Soon she would be free.
Javan would come back for her. She knew he would. And the warden would pay for everything she’d done. And then Sajda would have her stars and her wide-open spaces. Then she could leave the dust of Akram behind and never look back.
The thought sliced at her heart, a flash of pain she didn’t want to examine closely.
But for any of that to happen, Javan had to win the next day’s combat round, which meant he had to stop trying to talk her through what would happen if he lost and focus on the beasts he’d be fighting.
She faced him across the couch in the room on the third level as he said, “Just in case. It’s the only thing I can think of to—Are you listening to me?”
“No. We aren’t going to talk about you losing. We’re going to—”
“We are absolutely going to talk about me losing.” He leaned close, a feverish light in his eyes. “I plan to win, Sajda. You know I do. But we’d be fools not to have a contingency plan in place in case I lose. In case I die.”
“Stop it!” She glared at him, and his expression softened.
“It’s just in case. I need to know that I was able to do something to help you.”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest where the hollow space was now swirling with panic.
“If I go down, you take this.” He held up a beautiful red sash wrapped around a square of folded parchment. “I’ll wear it under my tunic, next to my heart. Get it to the king. You have the freedom to go up the stairs. You can reach him and give it to him. Tell him I’m his son, and I fulfilled my mother’s muqaddas tus’el.”
“Why don’t I just do that before the competition starts?” she asked. “Then you won’t have to fight at all.”
“Maybe you can. It depends on if the impostor is with him. If he is, I doubt he’ll let anyone get near the king while I’m alive. He has too much to lose. But if I’m dead, or I’ve lost and can’t have an audience with the king, then he might let down his guard.”
“Or I could just smash through his guard, give this to the king, and throw the impostor into the arena.” The rage within her blazed at the thought of hurting the person who’d taken so much from Javan.
“And be revealed as a dark elf? Be accused of killing the prince? The king would never look at what you have in your hands if you committed violence to get it to him.”
“Fine. Now, are you ready to go over the creatures again?”
“We’ve gone over them for days, Sajda. I know them. I know how to kill them. I’m ready to fight. What I’m not ready for is leaving you behind, even for a minute.” The misery on his face had her moving across the cushion that separated them until she could wrap her arms around him and lean her head against his chest.
She didn’t want to be left either. Not for a minute.
But he’d come back.
She’d seen the truth in his heart.
He’d come back because he loved her.
She loved him too—a terrifying, exhilarating revelation she hadn’t found the courage to put into words for him yet.
She had never said “I love you” to anyone. And even though it was true—she loved Javan fiercely and absolutely—saying it felt like dropping the last tiny defense she had. It was standing in front of a windstorm, arms wide open, with nothing to anchor her to the ground. It was jumping from a mountain believing that gravity couldn’t touch her.
It was thrilling. Comforting. Terrifying.
And so she held him close, her magic humming along her skin and into his, and hoped he understood the things she didn’t quite know how to say.
“I love you,” he said softly.
She tipped her head up and brought his face to hers. Pressing her lips to his, she tried to memorize the way his chest rose and fell with every breath. The way his heart beat steadily beneath her hand while his mouth moved gently against hers. Warmth swirled through her, tangling with her magic until she wanted to send it into him and read his heart again. See his truth so she could hold it close after he was gone.
When she pulled away, he tried to follow, but she pressed him back into the couch. “I have to pull the weapons for tomorrow and make sure everything is sharpened and cleaned. You can’t help with that. Prisoners aren’t allowed to touch any of them outside the arena. The warden already checks up on me often when I’m working with the weapons to make sure I don’t steal any for my own use. If you were with me, she’d have reason to punish you badly enough to make sure you’d lose the competition.”
He stood when she did and wrapped his arms around her once more. “No matter what happens tomorrow, I don’t regret being here, Sajda. I love you.”
She leaned into him, and when the answering words lingered on her tongue, she opened her mouth; but the thread that held her together shivered and frayed, and the words dissolved. She left him there and hurried down to the weapons closet. She was focused on thinking through the weapons’ layout she’d drawn up the day before—short swords in the center where Javan could easily find them. Bow and arrow for him on a hook to the west, far away from the gate to give him a chance to aim at the creatures she’d be sending into the arena. Spear on the opposite wall—
“Well, well, if it isn’t the warden’s little monster.” Hashim smiled at her outside the door of the weapons closet, and she pulled up short. A quick glance around confirmed that they were alone in the corridor.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, resting her hand on the wall beside her so she could pull the cold indifference of the stone into herself.
His smile turned vicious. “I finally figured it out. The way the warden calls you monster. The iron cuffs with runes carved in them.” He gestured toward her wrists while everything inside her went still.
“Get out of my way. I have work to do.” Her tone was as hard as the floor beneath her boots.
“I don’t think so.” He leaned against the closet door and tapped a thick, meaty finger against his lips. “It’s so rare to catch you without your aristocratic guard dog that I think I’ll stay and chat.”
“Then I won’t stick around to listen.”
