Exactly what I said. Next time, just answer the question.”
“We shall see. Choose the next target, Jalal.”
His grin grew even wider. “Yes, my lady.” He studied the courtyard. Then he pointed to a slender pillar with a tabarzin axe embedded in its side. “The winner is the archer with the arrow closest to the axe blade.”
It was by far the most difficult shot. The tabarzin’s wooden handle was quite narrow by the blade, and it was wedged into the pillar at an odd angle that all but obscured it from view. To make matters worse, the impending storm had now added a wind factor that would put to rout even the most gifted of archers.
As the winner of the last match, Jalal was given the first shot. He waited for the gusts to calm as much as possible before he positioned the arrow to the string and let it fly. It spiraled toward the tabarzin and managed to strike the wood of the handle.
An impressive achievement.
Shahrzad pulled an arrow from the quiver at her back. She fitted it to the sinew and nocked it tight. Closing her eyes, she let the breeze blow against her face, calculating its trajectory. Her fingers curled around the white-feathered fletchings.
She opened her eyes and pinpointed the small stretch of wood fixed before the gleaming axe blade.
Then she loosed the arrow.
It sailed through the wind, over the sand . . . and thudded into the handle, a mere hairsbreadth from the metal.
The soldiers shouted in collective disbelief.
Jalal began laughing. “My God. Perhaps I should try my hand at not aiming.”
Shahrzad mimicked his previous bow, her arms outstretched at her sides.
His laughter grew. “Well, you’ve earned this next question, my lady. Do your worst.”
Yes. I believe I will.
It’s time I learned the truth.
She strode forward. “What is the real reason all of Khalid’s brides must die?”
It was posited in a ghost of a whisper. Only Jalal could have heard it.
But it was as though she had shouted it from the rooftops.
Jalal’s amusement vanished, doused by an urgent gravity she had never seen on his face before. “This game is over.”
Shahrzad pursed her lips. “Why is it you get to decide the rules on all fronts?”
“It’s over, Shahrzad,” he said, confiscating the recurve bow from her grasp.
“At least give me the right to ask another question.”
“No.”
“You promised me that right!”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot honor that promise.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry.” He stalked to the weapons rack and restored both the longbow and the recurve bow to their respective places.
“Jalal!” Shahrzad raced in his footsteps. “You can’t—”
He nodded to the Rajput, who began making his way over to Shahrzad.
Outraged, Shahrzad snatched a scimitar from a nearby weapons rack.
“Jalal al-Khoury!”
When he still refused to acknowledge her, Shahrzad raised the sword into the light with both hands, and the Rajput shifted closer.
“How dare you dismiss me, you horse’s ass!” she yelled.
At that, Jalal turned around, his stride off-kilter. She swung the heavy blade in a sloppy arc meant to goad him into taking her seriously.
He dodged her and reached reflexively for the scimitar at his hip. “What the hell are you doing, Shahrzad?”
“Do you think you can get away with treating me in such a manner?”
“Put down the sword,” he said in an uncharacteristically stern tone.
“No.”
“You have no business handling a blade like that. Put it down.”
“No!”
When she swung it again in another haphazard slice, Jalal was forced to deflect it with his own blade. The Rajput grunted loudly and withdrew his talwar, shoving Jalal away from her with a single push of his palm.
“Stop it!” Shahrzad said to the Rajput. “I don’t need your help.”
The Rajput sneered down at her with obvious disdain.
“Are you, is he—laughing at me?” Shahrzad asked incredulously.
“I imagine so,” Jalal replied.
“Unbelievable. What’s funny?”
“I would assume it’s both the sight of you wielding a sword in such an abysmal manner and the presumption you wouldn’t need his help when doing so.”
Shahrzad spun to face the Rajput. “Well, sir, if you’re really in the business of helping me, then, instead of laughing at my ineptitude, do something about it!”
The Rajput merely continued sneering at her.
“He’s not going to help you, Shahrzad,” Jalal said, seamlessly resurrecting his smug façade. “I’d venture a guess that not many soldiers out here, save myself, would take the risk of getting within an arm’s length of you.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, by now every soldier in Rey knows what happened to the last guard who dared to put his hands on the queen. So if I were you, I’d give up on cajoling the Rajput into giving you lessons on swordplay. Even though you did ask him so nicely,” Jalal joked drily.
“Did . . .” Shahrzad frowned. “What happened to the guard?”
Jalal shrugged. “A bevy of broken bones. Your husband is not a forgiving man.”
Wonderful. Yet another attribute of note.
“So please put down the sword and go back to the palace, my lady,” Jalal finished in a firm tone.
“Don’t you dare dismiss me, Jalal al—” And Shahrzad’s rant died on her lips, before it even started.
She wanted to turn around.
Because she knew, instinctively, that he was there. There was no logical explanation for it, but she felt his presence behind her, like the subtle change in the seasons. A shift in the wind. This was not necessarily a welcome change. She did not suffer that kind of delusion. Not yet.
