But he pivoted at the last moment, and I caught him with the tip alone, a slice across his chest where his heart would be.
If he had one.
“What did you think would happen when I was arrested? You knew my father would come for me.”
Pain laced across his features, making something break in my chest. “I thought I had more time.”
I laughed, the bitter sound swallowed up by the rain. “You had it all planned out, you just failed to let anyone in on those plans.”
“My revenge was supposed to be quick, easy.”
“It wasn’t.”
“For neither of us,” he agreed.
“Excuse me? You want me to pity you? You who live in your golden palace, who does the bidding of a man who murdered his mother to protect a sister who would likely be better off away from here? What do you know of betrayal? What do you know of anything that I went through?”
Mazin pushed my sword away with his, the sheer brute strength of his arms overcoming mine. I would never beat him that way, but I was faster, smarter—my tactics were always to weigh a man’s weaknesses and use them to my advantage. He slashed the air in front of my face,more in an effort to ward me away from him. But I danced backward, arcing my blade.
“You think I don’t understand?” His voice was guttural, his face close to mine as our swords pressed together in silent struggle. “You think I didn’t mourn the death of your father too? I loved him like he was my own.”
“And yet your loyalty suggests otherwise.”
“I thought I could destroy Vahid!” shouted Mazin, and he pushed my sword away.
I lowered it.
“I thought I could undermine the emperor’s influence in the north with the death of their beloved warlord and then finally take the throne from him.”
His eyes were feverish, his mouth a bruise.
I gave him a grim smile. “And so, we come to the truth of it. You wanted the throne, not to protect your sister. Not revenge. This was never about anyone but you.”
“I wanted revenge,” he growled, the words reverberating through my body like I’d said them myself.
Because Ihadsaid them.
“Revenge for my mother. And look what it cost me. Tell me, what is your revenge costing you?” He threw his sword onto the white marble, then unbuckled the golden clasps of his sherwani. He peeled the plastered fabric off his body, the pale kurta beneath already soaked through with rain. The fabric had molded to his body like a second skin, and I could already see the scars beneath, could practically feel the ridges of them with my fingertips.
“What is your revenge costing you?”
He fell to his knees on the floor, looking up at me as if waiting for his execution.
“I am a shell of who I was for what I did to you. For what I did to your father. And still Vahid sits on that golden throne. Still he rules over the empire after all he has done.”
He placed a wet hand over his chest. The rain had lessened, and now it was a dull drizzle. “You think it didn’t feel like my heart had been eaten out of me when they took you away? Knowing that they had you, knowing you were imprisoned and I couldn’t do anything?”
My sword was still. I tried to will my hands to move, to lunge forward and pierce him through the chest as he had done to me when he had me sent to that prison. But something stopped me. He knelt before me baring everything, as if there was nothing between us but this truth, this fight, this shared misery.
He said he hadn’t betrayed me, but even if that were true, he’d abandoned me to get revenge. Was that any better?
I raised my sword with a scream that tore through me, the rage and hurt and anguish ripping through my body like a mad river.
Still, he didn’t move. Those dark eyes watched me, as if he was perfectly fine with whatever I was about to do—even if I were to stab him through the heart.
My arms were aching and frozen, unable to move.
“What is your revenge costing you?”
