SOMEONE WHO KNOWS
IT WAS THE MUTED GROAN OF THE DOOR THAT WOKE her. Shahrzad could recognize
it, even in her sleep.
But this time, something was different.
Something was in her room. Something brash and unafraid.
Eyes watched her. Unwanted eyes. Tiny pinpricks ran down the back of her neck, and the blood coursed through her body, ignited by fear.
The hush of footfall nearby forced her to make a sudden decision.
Shahrzad opened her eyes and screamed, filling the darkness with sound and shock. Footsteps rushed at her, and she scrambled across the cushions in an effort to escape. She yanked the gossamer aside, cursing its pointless existence.
Her heart clamored in her chest at the sight of Despina’s door cracking open across the chamber. “Shahrzad?”
Hulking shadows began to move about her room—shadows cloaked in more
than night.
Oh, God. Despina!
Shahrzad grabbed the stool next to her bed and screamed again, trying to draw them away from her handmaiden. If Despina could make it past the door of the chamber . . .
When a hand reached for Shahrzad, she swung the stool in its direction.
“Shahrzad!” Despina cried.
“Go!” Shahrzad yelled.
Despina rushed for the double doors as two shadows converged on her. She managed to yank one open and race into the marbled hallways of the palace. A single, terror-fueled word echoed in her wake: “Jalal!”
The shadows descended on Shahrzad, and one seized her from behind. When it pulled her closer, a pair of angry male eyes glittered at her from above a black
mask. She pitched the stool at his head. He caught it with a whispered oath and struck her across the cheek with the back of his hand.
Shahrzad reeled to the marble, her eyes tearing at the burgeoning sting. When another shadow tried to haul her to her feet, she reached out and snatched the cloth off his face. He lifted her by the throat and shoved her against the wall.
“Who are you? What do you want?” She kicked and scratched at him.
More footsteps pounded down the corridors outside her room.
Both doors were shoved aside in doleful protest, revealing a lone figure and
the silhouette of a sword.
Khalid.
Her captor began to laugh, low and cruel, as he cinched his hold on her neck.
Khalid did not ask questions. He did not try to negotiate. His shamshir flashed in the darkness, and a shadow near the door fell with a gurgle and a series of sickening thuds. A moment later, Jalal burst across the threshold with the Rajput on his heels.
“Take Khalid out of here!” Jalal shouted to the Rajput.
With a dismissive shove, the Rajput pushed past Jalal and raised his talwar.
Khalid brandished his sword and moved forward. The shadows congregated in his path. There were at least eight of them, including the one pinning her to the wall.
The sound of blades being drawn from their sheaths rippled through the chamber, and the man grasping Shahrzad by the throat pulled her back against him, wrapping a forearm of corded muscle around her neck.
The Rajput engaged the vanguard of shadows, and Khalid and Jalal flanked him on either side. Weapons clashed against one another, metal to metal, and death sliced through the air, leaving behind blood and vengeful wrath.
The shadows were losing.
Shahrzad’s captor began dragging her to the open screens leading to the terrace. His hold loosened, and she managed to twist an arm free. She swung a haphazard fist at his face. It caught him in the jaw, and she spun around to bolt.
He lunged at her, snagging a shoulder in one hand and the back of her neck in the other.
“I’ll kill you for that,” he spat in her ear.
“Says a dead man,” she rasped.
“Not just yet.” He slid his hand from her neck into her hair and coiled his fingers through to the roots, positioning her as a shield before him. Shahrzad bit
back a gasp as her eyes began to water.
“Khalid Ibn al-Rashid!” he bellowed.
When her vision cleared, Jalal and the Rajput stood a body’s length away,
with their weapons at the ready.
Khalid slashed his sword a final time, and the blood of his opponent spewed across his bare chest and face in lines of dark red. Then he crossed the room, his eyes awash with rage, and the silver of his sword dripping crimson.
The marauding shadows were silent and motionless now.
As Khalid stalked closer, the hand in her hair tightened its grasp. Her captor pulled up sharply, and it tore a cry from her lips.
Jalal swore an oath, and the blade of his scimitar gleamed white on a
moonbeam.
Khalid halted in his tracks.
Her captor laughed, and it was like stone against metal. With his other hand, he positioned a small dagger to her throat.
“Not a single plea?” he whispered in Shahrzad’s ear.
“I don’t beg,” Shahrzad retorted. “Especially to dead men.”
“And the mighty Caliph of Khorasan?” her captor said into the night. “Does the King of Kings have any pleas?”