But even the moment when the leaves fall from their boughs—even that moment—has a beauty to it. A glory of its own.
And this change? This change made her shoulders tense and her stomach spin.
It was real . . . and terrifying.
“This moment could not be any more perfect,” Jalal muttered, glancing to his left.
Still Shahrzad did not turn around. She clenched the scimitar tight in both hands, and the Rajput stepped even closer, his talwar glinting with a silent warning.
“By Zeus, Shahrzad!” Despina cried. “Is this what happens when I leave you alone? You get into a sword fight with the captain of the guard?”
At that, Shahrzad twisted her head to the right.
Despina stood by Khalid with a look of worry and dismay on her pretty face.
Khalid was as inscrutable as ever.
As cold as always.
Shahrzad wished she could end it here and now, with the slash of a sword. She wished she could grab Khalid by the shoulders and shake a semblance of life onto his frozen countenance.
Instead, Shahrzad continued with the pretense—the one she gave to the world, and the one she gave to herself.
“Well?” Despina said.
Khalid’s eyes flicked to the handmaiden.
“I
apologize, sayyidi. I did not mean to address the queen so informally.” Despina bowed in haste, her hand to her brow.
“You don’t have to apologize, Despina. I did not get into a fight with Jalal. We’re merely trading a few . . . lessons. Apparently, I am not that gifted with a sword. There are, in fact, limitations to my greatness,” Shahrzad jested.
“Thank the gods,” Despina mumbled.
“Limitations plague us all, Shahrzad.” Jalal grinned, seizing upon this opportunity for levity. “Don’t take it to heart.”
She wrinkled her nose at him, plunking the scimitar to the ground.
“What limitations?” Khalid asked quietly.
The sound of his voice slid down her back, bringing to mind cool water and sun-warmed honey. She gritted her teeth. “For one, I can’t seem to wield a sword. And that seems to be a basic premise of swordsmanship.”
Khalid watched her as she spoke.
“Pick it up,” he directed.
Shahrzad looked at him. He blinked, and his features softened. She raised the scimitar in both hands. Then, to her surprise, Khalid backed away and unsheathed his shamshir.
“Try to hit me,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
He waited in patient silence.
She swung the sword in a clumsy swipe.
Khalid parried it with ease and grabbed her wrist. “That was awful,” he said, pulling her into him. “Again.”
“Can you offer some direction?” she demanded.
“Widen your stance. Don’t throw your entire body into the movement. Only your upper body.”
She sunk into a lower stance, her brow lined with irritation. Once more, she curved the scimitar at him, and he blocked it, grasping her by the waist and bringing the flat of the shamshir against her throat.
In her ear, he whispered, “Do better than this, Shazi. My queen is without limitations. Boundless in all that she does. Show them.”
Her pulse raced at his warmth. In the words and the actions. The nearness of him.
She broke away and raised the scimitar.
“Smaller movements. Quicker. Lighter,” Khalid commanded. “I don’t want to see you act before you do.”
Shahrzad lashed out with the sword. Khalid parried the blow.
The Rajput grunted, crossing his mammoth arms.
After Shahrzad cut the scimitar in Khalid’s direction a few more times, she was shocked when the Rajput stepped forward and kicked at her back foot, nudging it into a new alignment. Then he lifted his bearded chin with a jerk.
He . . . wants me to keep my head up?
Khalid stood by, watching.
“Like—this?” Shahrzad asked the Rajput.
He cleared his throat and moved back.
When Shahrzad looked at Khalid again, his eyes were alight with an emotion she recognized.
Pride.
And the moment felt so terrifyingly real that the thought of anything destroying it cinched the air from her body . . .
Like a silk cord around her neck.
TO INFLICT A DARK WOUND
SHAHRZAD PICKED UP THE VIAL OF SCENTED ROSEWATER and pulled out the glass stopper. The perfume smelled heady and sweet—like a bouquet of aging blossoms alongside a vat of slowly melting sugar. Intoxicating and mysterious.
Perhaps too much so.
It didn’t smell like her.
She sighed and put down the vial.
Following her impromptu sword lesson, Shahrzad and Despina had returned to her chamber for dinner. Then her handmaiden had retired to her small room by Shahrzad’s chamber, mistakenly leaving behind a few cosmetics near the mirror in the corner. Shahrzad had wandered past this arrangement several times over the course of the last few hours.
Considering.
Situated by the vial was a tiny pot of polished ivory. Shahrzad twisted open the lid to discover a mixture of carmine and beeswax. She dipped her index finger into the shining paste and daubed it onto her lower lip. It felt sticky and strange on her skin as she attempted to mimic the alluring pout she always admired on her handmaiden. She stared back at her reflection.
I look ridiculous.
Shahrzad rubbed away the stickiness with her palm. It stained her hand pink.
What am I doing?