She turned to go but froze as he said, “Elf or fae?”
Magic screamed through her, a blazing heat in her veins, and her wrists ached as the runes glowed. Slowly she turned to face him. “Excuse me?”
“Are you a dark elf or a fae?”
“If I was either one, you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?” She bared her teeth at him.
His eyes narrowed. “I felt your magic. Last competition, when you put grave dirt on me. You looked angry with me, and then there was this buzzing in my chest right where our skin touched. When you removed your hand, you’d left a handprint burned into my skin. See?” He pulled his tunic aside, and Sajda’s mouth went dry as she saw the raised pink scar of her hand in the center of his chest.
When she said nothing, he sighed. “I guess it doesn’t really matter which you are. My bet is elf because of how pale your skin is, but either way, I know.”
Magic sliced at her, and she moved closer to him. He lifted his other hand, and she stopped as she saw the thick iron chain he held.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“Borrowed it from the last sparring session. No one noticed that I’d taken it from the arena. Guess you’re still distracted by the old man’s death.”
She raised her hands, runes glowing, magic coiling in her palms. “I don’t need these cuffs removed to hurt you, Hashim.”
“I know. But I’m betting if I wrap you in this chain, it will be very difficult to use any of that magic against me. This is a lot of iron.” He hefted the chain.
“And I’m betting I can hurt you before you do that.”
He shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m not alone.”
She turned and found three of his friends closing in slowly behind her, each of them carrying an iron chain.
“You didn’t take four chains from the arena, Hashim.”
&nbs
p; “No, I didn’t. I had a little help unlocking the weapons closet.”
“The warden.” Her breath came in quick bursts, and anger warred with panic.
The warden couldn’t harm Javan directly without starting a fire of rumor and anger with her wealthiest bettors. But she could get to Javan by letting Hashim get to Sajda.
“The warden,” he agreed. And then his chain whistled through the air, directly for her face. She dodged it, but then stumbled as a woman behind her snapped her chain across Sajda’s back. Whirling, she snatched the chain, ignoring the burn of iron against her hands, and yanked the woman forward. A swift kick sent the toe of her boot into the woman’s stomach. She fell, and Sajda turned on the others, but it was too late.
Two chains wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides. She hissed as the iron touched her skin. Magic tumbled and churned in her veins, but her hands were pinned, and the iron was slicing through her power, sending it spinning through her in fragments.
Hashim stepped in front of her, his chain swinging as if he might flick it toward her face at any moment. The air felt too thin, her blood too thick as panic roared within her.
She was trapped. No way to use her magic. No way to use her strength and speed. And no help was coming.
“What do you want?” she snapped, her voice shaky at the edges.
“What the warden wants. For me to win. She wants me to kill Javan during the competition.” He smiled at her, and she nearly spit in his face. “But I think you and I can come to an understanding instead, which is why I asked her to let me use the chains. She didn’t seem to think you’d be helpful, but you will.”
“Why should I?”
“Because this is the best outcome for you. I leave, and no one in this hall breathes a word about what you are. You get to keep your favorite prisoner by your side. And the warden stays on the king’s good side. My understanding is that the royal family doesn’t want Javan to even be in the competition. I don’t know what your aristocrat did to land himself in Maqbara, but he made enemies of the wrong people.” He moved closer, the chain swinging. “As long as you help me, Javan will stay in Maqbara with you for the rest of his life.”
She felt a flash of temptation followed instantly by guilt.
Javan would come back for her.
And even if he didn’t, she could never be the reason he was forced to stay.
Hashim took her silence for agreement. “You’re going to tell me where the bow and arrow and the short swords will be located tomorrow. Your boy can still fight, but he won’t have his favorite weapons.”
She laughed, cold and cruel. “Why would I do that? To force Javan to stay imprisoned here?”
“Because if you don’t, I will reveal to the aristocracy that you are a dangerous creature of magic whose iron cuffs no longer restrain her. I’ll show them your handprint on my chest as proof. It’s almost the week of Tu’ Omwahl. The memory of what your people did to ours is fresh. You’re strong, but you can’t take on an entire crowd of people who think the only way to protect themselves and their children from your kind is to kill you.”
He was right. The crowd would devour her. She might take a few of them with her, but with restrained magic she wouldn’t take enough.
Plus tomorrow couldn’t be about her. Not even for a second. Javan needed to win so he could talk to his father and be restored to the throne. It would be harder for him to win without his preferred weapons, but it would also be hard for Hashim to win trying to use weapons that were better suited to someone else. And she could warn Javan. He was good at improvising.
“Do we have an agreement?”
She nodded, sickness moving through her as the iron chafed her skin.
Hashim leaned close and snapped the edge of his chain against her heart. “That’s for burning me. And if you even think about betraying this agreement, I will expose you to the spectators and in the chaos that follows, I’ll kill Javan.”
The chains fell away, and Sajda reached one shaky hand into her pocket. Without another word, she handed over the weapons’ layout and then brushed past him to enter the closet that the warden and Hashim had left unlocked while he was waiting to ambush her. Her hands shook with the need to carve into him, take his blood, and break his will into pieces.