Again Khalid stalked toward them in brutal silence, raising his shamshir across his body.
“Don’t move, you bastard son of a whore!” her captor exploded. “Or I’ll slice a maggot hole across her throat. You can watch her die, just like your mother.”
Khalid froze in time. Then Shahrzad watched his face shatter. The eyes of molten amber faded to dull memory. Faded to ruin. His raw anguish seared her soul and robbed her of breath. The bloodstained shamshir fell to his side.
“I will kill you for that,” Shahrzad choked over her shoulder.
His laughter was a vicious rumble against her back.
“What do you want?” Khalid asked quietly.
“Drop your weapon.”
The shamshir struck the marble with a sharp clang. Without the slightest hesitation.
Her captor sneered in triumph. “Tell them to drop their weapons.”
“Stop it!” Shahrzad cried.
Look at me, Khalid. Please! Do not listen to this animal.
Her captor withdrew his hand from the back of her head and seized Shahrzad’s chin, angling her jaw higher. Pressing his dagger closer.
“Jalal. Vikram. Do as he says.” Khalid’s voice was heavy. Mired in acceptance.
“Khalid!” Shahrzad despaired. “Don’t do this. Jalal, don’t listen to him. You can’t—”
“Say one more word, and I’ll make certain it’s your last.” He shifted his hand
from her chin to her mouth.
Shahrzad bit down on his flesh as hard as she could. The taste of salt and sweat rushed onto her tongue. Her captor bellowed, slackening his hold. She rammed her elbow into his midsection, and his dagger slid back across her throat, leaving behind a white-hot trail. Then a pair of strong arms yanked her aside, pulling her into a bloodstained chest.
Khalid’s heart thudded around her, loud and fast. It raced against her cheek, each beat an unspoken promise.
And, for a breath of time, it was enough.
The Rajput slammed her captor to the floor. Jalal shoved a knee into his torso and smashed a jeweled hilt across his jaw.
“In what world did you think you could get away with this?” Jalal seethed.
“To my cousin? To my family?” His gleaming hilt continued its punishing onslaught.
“Enough!” Khalid pronounced the word with such force, such unmitigated fury, that it stilled all sound within the chamber. He reached down for his shamshir, and the blade dragged across the marble in a threatening skirr.
Without further prompting, Jalal stepped back from the man and strode to Shahrzad’s side. The Rajput melted into the shadows nearby, his huge hands wrapped around his talwar, and his bearded features coldly feral in the
moonlight.
Khalid walked forward.
The man was lying on the floor, blood coursing from his mouth and his nose.
When he saw Khalid looming above him, he began to laugh in a broken rasp.
Khalid positioned the end of the blade to the man’s throat. “She was right.
You are a dead man. But I’m willing to discuss degrees of pain.”
The man’s wheezing laughter grew louder.
“Who sent you?” Khalid continued in a savage whisper.
“Someone who wants to see you suffer.”
“Tell me, and I will spare you a measure of the pain you greatly deserve.”
The man coughed, and streaks of crimson spurted from his swollen mouth.
“Do you think I fear you, boy?”
“I will ask one last time. Then the answer will be torn from your lips.”
“You think to thwart the hands of fate? No matter how long you try to fight it, you will pay the price, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid.” The man’s eyes shot to Shahrzad with irrefutable significance.
“We are now past words.” Khalid eased his sword into the man’s neck, drawing a thin stream of blood. “In this, I am definitely my father’s son.”
The man’s laughter turned maniacal. “You wish to know who sent me,
mighty King of Kings? I’ll tell you,” he gasped, starting to choke. “Someone who knows.”
With that, he dragged his own throat across the edge of the blade.
Jalal grabbed Shahrzad and tucked her face into his shoulder. Her hands shook against him, and he pressed his palm to her cheek in an effort to soothe her.
The Rajput crouched beside her captor’s body. He ran his depthless black eyes across the man’s motionless form. Then he pulled back the dark sleeve covering the man’s right forearm. In the pale light of the moon spilling from the terrace, Shahrzad saw a faint mark seared into his skin: the outline of a scarab.
“A Fida’i dog,” the Rajput grumbled like distant thunder.
Khalid regarded the brand in silence before turning away. With a low curse,
he heaved his shamshir across the room.
“What?” Shahrzad asked Jalal.
“The Fida’is. Hired mercenaries. Assassins.”
Shahrzad inhaled sharply, the questions massing at the top of her throat.
Jalal peered at her neck. “My God. You’re bleeding.” He shoved aside her hair.
