“You’re right,” he said quietly.
I reared back. “What?”
“I owed you more than that. But I couldn’t have fought my way out of the palace with you. I had Anam to think about as well. What would he have done with my sister if I had left? I had her to protect.”
Anam.
I tasted the acid in my mouth as he said it. I wanted to make him say the words. I wanted him to admit that he’d thought of everyone else but me.
Thunder echoed through the halls of the palace, and I looked up into the open sky of the courtyard, the heavy clouds darkening our figures, blending our shadows into one.
Rain splattered, thick droplets pounding the floor. A monsoon began to pour, the sheet of rain like a scream.
“Dani, the choice I made…” He shook his head. “It was the wrong one. I chose revenge over you. I chose it over everything.”
His words grated on my skin, an echo of my own. But I brushed them away like the rain pounding my shoulders.
“Let me prove it to you now. Tell me what you want, Dani.”
“What I want?” I lifted my sword in front of my face, the rain beating against the blade. “I want my fucking cat back.”
I lunged at him, my sword pointed at his heart. My hands were slick, my vision blurry, but when it came to Mazin I saw clearly. I saw everything. He wouldn’t be the one to take it all away from me again.
He finally drew his own blade, but raised his scimitar in defense instead of attack, flicking my blade away. But I knew him. I knew his body, the muscles in his arms, how long until he would tire, his ticks and habits.
I knew how to beat him.
I kept coming. Again, and again, and again. I arced my sword up overhead, meeting his blade in the flashing rain.
“I don’t want to fight you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
He defended every attack I wagered against him, but never advanced himself. His face was a mask of anguish, but I recognized that determined clench of his jaw, the small crease in his forehead.
He was holding himself in check, and I wanted him to unleash. I wanted him to burn with hatred as much as I did, to fight like he meant it, to fight like I had meant something—anything—to him.
“Had you already plotted against me when we were together in your room?”
His eyes flashed dark as I chipped away at his stillness.
“And when we talked about your mother? Did you know then that you would abandon me to Vahid, just as she was?”
He slashed at my sword, but his blade faltered. My own slid down his and sliced his arm. He winced but sidestepped my next attack, spinning and lifting his scimitar to slam against my sword.
“When I opened my heart to you? You knew then that you were going to crush it, didn’t you?”
I ducked low, my sword swiping to the side and the blade catching him across the middle before he fell back. He grunted, slamming backward, the rain pounding against him.
He got up on his forearms and flipped back up onto his feet before I could rush at him.
This time he moved against me.
I felt the rush of satisfaction as his sword hit mine, at the anger I saw bleeding into the darkness of his eyes.
“No!” He shouted the word, the rain amplifying the sound. “None of this was planned. None of this was what I wanted.” His voice was hoarse, the stone facade of him finally cracking. “I wanted Vahid to suffer, not you. But you got caught up in it.”
“And my father?” I twisted, slamming the hilt of my sword into his jaw. His head snapped back and he stumbled. I pressed forward my blade aimed at his chest.
