Khalid closed his eyes for a moment before he continued.
“We lost the baby a few weeks later. Ava was inconsolable. She stayed in her room for days on end, eating only enough to survive. I would visit her, and she would refuse to speak with me. But she was never angry. Always just sad, with eyes that tore at my soul. One night when I came to see her, she finally sat up in bed and engaged me in conversation. She asked me if I loved her. I nodded because I couldn’t bring myself to lie outright. Then she asked me to say it. Just once, because I’d never said it. Her eyes were destroying me—such dark wells of sadness. So I lied. I said the words . . . and she smiled at me.”
He shuddered, pressing their joined hands to his forehead.
“It was the last thing I ever said to her. A lie. The worst kind of lie—the kind shrouded in good intentions. The kind cowards use to justify their weakness. I didn’t sleep well that night. Something about our exchange unnerved me. The next morning, I went to her room. When no one answered the door, I pushed it open. Her bed was empty. I called out for her, and still I heard nothing.”
Khalid paused, his features caught in a storm of remembrance.
“I found her on her balcony with a silk cord about her throat. She was cold and alone. Gone. I don’t remember much else about that morning. All I could think was how she’d died alone, with no one to offer her solace, no one to grant her comfort. No one who cared. Not even her husband.”
Shahrzad’s eyes burned with unshed tears.
“After we laid her to rest, I received an invitation from her father to meet at his home. Out of guilt and a desire to show her family a measure of respect, I went to see him, against the counsel of those around me. They did not know what her father could possibly want to discuss with me in private. But I dismissed their concerns.” Khalid took a deep breath. “Though they were right to have them.”
He withdrew his hand from hers and fell to silence.
“Khalid—”
“One hundred lives for the one you took. One life to one dawn. Should you fail but a single morn, I shall take from you your dreams. I shall take from you your city. And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold.”
Shahrzad listened to him recite these words from memory, his eyes adrift in their meaning.
And realization crashed down on her, like lightning to a crag on a mountaintop.
“A curse?” she whispered. “Ava’s father—cursed you?”
“He gave his life to this curse. Before my eyes, he ran a dagger through his heart, paying for the magic with his own blood. To punish me for what I had done to his daughter. For my rampant disregard of his greatest treasure. He wanted to make sure that others would know his pain. That others would despise me as he did. He ordered me to destroy the lives of one hundred families in Rey. To marry their daughters and offer them to the dawn, just like Ava. To take away their promise of a future. And leave them without answers. Without hope. With nothing but hate to keep them alive.”
Shahrzad brushed away the hot tears coursing down her cheeks.
Shiva.
“I refused to comply at first. Even after we realized he’d sold his soul to the darkest magic to enact this curse, even after nights without sleep, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t begin such a cycle of death and destruction. Then the rains ceased. The wells dried up. And the riverbeds vanished. The people of Rey fell to sickness and starvation. They started to die. And I began to understand.”
“I shall take from you your city,” Shahrzad murmured, recalling the devastating drought that had destroyed the crops during the last harvesting season.
He nodded. “And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold.”
Here it was. At long last. An explanation.
A reason for such senseless death.
Why do I not feel any better?
Shahrzad studied Khalid’s profile in the dim light of the lamp above as he continued staring at the floor.
“How many dawns are left?” she asked.
“Not many.”
“And what if—what if we fail to comply?”
“I don’t know.” His posture indicated an invisible weight and its foregone conclusion.
“But—it rained. It’s rained several times in the two months I’ve been at the palace. Perhaps the curse has weakened.”
He turned to look at her with a sad half smile. “If that is the case, there is little else I would ask of heaven.”
A gnawing sense of awareness began to tug at her core. “Khalid, what if—”
“No. Do not ask what you are about to ask.” His voice was harsh and laced with warning.
Her heart tripped about in her chest, matching pace with her newfound fear. “Then you have not even considered—”
“No. I will not consider it.” He reached for her with both hands, framing her chin between his palms. “There is no situation in which I will consider it.”
She shook her head, though her shoulders trembled and her nails dug into her palms. “You are ridiculous, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. I am just one girl. You are the Caliph of Khorasan, and you have a responsibility to a kingdom.”
“If you are just one girl, I am just one boy.”
Shahrzad closed her eyes, unable to hold the fierce light in his gaze.
“Did you hear what I said, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran?”
When she refused to respond, she felt his lips brush across her forehead.
“Look at me,” Khalid said, so soft and so close that it washed across her skin in warm assurances and cool desperation.