Before she had a chance to react, she was lifted off her feet. Khalid dismissed her protests as he carried her away from the carnage, with Jalal and the Rajput following close behind. When they crossed the threshold, the lifeless bodies of the two Royal Guards positioned outside her door stared up at her with glassy eyes. Their throats were slashed to gaping maws. She stifled a gasp.
“They’re all dead,” Khalid said without looking at her. “Every guard in this corridor is dead.”
She tensed her grip around his neck as he continued down the hall. Once they rounded the corner, soldiers burst through the doors, led by General al-Khoury.
“Is she hurt?” the shahrban demanded in an urgent voice.
“I’m fine,” she replied, momentarily taken aback by his concern. “Really, I
am.”
“She’s wounded,” Jalal clarified.
“It’s not bad,” Shahrzad countered. “Put me down. I can walk.”
Khalid ignored her.
“I can walk, Khalid.”
Again, he refused to look at her, much less respond.
They moved down the hallways with guards lighting their path, encircling them in a gleaming bastion of steel and torchfire. Deciding to cede this particular battle, Shahrzad leaned against Khalid, closing her eyes to the glare for an instant, and his hold on her tightened.
They turned down another, smaller corridor Shahrzad had never seen before.
It was lined in stone with an arched ceiling of smooth alabaster. Soon they halted before a set of double doors made of polished ebony, hinged in bronze and iron.
“Guards are to stand post here and at the doors leading to my chamber until further notice,” Khalid commanded. “Be advised—if there is the slightest breach at either entrance, you will answer to me.”
A guard nodded briskly before pulling on one of the bronze handles. Khalid walked through the huge, ebony doorway with Shahrzad in his arms. He did not put her down. Instead, he crossed a pitch-black antechamber to another set of doors identical to the first. Once they passed this threshold, they entered a vast room with a vaulted ceiling lit in its center by a single lamp of latticed gold.
Khalid set Shahrzad on the edge of a platformed bed covered in dull silk. Then he strode to an immense ebony cabinet positioned against the back wall, where he removed strips of spun linen and a small, round container before collecting a pitcher from atop his desk.
He knelt before Shahrzad and brushed her hair over her shoulder to look at the wound.
“I told you,” Shahrzad said. “It’s not bad. It can’t be much worse than a scratch.”
Khalid poured water from the pitcher onto a strip of linen. He lifted it to her neck and began cleaning the wound.
Shahrzad studied his face as he worked. The dark circles beneath his eyes were even more pronounced now. Lines of dried blood ran across his cheek and brow, marring his sun-bronzed skin. His features were set on edge, and he refused to meet her gaze. The angles of his profile remained obdurate.
Unyielding. Like the edges of a rumpled scroll, demanding to be smoothed . . . or cast aside, once and for all.
When he dampened another piece of linen, Shahrzad placed her hand over his and removed the cloth from his grasp. She raised the strip to his face and wiped at the dark blood of his enemy.
Khalid’s tiger-eyes finally fell to hers. They roved across her in poignant silence as she washed away the remnants of death with steady, graceful fingers.
Then he leaned forward, pressing his brow to hers, catching her hands in his.
Stilling them both.
“I want to send you away. To a place where none of this can touch you,” he began.
Her heart shuddered, and she pulled back. “Send me away? As if I were a
thing?”
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“I meant that I cannot keep you safe. From anything.”
“And your answer to that is to send me away?” Shahrzad repeated in a dangerous whisper.
“My answer is not an answer. It is a willingness to do whatever it takes— even something as distasteful as sending you from my side.”
“And you expect me to obey? To go wherever you command?”
“I expect you to trust me.”
Shahrzad narrowed her eyes. “You should know I will not take kindly to you treating me like a possession.”
“I have never treated you like a possession, Shahrzad.”
“Until you spoke of sending me away.”
Khalid shifted his hands to her sides. “You’re my wife. They are hurting you because of me.”
“They? Do you mean the Fida’is?” She hesitated. “Who are they? To whom do they pledge loyalty?”
“To whoever can pay their price. Loyalty ebbs and flows with the tide; gold does not. The men who hire them have little to offer beyond that.”
“And you think it will help if you yield to such men?”
“I don’t care what they think as long as you’re safe.”
“You should care. It’s time to start caring. You cannot continue to rule this kingdom in such a callous manner.”
He smiled, bitter and unamused. “You speak as though you understand. As though you know.”
“You’re right. I understand nothing. I know nothing. And whose fault is that?” Shahrzad pushed against his bare chest and stood from the bed, walking past him.