FORTY-ONE
SAJDA CLOSED THE door behind her, her skin still burning from the iron chains, her heart beating a frantic tempo in her chest. Her hands shook as she began putting away the freshly cleaned weapons that had been used in combat practice that day. Tomorrow, she’d be up at dawn placing them in their assigned spots inside the arena while the warden watched.
For tonight, the swords went on the dusty black cloth. The mace hung on a hook beside the short spear and the chain. She picked up the bow and ran her fingers over the place where hours earlier Javan had stood in the center of the arena, and fired arrow after arrow in quick succession around the arena.
His strategy depended on getting the bow and arrow, and she’d just taken that from him. The warden would never agree to a last-minute change in weapons’ placement. She gripped the bow with white knuckles, her heartbeat roaring in her ears, her magic blazing through her blood in desperation to protect Javan.
Oh, how she’d wanted to save him. To leap the wall and run to his side, her magic clawing for the blood of his foes so she could whisper nightmares that would reduce them all to rubble.
Was it wrong to use her magic to hurt those who sought to hurt the boy she loved?
She wasn’t sure she cared. If she had to be a monster, at least she could be a monster who kept the prince of Akram safe and helped restore him to his throne.
Something bumped the wall in the corridor outside the closet, and she froze, magic scraping at her skin. Had Hashim and his friends returned to torture her with their chains again?
“Did anyone see you enter?” The warden’s deep voice filled the air.
Sajda shrank, huddling close to the floor, reaching for a pair of battle-axes as though that could save her if the warden turned her attention to the weapons’ closet and discovered an eavesdropper.
“I was careful.”
She knew that voice—elegance and brute arrogance. It was the false prince. Her fists closed around the ax handle as she considered whether she could get past the warden long enough to kill the boy who’d taken everything from Javan.
“What is it? I have a prison to run.”
“You have a boy to kill. I’ve run out of patience. Javan cannot be allowed to win tomorrow’s competition.”
“I’ll make sure of it. If he doesn’t die in the competition, then the points will add up to another winner.” The warden sounded impatient.
“I don’t have the same kind of faith in your abilities as Fariq. From the start, you have done nothing but create problems. You attacked Javan too early in Loch Talam, and didn’t even manage to kill him then. You failed to report that he was in your prison, and by the time we found out about it, rumors about him were already spreading. And you failed to make sure he died in the last round of combat. You should’ve just killed him in between rounds and been done with it.”
The warden’s voice was a low, throaty snarl that sent a chill over Sajda’s skin. “You’d better be careful how you speak to me. You need me as an ally, not an enemy.”
“And you need me. Fariq is dead. The king will be dead shortly after my coronation. If you’ve made an enemy of me, you will lose this prison, your coin, and if you don’t flee Akram fast enough, your life.”
There was a long moment of silence, and Sajda hardly dared to breathe in case she gave herself away.
Finally, the warden said, “I can’t just kill a competitor who is a crowd favorite. Not without raising a lot of questions with both my prisoners and the aristocrats. That’s why I didn’t kill him in the first place. The last thing we need are rumors about the boy with the resemblance to royalty who died mysteriously in Maqbara.”
“Then you shouldn’t have let him be
come a crowd favorite!”
“I was away when he arrived, and I didn’t even know he was here until he was already in a competition and word was already spreading. You should’ve made sure he never made it to Maqbara.”
“You bear plenty of blame for that as well. He must be killed. Tonight. The king’s health has improved lately, and it’s risky to let him see Javan. I’ll dose him with saffeyena to confuse him, but I don’t want to take chances. Kill Javan. We’ll claim it was a jealous prisoner and punish one of them accordingly.”
“If the prisoners think they aren’t safe in their cells when they’re following all of the rules, I could have a riot on my hands.”
“Then you shift into a dragon and you kill anyone who riots. That will quell any dissent immediately. In fact, that’s the best solution to all of this. Shift, burn Javan, and claim you’d discovered he was part of a plot against the crown. I’ll support your claims. It will be simple.”
“Easy for you to say when you get all the benefit and take none of the risk,” she answered.
“Need I remind you that Fariq gave you an incredible amount of leeway in how you run your prison and how you gain your prisoners. I’m sure an investigation would uncover quite a number of inmates who aren’t actually guilty of their crimes but whose room and board the city’s taxes have been generously paying. And it would reveal that you’re baking the corpses of the losers along with the destroyed beasts and using that to feed your prisoners so you can pocket the coin we send for their upkeep. As the new king, I can either continue to look the other way as Fariq did, or I can ruin you. Choose wisely.”
In the silence that followed, Sajda quietly set the battle-axes down and pressed her hands to the stone floor. Her magic stung her palms as it drank in the heart of the stone, sheathing her in cold, immovable purpose.
“Consider it done,” the warden said. “It’s nearly twelfth bell. I’ll burn him in his bed once the bars go down. There’s no escaping from that.”