“Dania.” Noor’s cool voice cut through my frantic words and she laid a hand on my shoulder. I stilled, my blood pounding in my ears. “I think your grandmother is trying to tell you something.”
An ache formed in my chest, a black gaping wound that felt as if it were going to swallow me whole. I knew the words before she said them, before she even turned her pale eyes to mine, before Noor caught me as I fell. I knew what my grandmother had been trying to tell me, and I didn’t want to hear it.
Because if it was true, then I had nothing left.
“Dania, your baba is dead.”
Twelve
“Tell me what happened.”
Nanu took us to her little house a few minutes away and we sat in her front room, cradling cups of chai she’d poured from a pot hanging over the fire.
“The house was raided after your father was killed.”
After my father was killed.
I knew it was true in my bones, the way you feel a mountain storm about to descend. My father wasn’t here anymore.
And I needed to know why. But my grandmother had thus far avoided my questions and instead made up a bed for us in the main room.
“Tell me what happened,” I repeated, my voice low, coming over to her as she stoked the flames. She poured more chai, and a green cardamom pod floated to the top of the milky tea. I gripped the warm cup but couldn’t bring it to my lips, my tongue feeling thick.
“Drink your tea,” she said firmly.
I swallowed thickly, trying to bury my frustration. She met my glare with a stoney stare of her own, so I lifted it to my lips and downed the hot liquid, not tasting a single drop, barely noticing the scalding tea as it flooded my throat.
“There.” I slammed my cup on the table in front of us. “Now,tell me what happened!”
Noor laid a soft hand on my shoulder, and I shot her a grateful look. I closed my eyes and let a long breath flow through me, trying to calm the riot of emotions bursting to get out. I knew this wasn’t my grandmother’s fault, but I needed information from her.
Nanu took a deep breath. “When they took you, your father was consumed with rage. He gathered his best weapons, intending to free you. No one could talk sense into him. His friend Casildo said he would help him, so together they went at nightfall to find you.”
Casildo.
My father visited him when we’d made trips to Basral and Casildo would often purchase swords from him. He had been a good friend to my father, and I considered stopping at his house when we rode here. But the fact that Casildo helped my father try to rescue me made something rise in my chest.
I didn’t even know that my fatherhadmounted a rescue.
My hand reached out of its own accord to grasp Nanu’s cool fingers. She paused and looked down at our joined hands, a frown curling her mouth. We didn’t touch often, and now I had both embraced her and held her hand in the space of a few hours. When my mother had died, it wasn’t my grandmother I could turn to in my grief. But now she was the only left who knew my father as I did and who knew what he meant to me.
“I didn’t know of Baba’s attempt to break me out,” I said, remembering those early days of imprisonment in the palace dungeon, before they had transported me to the island and left me to rot.
I had expected to be executed, but they’d sent me to a place much worse than death. And all the while my father had died trying to free me. That dark, sick feeling grew bigger and more encompassing.
“Baba is dead because of me?” I turned my face away from hers, not wanting to see the confirmation in her eyes.
“No,” she said, her voice cutting through the roar in my ears.“He was betrayed by his friend Casildo, who said he could get them into the palace prison. Instead, he led your father straight to the city guards. But your father would not go quietly. He fought them until he was overwhelmed by the soldiers. Foolish.”
Nanu’s words were quiet, but I heard them so loud in my head I couldn’t see straight. I pictured everything—the way he would have drawn his favored filigreed talwar upon seeing the guards, the twist of his mouth when he whirled on his friend and realized his treachery. It would have been a lot like the way I had looked at Mazin before the guards took me.
He would have felt that same drop in his stomach that I did, the same rush of disbelief at the realization your closest ally had betrayed you.
The understanding that you were alone.
“Where is he now?” I asked with deadly calm.
Noor met my gaze, her feet tucked under her as she sat on the date palm mat.
