“You can afford a few minutes to bathe,” Zaarib said, scrounging up a smirk as he followed. As they all did. “Get yourself all pretty to see your wife again.”
It hurt to admit, “I can’t spare the time.”
“Eat then,” he suggested, changing tack. “Come eat breakfast with us. We can discuss a plan of attack for getting into the dungeons at the table.”
“It will slow us down.”
“Varidian.” Aliah’s voice hardened. “If you don’t slow down for a damned minute and take care of yourself, you will be unconscious by the time we reach the capital.”
“I’mfine,”I snarled, and I didn’t know if it was Mak’s rage or my own brittleness that made me bare my canines. Thunder grumbled in the dark clouds overhead; I saw Nabil mark the noise and give me a look. Cold shivered at the back of my neck, but there was no way he could know about the lightning soul.
“Fine?” Aliah grabbed my arm and halted me inside the kitchen, compassion still in her eyes but her expression resolute, unbending. So was her voice when she asked, “When was the last time you changed the dressing on your wounds from Daurith?”
“I—” I didn’t know. Couldn’t remember.
“And the last time you ate?”
Days ago.
“Ameirah’s going to kick your ass,” Nabil told me with a frown, digging through a drawer until he found paper, then disappearing into the corridor beyond, presumably on the hunt for ink and a pen to write to the Torn Isle.
Ameirah was going to kick my ass, he was right. I scrubbed both hands over my face, so damn tired that my eyes hurt, grit permanently embedded in them. That exhaustion weighed on my shoulders, my chest, made it hard work to lift my legs and place my feet in a step.
“One meal,” I relented, my voice hoarser than it had a right to be. “And we plan as I eat.”
Aliah snuck her arms around my waist and squeezed, before she slipped away to plunder our kitchen and stores. Where my mother had gone, I didn’t know.
I sat at the table, the memory of Ameirah sitting in this exact chair making my throat squeeze, apparently full of knives and broken glass. The same shattered feeling sat in my chest, stabbed at my eyes. Ameirah was imprisoned. I sent her to Morysen where she ought to be safe, and now she wasimprisoned.
“I fucked up,” I croaked, looking at the chips and dents on the table, the Marrakchi family history written on its very surface. There was where I slammed my knife into the table when I learned of how Bakshi discarded my mother when he discovered she carried me. Beside it, almost hidden by a bowl of oranges, was the scratch where Nabil and I ended up in the middle of abrawl, before Fahad knocked our heads together and forced us to sit down and talk through our problems.
It cut through my chest like a fracture, the pain of his absence.
“You fucked up by sending her away?” Zaarib clarified, frowning as he sat opposite me, the shoulders of his black and silver djellaba straining at the seams. I would have teased him about that if I could find a spark of feeling in my chest.
“Catastrophically,” I confirmed.
“I still don’t understand why you sent her to Morysen,” he said, shaking his head. “The Morysen part I get, it’s unlikely Bakshi will allow his capital to be sacked. But why send her away at all? Because of what happened at Wyfell?”
“I—” I opened my mouth, then closed it again. With the hollow in my chest and the exhaustion draining everything else, I couldn’t remember what reasons I’d given them.
Dull hurt cracked through my skull when the flat of a palm met the back of my head, and I whipped my head around to glare at Shula as she stalked past.
“Just tell them,” she barked, raising an eyebrow. In challenge and confirmation.
She knew. How, I didn’t know, but sheknew.Or maybe she knew something else and hadn’t guessed at the truth. Shame burned like acid in my stomach. I couldn’t look her in the eye.
“We already know, Varidian,” Nabil said, folding a piece of paper as he walked back into the room. “Just tell us.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Shula added encouragingly.
“Well.” Nabil gave her a look. “It’squitea big deal. It’s not every day your friend and commander becomes a living myth.”
“Shit,” I hissed, burying my head in my hands. They did know. They truly knew. “You know what I am—and you’re still sitting here with me? When did you figure it out?”
“Daurith,” Aliah answered with a soothing blend of kindness and wry amusement. I dropped my hands to meet her eyes and found no hatred, no judgement. “It was obvious, Varidian.”
“Well, not to me,” Zaarib blurted. “I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
