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.