She paced toward the raised platform of her bed.
None of this was right.
She was not here to spend time troubling about her appearance. Such childishness was beneath her. She had come to the palace with a singleminded purpose: to discover her enemy’s weakness and destroy him with it.
How could she lose sight of everything over a mere kiss? Over a mere moment in a dark alley by the souk.
A moment that replayed in her mind with staggering frequency.
Shahrzad inhaled and tightened the silver laces of her shamla. She could not—would not—stray from her purpose.
How had this even happened?
It’s because he’s not the monster I thought he was.
There was so much more below the surface, and she had to know what lay at the root of it all.
Why did General al-Khoury try to poison her?
And why did Shiva have to die?
Shahrzad no longer believed the tales running through the streets of Rey. Khalid Ibn al-Rashid was not a madman from a line of murdering madmen, hell-bent on senseless brutality.
He was a boy with secrets.
Secrets Shahrzad had to know. It was no longer enough for her to stand at his side and play along with the dance of ice and stone. To watch him fade into the distance, barricaded in a room no one was permitted to enter.
She was going to break down the door. And steal all of his secrets.
Shahrzad walked to the pile of cushions on top of her bed and coiled into its center.
The least she could do was pretend she was not waiting for him.
That she was worthy of better.
Did she really care about him? For this acknowledgment would mean giving teeth to the most dangerous realization of all—
Caring about him meant he had real power over her. That he held sway over her heart.
Shahrzad sighed, hating her weak heart more with each passing breath. If she had to fail so abominably in her task at the souk, then at the very least, her heart should not have been so complicit in her failure. Where was the resolute, steel-encased enclosure she had constructed for herself, not so long ago?
Her mind drifted back to the night before the soldiers had come for Shiva.
They had stayed up together, just the two of them, huddled in the blue darkness with a single candle. Instead of crying over what would never be or wailing to the stars for what was to come, Shiva had insisted they laugh for what they still had. So they’d sat in her courtyard under a slivered moon, giggling at years of shared memories.
This is what Shahrzad had done for Shiva.
What Shiva had done for Shahrzad.
That morning, when Shahrzad had left her so that Shiva could spend her last day with her family, Shiva had smiled at Shahrzad and said, with a simple hug, “I will see you one day, my dearest love. And we will smile and laugh again.”
Such strength.
For such betrayal.
Shahrzad seized a pillow and curled her fists into the silk.
Shiva. What do I do? I—can’t find the hate anymore. Help me find it. When I see his face . . . when I hear his voice. How can I do this to you? How can I love you so much and—
The doors to the chamber opened with a creak. Shahrzad sat up, expecting to see the usual servants with their nightly wares.
Khalid stood at the threshold.
Alone.
“Were you sleeping?” he asked.
“No.”
He stepped inside and pulled the doors shut behind him. “Are you tired?”
“No.” Shahrzad’s fingers tightened against the silk.
He remained by the doors.
She rose from the cushions and straightened her shamla. It spun about her
as she moved past the gossamer veil at the foot of the bed.
“Do you want me to finish the tale of Aladdin?”
“No.” Khalid strode from the doors to stand before her.
He looked . . . exhausted.
“Did you not sleep?” she asked. “You should sleep.”
“I should.”
The air between them swirled with the intensity of the unsaid.
“Khalid—”
“It rained today.”
“Yes. For a little while.”
He nodded, his amber eyes catching fire on a thought.
Shahrzad blinked. “Are you a fool for the rain, like Jalal?”
“No. I’m—just a fool.”
Why? Tell me why.
She lifted her right hand, slowly, to his face.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he placed his palms on either side of her neck.
How could a boy with legions of secrets behind walls of ice and stone burn her with nothing more than his touch?
He trailed his right hand through her hair, over her shoulder, and down her back. His left thumb lingered on her neck, brushing across the hollow at its base.
I—I won’t stop fighting, Shiva. I will discover the truth and seek justice for you.
She stared up at Khalid. Waiting.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Exercising restraint.”
“Why?”
“Because I failed to do so in the souk.”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes, it does,” he said quietly. “Do you want this?”
Shahrzad paused. “We’ve done this before.”
“It’s not the same. It won’t be the same.”
The blood flew through her body, ignited by his words.
He pressed his lips beneath her earlobe. His tongue lingered for an instant on her skin. “Do you want this?” he repeated in her ear.
Shahrzad steeled herself, fighting back an onset of trembling limbs.
“Why do you think I’m standing here, you idiot?”
Then she seized his chin in her hands and slanted her mouth to his.
What began as a playful kiss soon changed into something more in keeping with the prurient thoughts that had filled the space only moments before.
Shahrzad’s fingers curled into Khalid’s soft hair as his lips curved over hers. He enveloped her in an embrace that took her bare feet from the marble. The veil tore from its mooring as they fell back onto the cushions with complete disregard for such trappings as gossamer.