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.
Her hands dragged the hem of his qamis over his head. The muscles of his torso coiled at her touch, and the air in the room grew ever more stifling, ever more tangible. When his lips moved to her neck and his palms slid across her stomach to the laces of her shamla, she knew he was right.
This would not be the same.
For this was untrammeled need; this was a body of water and a soul of ash.
The laces of her shamla were free. If this progressed much further, it would be pointless to even consider such a thing as thought. She had to ask now, before the flames consumed her.
“Tell me,” she gasped, her fingers gripping his shoulders.
“Anything.”
Her heart soared, and the guilt clutched at it. “Why did they have to die?”
He stilled in her arms for an interminable beat.
Then Khalid lifted himself from her and stared down at Shahrzad, his face
frozen in horror.
He saw the conflict in her eyes.
She saw the terror in his.
Without a word, he rose from the bed and made his way to the doors.
As his fingers grasped the handle, he paused.
“Never do that to me again.” It was low and harsh.
Filled with unmitigated pain.
He slammed the door shut behind him.
The deprivation of him was palpable. A part of her almost reveled in it—the reminder that this was all a result of vast suffering at his hands. The other part longed to chase after him. For she knew it was possible to conquer him if she did.
Shahrzad buried her face in the cushions and began to sob.
At last, she had discovered a real weakness.
It was her.
And I will use it; I will find out why Shiva had to die.
Even if it kills me.
• • •
The corridors of Taleqan were as silent as the grave.
As dark as the most sinister of intentions.
Jahandar climbed the stairs, clutching the bundle in his left arm tight. The torch in his right hand wavered with every cautious step, casting shadows along the uneven stone walls.
His heart pounding, he pushed the wooden door to his room ajar and leaned into it until it shuddered closed with an echoing thud.
When he was certain no one had heard him moving about, he breathed a sigh of relief before setting the bundle atop his desk and barring the door.
Then he removed the dagger from beneath his cloak.
It was a simple blade. Insignificant at first glance. A wooden handle with commonplace carvings. Slightly hooked and forged of dark iron.
Quite unremarkable, really.
Jahandar closed his eyes and clenched the dagger in his palm.
It was time. After more than two weeks of painstaking study and tedious translation, the moment was upon him.
Tonight, he would learn if the book had chosen him.
Tonight, he would discover if he was worthy of its power.
Again, he walked to the bundle on his desk. He unwrapped the linen.
Nestled in its center was a sleeping hare of soft tan fur.
His first test.
Jahandar swallowed.
He did not want the creature to suffer. It seemed wholly unfair to take the life of such a helpless thing in such a gruesome manner.
But it could not be helped.
He had to do what was necessary. For his children. For himself.
He raised the dagger in his right hand and drew it across his left palm in a single, quick motion. A line of blood appeared in its wake. He dripped the crimson liquid onto the dark blade.
As soon as his blood coated the dagger’s edge, the metal began to glow a
white-hot blue.
Jahandar’s eyes gleamed.
Now the cycle had to be completed.
He inhaled through his nose, silently beseeching the sleeping hare for forgiveness. Then he drew the luminous blade across its throat.
Jahandar watched the small creature’s bright blood spill onto the dagger, and the metal turned from a glowing blue to a fiery red.
The magic rose from the blade into the air, filling the chamber with an eerie rubicund light.
Finally, he touched the dagger to his palm.
Power flowed into the open wound, raw and frightening. It seared as it pummeled through his body, heating him to his very bones. His eyes flashed once, and the dark blade fell to the floor.
When his vision cleared, everything around him appeared sharper than before. The fatigue of only a moment ago was but a distant memory. He stood
taller. Breathed deeper.
Felt invincible.
He bent to the floor and retrieved the dagger, wiping its surface on the bundle of linen next to the motionless body of the tiny hare.
Jahandar paused in thought.
Then he waved his hand over the bloody carcass.
And it disappeared in a burst of cool light.
