Yes, he was a lover.
But I wasn’t ready to say that yet. I hadn’t quite grappled with the depths of that betrayal, and with the fact that in my dark moments my treacherous mind still thought back to those memories when I needed comfort.
As if I still had capacity to yearn for someone who was never there to begin with.
But there was no point in not being truthful now; it wouldn’t erase what had happened.
At my silence, Noor cleared her throat. “How do you know they were responsible? Those names you recited.”
“How do you know your chieftain trusted you?” I asked her in response. “How do you know he cared about you?”
Noor answered immediately, without hesitation. “I felt it in my bones.”
“Yes,” I said, the word a whispered hush. “Yes, exactly. When I was arrested, I went over it all, every step, every conversation, every strange look or absurd coincidence. Maz asking to meet me in that room, at that particular time. Darbaran coming upon me instead, catching me right as I discovered the body. Neither of them would have done this at all if Emperor Vahid had not ordered it. The body at my feet was a rival to Vahid—a northern warlord who was rumored to be starting a rebellion. If the emperor had executed him, it would have caused a civil war.” My voice was steeped in bitterness. “Maz is loyal to Emperor Vahid above all, no matter what his sins are.”
And Vahid had many, given the slaughter during his rise to power.
Noor’s eyes darkened at the mention of Vahid’s name. “Why didn’t they executeyouto silence you?”
She asked the question I’d asked myself. Why was I still alive? Why was I here?
“That part I can’t figure out. I can only imagine they wanted to inflict the greatest suffering possible.”
That stung the most. The knowledge that not only had Maz betrayed me, but that he wanted my torture. My pain. He wanted me to hurt.
What was most pathetic was that I cared. I cared he had made this so personal, he had put me here to rot and taken the side of the emperor.
What had I done to him to deserve that?
Or perhaps I needn’t have done anything. Perhaps he always had the capacity to do this to me, and I was too in love with him to see it.
There was a heavy silence.
Noor scratched the back of her neck.
“If Maz put you in a place like this, he can’t have been a very good lover,” she said, laughter clinging to her words and dispelling the tension in the room.
I huffed out a rueful laugh in response, appreciating her attempt to drive the darkness from my heart.
“No,” I said finally, the smile fading from my lips, my eyes tracing the cracks on the ceiling. “That was never our problem.”
“Ugh, isn’t that always the way? Good at one thing and terrible at everything else.” She leaned back against the wall.
I thought back to the first time I had kissed Mazin.
The first time he’d wrapped his arm around my waist, pressed his lips to my neck. Even though the memories were twisted and bitter with his betrayal, I could still remember what it felt like to have my pulse beat wildly as his thumb traced my lower lip, the rush of anticipation in my stomach when he smiled against my skin. I swallowed, trying to will the memories away.
“We knew each other for a long time. I thought I knew him as well as he knew me, but obviously not.”
“The ones closest to you will betray you the most,” Noor said so softly I almost didn’t catch her words. I wondered at them, because she sounded like she understood from personal experience.
I cleared my throat, glad to change the subject. “Is that what happened to you and Souma? Emperor Vahid found out he was stealing from him through someone close?”
Noor nodded. “His own son betrayed him. He wanted to save his family’s honor but ended up massacring them all. Even the servants were arrested and imprisoned.”
“Like you.”
Noor looked uncomfortable by the suggestion that she was a servant but eventually nodded. “Yes, like me. But I’m not going to stay here and rot like everyone else, that’s not my fate.”
