“Did you hear what he said about wanting you to be executed? But ‘that boy’ prevented it from happening? Do you think he was talking about Mazin?”
“Probably,” I said, resigned. “I don’t really know what he meant.” I shrugged. “Mazin likely wanted me to suffer as much as possible.”
I leaned back and looked up at the sky, bright with stars. I remembered other stars, on other nights, and the person I’d been looking up at them with had been him. Perhaps Mazin couldn’t bring himself to have me killed after everything we had shared. Perhaps he wanted me imprisoned but not dead.
I shook myself. Nothing good would come of thinking that way. My father was still dead. And Mazin hadn’t said a word to defend me when I was arrested.
It was the same as if he had killed me.
Noor looked as if she wanted to say something else.
“What is it?”
“Or…” She held up her hands at my expression. “Hear me out. Or he was saving your life.”
I turned to look out the north window, the palace lit up in gold. I felt like I was being pulled in two—that raging, dark vengeance ready to light Basral on fire, and that other part of me that felt alive and free when Maz kissed me again.
But which half of me would win?
And which did I want to?
Thirty-five
If I thought the party at our town house was opulent, the emperor’s put it to shame. There were street performers folding themselves into small boxes, tigers on golden leashes, and zoraat entertainers that pushed beyond the bounds of imagination.
I suppose when you held the key to a djinn power, you could imagine anything.
“I just watched a woman transform herself into a cobra and then eat a man she had just turned into a white-bellied rat. Who evenwantsto see that? I nearly threw up.” Noor shuddered.
“The emperor and his cronies, apparently.” I looked around distastefully.
Noor surveyed the room with a scowl, as if she could conjure the emperor with her eyes.
“Vahid likely won’t reveal himself until later,” I said with a low voice. “The emperor always did have a flair for the dramatic.” The few times I’d seen him he was with my father, looking at his swords. I didn’t understand why he even wanted to own swords in the first place if he held djinn power. He had told my father he liked the way it felt, to hold something not forged from magic but by human hands.
“I’ve never seen the effects of so much zoraat in one place.” Noor swept her gaze over the crowd.
“The emperor controls the use of it, but he likes to show off. He likes everyone to know the power that onlyhehas access to.”
Noor raked her hands through her short hair. “Which is why he killed my father.”
I pressed my hand to her upper arm. “Just remain calm. He doesn’t know who you are, and he can’t hurt you.”
We both paused in horror as a man who had just consumed a vibrant yellow dose of zoraat split himself in half and then fused his body back together again.
“Oh, I think he can hurt me.” Noor’s was voice low and bitter as she watched it too. Sweat formed on the edge of Noor’s brow and she shifted on her feet nervously. She looked terrified.
I grabbed her wrist and dragged her away from the performers. “Don’t focus on that.” I scanned my eyes over the crowd, checking Mazin wasn’t nearby either.
“You telling me not to focus on all this is like saying to ignore the sun on a hot day. It’s all around us.” She waved her hands at the grotesque performances.
I huffed a breath. She was right. But I needed her headspace clear right now for what we needed to do next. “Vahid uses this to show his power. To assert his control. But we have one thing he doesn’t.”
“And what is that?”
I touched my hand to the dagger held in an opulent sheath at my waist, as if the weapon was used more for decoration than murder, beautiful, not dangerous. Exactly how I wanted to appear.
“Me.”
