“Why, when you are serious enough for the both of us?”
I knew she was only doing it to lighten the mood, but there was a grain of truth in it. I hadn’t handled Mazin’s appearance well. He had still managed to draw me to him, and the lure of him was even stronger than before.
But I couldn’t let myself fall into my own trap. I scrubbed my hands over my face and tried to let that sink in.
The door opened and a servant entered with tea. She placed it on the table, gave a bow, and then left.
I took a long sip, the hot chai warming my throat and bringing me back to myself.
“I want the world to see what a coward Casildo is,” I said as Noor turned toward me. “I want his friends and family to turn their back on him. I want him to lose everything he’s ever had.” My hand gripped the edge of the table. “I don’t have long with this face. If we don’t get what we came here for, it would be the same as if we never left that prison.”
Noor watched me, her unfathomable golden eyes taking me in with the same assessment she had when she first entered my cell. “Like I said, you are serious enough for the both of us.”
I huffed out a breath and sat back on the divan. A gust of wind rushed through the room, rustling the curtains.
If I listened hard enough, it almost sounded like the same whispers I’d heard in Souma’s cave as I touched the zoraat.
Revenge.
“I have a task for you,” I said suddenly, pulling myself from those thoughts, from that memory of my father’s decaying corpse.
Noor walked over, picked up the chai from my hands, and took a great gulp out of my cup.
“We have more gold than you’ve ever seen in your life and you can’t order your own cup of chai?”
“Stealing yours tastes better.”
I rolled my eyes. “I want you to follow Casildo. I want to know every move he makes, and I want to know everything that’s important to him. If there’s a crack in his foundation, I want to know about it.”
“So you can flood it with water?”
I smiled. “So I can erode the very earth he walks on.”
“Make a list of things that will destroy Casildo. Got it. What will you be doing?”
I swiped my cup of chai from her and leaned back on the divan. “I’ll be going shopping.”
Twenty-one
The bazaar was full today, with shouting market vendors clamoring for my attention and shoppers jostling me from every direction. I hadn’t quite gotten used to my new appearance yet, and every pass by a dusty mirror took me by surprise.
It was no wonder the fabric merchants wanted my business when they saw the yards of vibrant textiles I was wearing, colors so rich the dye alone might have been a year’s worth of custom. I even caught the hand of a cheeky pickpocket trying to unclasp my jeweled bracelet.
Today I was dressed in a kameez with floral embroidery and small blue beads adorning the sleeves like a thousand grains of indigo sand. My hair—which was now a lighter shade of mahogany brown—was twisted up into a knot and decorated with a golden headband with strings of pearls and golden beads covering my forehead. But the softer curve of my cheeks, round eyes, and gentle, approachable face took me aback just as much as my clothes.
Sanaya looked soft and petite, while Dania was rough and fierce.
Well, we were both fierce, my disguise just hid it better behind an intricately woven shalwar kameez, and a dupatta slung over my arms, so fine it could have been spun by the djinn.
Was this the kind of woman Mazin wanted? One who would be a gentle presence to his ferocious ambitions?
I caught myself before I went down that road.
It didn’t matter what kind of love Mazin wanted. It was my job to make sure the person he chose was Sanaya. And once I destroyed him, perhaps I would finally be free of him. Free of his constant presence haunting me like a bhuta everywhere I went—his persistent ghost hounding my every thought.
I shot past the spice stalls, heaping with saffron threads, black salt, sharp dried mint, and heady mango powder. I ignored the jewelry stands that Noor would have insisted we stop at—the mirrored earrings and elaborate tikkas were some of her favorite things to buy. I didn’t even spare a glance for the large piles at the fabric merchants, piled heavily with patterned textiles, cotton, silks, and organza. I was here for something else altogether.
Something caught my eye, darting through the thick crowd of people so deftly I almost didn’t catch it. But when I looked closer, triumph lifted my steps.
