“I think I have dirt so far up my fingernails it’s part of my skin now.”
I lay in Noor’s cell, examining my hands. She was right, minewasworse than hers. Her chamber looked like a palace compared to where I’d been housed—it was at least three times the size, and she even had a rickety bed with a worm-eaten straw mattress that felt as good as if it had been filled with peacock feathers.
When I first saw it, I cried.
Then I lay down, my bones sighing, my back unbending from the year of sleeping on a cold stone floor.
“You said you were tricked when you were arrested.” Noor’s voice cut through my joy in lying on a bed again. She sat with her back against the wall, cross-legged, watching me. “Tell me what happened to put you in here.”
I sat up, rolling my shoulders and ignoring my growling belly. My muscles ached from digging and I was feeling the lack of food more keenly now.
When I didn’t answer right away Noor barked out a rough laugh. “You get such a look on your face when you are thinking about home that I can’t help but ask about it. And sometimes when you talk about escaping, I can only describe your expression as how I would feel if Thohfsa were being dismembered in front of me.”
My lips lifted involuntarily. “I know exactly what my face would look like if that were transpiring.”
“So, tell me, then. What happened?”
What happened?
I had thought of nothing else. I had worked it all out, every misstep where I went wrong, every clue that signaled what they had done.
Whathehad done.
How could I have been so foolish to not realize who he was? To not think that he would choose the emperor over me, when it all came down to it?
I flexed my hands in the scratchy bedcover. “I was betrayed by someone I thought I loved. Someone I thought had my back. But he didn’t.”
“Bastard,” Noor seethed, and I appreciated the anger on my behalf. “What was his name?”
I exhaled, filling the space between us with my rage. “Mazin. We’d known each other since we were kids. I thought I knew everything about him.”
“What did he do?”
“He asked me to meet him in the palace. Instead, I found the body of a northern warlord at my feet, poisoned by djinn magic. Darbaran, the head of the palace guards, arrested me. I thought Maz would help me escape, but he just stood and watched. He didn’t even defend me.” The words stung so badly I trembled. “He made me believe I was loved, trusted. Then, he and the others at the palace framed me for murder. Emperor Vahid tossed me in here, condemning my family to the sin of my crime too.” I swallowed thickly, not just anger rising in my chest but sorrow. Maz hadn’t just taken my freedom, or my father’s reputation. He’d taken away one of the few relationships I believed was safe, true.
And he lit it on fire and smiled as I burned with it.
“Who framed you?”
I felt the involuntary curl of my lips but knew my smile wasn’t a smile by the expression on Noor’s face—a mixture of alarm and wariness.
That same simmering fury lurked in my bones, waiting to be released, waiting to be given a sword so that it could create a bloody, vengeful path. Then, I recited the list I said every night before I went to sleep. The list of people responsible for where I was.
“Darbaran, the head of the guards who accused me, arrested me, and made sure I had no escape. Emperor Vahid, who clearly wanted to dispose of one of his political rivals without triggering a civil war and I was the one to pin it on. And Maz.” I broke off, not trusting myself to speak anymore.
“Who was Maz to you?” Noor’s voice was gentle.
I closed my eyes, thinking about how to answer that question. My childhood best friend? My lover, whom I’d given my heart to? The person I’d shared my darkest secrets with, held in the early rays of morning and fought alongside against anyone who stood in our way?
I looked away from Noor to the wall behind her. Noor’s own scratches and marks decorated the stone, tabulating the days, triple the size of mine, a grim reminder of what my days would resemble if I stayed here. Days Mazin had condemned me to without a second thought.
“Mazin was someone I trusted when I should have known better. Someone who was always going to betray me, in the end.”
Noor made a sound against her teeth. “A lover, then.”
Something squeezed in my heart, and it made me inexplicably furious.
Yes. I wanted to answer.
