Without hesitation, the old man threw back his head and laughed. “To be sure!” His face shone with merriment. “Welcome to my home, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. I am Omar al-Sadiq, and you are my guest. While within these borders, you will always be treated as such. But bear in mind: a calipha in silk or a beggar in the street makes no difference to me. Welcome.” He dipped his head and brushed his fingertips along his brow with a broad flourish.
Shahrzad released a pent-up breath. It escaped her in a rush of air, taking with it the tension from her shoulders and stomach. Her grin stretching farther, Shahrzad bowed in return, touching her right hand to her forehead.
Shiva’s father watched their exchange with a blank expression, his elbows folded against the table’s weathered edge. “Shazi-jan,” he began in a somber tone.
He caught her just as Shahrzad reached for a piece of barbari. “Yes, Uncle Reza?” She lifted her brows in question, her hand hovering above the breadbasket.
Reza’s features turned pensive. “I’m very glad you are here—that you are safe.”
“Thank you. I’m very grateful to everyone for keeping my family safe. And for taking such excellent care of Baba.”
He nodded, then leaned forward, steepling his hands beneath his chin. “Of course. Your family has always been my family. As mine has always been yours.”
“Yes,” Shahrzad said quietly. “It has.”
“So,” Reza said, lines of consternation bracketing his mouth, “it pains me greatly to ask you this—as I thought you might have been remiss when you arrived last night—but I have swallowed your insult for as long as I can endure it.”
Shahrzad’s entire body froze, her fingers still poised above the bread. The tension renewed its grip on her body, guilt coiling around her stomach with snakelike savagery.
“Shahrzad . . .” Reza bin-Latief’s voice had lost any hint of kindness; any warmth in the man she’d considered a second father was gone. “Why are you sitting at this table—breaking bread with me—wearing the ring of the boy who murdered my daughter?”
It was a cutting accusation.
It sliced through the crowd like a scythe through a sea of grain.
Shahrzad’s fingers pressed tight over the standard of the two crossed swords. Tight enough to cause pain.
She blinked once. Twice.
Tariq cleared his throat. The sound echoed through the sudden stillness. “Uncle—Uncle Reza—”
No. She could not let Tariq save her. Not again.
Never again.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said, her mouth dry.
But she wasn’t. Not for this. She was sorry for a hundred things. A thousand things.
An entire city of untendered apologies.
But she would never be sorry for this.
“Don’t be sorry, Shahrzad,” Reza continued in the same cold voice. The voice of a stranger. “Decide.”
Mumbling her regrets, Shahrzad pushed to her feet.
She didn’t stop to think. Clinging to the remains of her dignity, she stumbled away from the table and into the blazing desert sun. Her sandals caught in the hot sand, hefting it behind her, striking her calves with each step.
A large, calloused hand took hold of her shoulder, halting her.
She glanced up, shielding her eyes from the blinding light.
The soldier. The lifelong aggressor.
“Get out of my way,” she whispered, fighting to leash her wrath. “Now.”
His lips curved upward with a leisurely kind of malice. He refused to move.
Shahrzad grabbed his wrist to shove it aside.
The rough-spun linen of his rida’ rolled up to his elbow, revealing a brand seared into his inner forearm.
The mark of the scarab.
The mark of the Fida’i assassins who had stolen into her chamber in Rey and tried to kill her.
With a gasp, Shahrzad ran. Clumsily, mindlessly, her only thought, of escape.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard Irsa’s voice calling for her.
Still, she refused to stop.
She ran into their tiny tent, throwing the door fold shut with a resounding slap.
Her shallow breaths rebounded across the three walls. Shahrzad raised her right hand into a shaft of light filtering through a tent seam. She watched it catch on the muted gold of her ring.
I don’t belong here. A guest in a prison of sand and sun.
But I need to keep my family safe; I need to find a way to break the curse.
And return home to Khalid.
Alas, she did not know whom she could trust. Until Shahrzad knew who this Sheikh Omar al-Sadiq was and why a Fida’i assassin lurked in his camp, she must remain careful. For it was clear she did not have an ally in Reza bin-Latief as she once had had. And Shahrzad refused to put her burdens on Tariq. It was not his place to keep her or her family safe. No. That duty remained with her, and her alone.
Her eyes flashed around before fixing on the pool of water in the copper basin.
Exist beneath the water.
Move slowly. Tell stories.
Lie.
Without a thought for sentimentality, Shahrzad yanked the ring from her finger.
Breathe.
She closed her eyes and listened to the silent cry of her heart.
“Here.” Irsa dropped the tent flap and moved to Shahrzad’s side. She needed no direction. Nor did she offer any kind of reproach. In a trice, she’d unraveled the length of twine binding Shahrzad’s braid. The sisters locked eyes as Irsa took the ring from Shahrzad’s hand and fashioned a necklace from the twine.
Wordlessly, Irsa secured the necklace behind Shahrzad’s throat and tucked the ring beneath her qamis. “No more secrets.”
“Some secrets are safer behind lock and key.”
Shahrzad nodded to her sister, Khalid’s words a low whisper in her ear. Not in warning. But in reminder.
She would do whatever needed to be done to keep her family safe.
Even lie to her own sister.
“What do you want to know?”
ALWAYS
HE WAS ALONE.
And he should take advantage of the time, before the demands of the day stole these moments of solitude from him.
Khalid stepped through the sands of the training courtyard.
As soon as he reached for his shamshir, he knew his hands would bleed.
No matter. It was of little consequence.
Moments spent in idleness were moments left to thought.
Moments left to memory.
The sword separated from its sheath with the soft hiss of metal on metal. His palms burned; his fingers ached. Still, he gripped the hilt tighter.
When he turned toward the sun, the light struck his eyes, searing his vision. Khalid cursed under his breath.
His growing sensitivity to light was a recurring problem of late. An unfortunate effect of continued sleeplessness. Soon, those around him would become all too aware of this issue. He was too comfortable in the dark—a hollow-eyed creature that slithered and slunk through the broken hallways of a once-majestic palace.
As the faqir had cautioned him, this behavior would be construed as madness.
The mad boy-king of Khorasan. The monster. The murderer.
Khalid squeezed his burning eyes shut. Against his better judgment, he let his mind drift to memory.
He recalled being a boy of seven, standing in the shadows, watching his brother, Hassan, learn the art of swordplay. When his father had finally permitted Khalid to learn alongside Hassan, Khalid had been surprised; his father had often disregarded such requests in the past.
“You might as well learn something of value. I suppose even a bastard should know how to fight.” His father’s scorn for Khalid seemed endless.
Strangely, the one and only time his father had ever shown pride in him had been the day, several years later, when Khalid had bested Hassan with a sword.
But the following afternoon, his father had forbidden Khalid from studying alongside Hassan any further.
He’d sent Hassan to study with the best. And left Khalid to fend for himself.
That night, an angry eleven-year-old prince of Khorasan had pledged to become the best swordsman in the kingdom. Once he had, then perhaps his father would realize the past did not give him the right to deny his son a future.
No. That would take a great deal more.
And the day he held a sword to his father’s throat, his father would know it.