“I’ve told you why.” Khalid rose to his feet. “It is not safe for you to know these things. To know—”
“To know what?” She spun around to face him. “To know you? As if I could ever hope to achieve such a thing. Yet, like a fool, I’ve wanted to learn. To understand what pains you, what brings you joy. But I remain ignorant of even the most trivial of things. I don’t know your favorite color. What foods you detest. What scent brings to mind a treasured memory. I know nothing, because you fight me every step of the way.”
He watched her as she spoke, his features careful, his composure deliberate, though his eyes revealed a deeper conflict he no longer fought to conceal.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Shahrzad. I only know I can’t give it.
Not now.”
“It does not have to be so difficult, Khalid-jan. My favorite color is violet.
The scent of roses makes me feel at home, wherever I am. I do not enjoy fish, but will eat it to make a loved one happy, suffering through my smiles.”
He remained stone-faced, the conflict in his eyes warring on.
With a beleaguered sigh, she turned and strode to the entrance. “Good night.”
Khalid was beside her in a few long strides, pressing his hand to the ebony door. Preventing her from leaving.
“What do you want me to do?” he said in a low voice.
She did not look up, though her heart thrummed in her throat. “Prove that a real man doesn’t make a show of what’s his. It just is.”
“Is it? Are you mine?” Khalid asked with quiet solemnity.
Her conviction wavered further. “I told you; don’t try to own me.”
“I don’t want to own you.”
She swiveled her neck to meet his gaze. “Then never speak of sending me away again. I am not yours to do with as you will.”
Khalid’s features smoothed knowingly. “How right you are. You are not mine.” He dropped his palm from the door. “I am yours.”
Shahrzad curled her fingers tight, forcing herself to recall a time when she meant nothing to him. A time when he meant less than nothing to her, and all that mattered was blood for blood.
Alas, she no longer saw the same boy before her. Just light amidst a sea of darkness, and the unerring promise of something more. But she never saw the things she should see. The pain, the anger, the betrayal. These things always faded, and she despised herself for it.
Before she could stop her hands, they reached for him, as though they existed for no other reason than to touch him. Her fingers brushed across his jaw with a feather’s caress before pulling away, and he closed his eyes on a soft inhale.
Like the poison toying with its remedy, Shahrzad’s hands ignored her and took control, a mere taste of his skin not nearly enough. Never enough. They began at his brow and eased their way to his temples before sliding into his hair, smooth as silk, dark as night. She watched his eyes open and turn from liquid to fire under her fingers. Shahrzad ran her palms down to his neck, where she paused.
“Why won’t you touch me?” she whispered.
It took him a moment to reply. “Because if I start, I won’t stop.”
“Who asked you to stop?” Her fingers traveled to his chest.
“What if I can’t give you the answers you want?”
Again, she returned to nothing.
Yet there, in the warmth of his eyes, was everything.
“Then give me this.” Shahrzad stood on her toes and brought her mouth to
his. When he did not respond, she curved her tongue against his lower lip, and his hands drew across her waist in a slow burn. She thought he would push her away, but he dragged her against him. Khalid kissed her, melding nothing to everything. Shahrzad wrapped both arms around his neck, and he backed her into the ebony door until she was braced up against it, each of their breaths matched, measure for measure, beat for beat.
“Khalid.” She gripped his shoulders as his lips brushed the delicate skin beneath her chin. Her heart was pounding so loud that she did not at first
recognize the noise at the door.
“Sayyidi.”
“Khalid,” she repeated, catching his wrists.
He swore softly. Then he reached for the bronze handle.
“Yes.” His reply was low and irascible.
The guard bowed through the crack in the door.
“The shahrban wishes to speak with you. Captain al-Khoury may have determined how the intruders gained entry into the palace.”
Khalid nodded curtly as he shut the door. He ran his palm along the side of his jaw before turning to Shahrzad once more.
She was leaning against the ebony with her hands clasped behind her back.
“Go,” she said softly.
He paused in thoughtful scrutiny. “I—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay here.”
“Thank you.” As he reached for the handle again, he lingered and smiled to
himself.
Her brows drew together. “What is it?”
“It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. To want something so much—to hold it in your arms—and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it.”
Khalid pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold without waiting for a response.
Shahrzad slid to the floor. The hands that had appeared steady against him now shook before her face. Proof that she was being equally punished for her own transgressions. Punished for desiring a monster.
She offered silent thanks to the stars that dealt in fate—for her monster did not seem to know how all reason had left her for the space of a breath.
How the guilt crashed down around her.
And how the questions burdened her soul.
“Someone who knows.”
