“About her taking up her training again,” I said smoothly, meeting Anam’s pleading gaze. I didn’t make eye contact with Maz—he’d have been able to tell I was lying. “She’s grown lax.”
Mazin sighed. “She won’t listen to me anymore.” He looked at Anam with a stern expression. “We might not always have the protection of the palace, you know.”
She gave a loud sigh. “You worry too much. No one can touch us behind these walls.”
“I bet the king thought that too,” I said, taking a sip of my tea.
“Yes, but he didn’t have the power of the djinn.”
I raised my glass to her. “True.”
Anam crossed her arms and glared up at her brother. “What are you so worried about, anyway?”
“We can’t always assume we will have this forever, Anam.” He spread his hands out, gesturing at the palace. I knew they had come from a small village, and he told me about the poverty he had grown up with. Anam had been a baby when the emperor had taken them in and didn’t remember.
“You can’t depend on always having protection.” His eyes looked haunted. I flexed my hand, nearly reaching for the hilt of my knife again. It made me want to stab someone, imagining what he went through when his parents died, knowing he was the only one who could look after his sister, realizing he had no choice but to depend on Vahid.
Maz lived as if any moment, his safety could be taken from him.
“I agree with your brother that you should go back to your training, but I disagree with him on one thing.” I sidled up to Anam.
Maz cocked his head in my direction. “And what is that?” His voice was irritated, but I was glad it had replaced the bitterness.
I raised my glass and winked at Anam. “You can assume you will have me protecting your back forever.”
Thirty-one
“Did he buy into it?” Noor’s voice cut through the panic that had descended over me since I left the garden. Someone else had been there with Darbaran and me, and I didn’t want to voice who I suspected it was.
Was it Mazin watching us? And how much had he heard?
We said goodbye to our final guest and I turned back to Noor. “I gave him exactly what he wanted. A chance to be richer than he ever thought possible. What do you think he did?”
Noor rubbed the back of her neck. “You told him the truth, then? That’s a risky move.”
“This entire business is risky. But we went into it knowing that.”
I flopped down onto a divan filled with jewel-toned pillows and massaged my temples. It was all going to plan, but if Maz had overheard anything I’d said to Darbaran, we had him to deal with.
“You want to talk about it?”
Noor sat beside me and gave me a pointed stare.
“Talk about what?” I brushed an invisible piece of dust from the end of my blouse, determined to avoid the subject of Mazin for as long as I could.
Noor snorted. “Nice try, but you are definitely giving me the details right now.”
I put my hands over my eyes and groaned. A pillow hit me in the head.
“Ow!” I sat up.
“Stop being dramatic, that didn’t hurt. You kissed him.” It was an accusation. One she had every right to make.
I had kissed him, it was part of the plan to kiss him.
But Noor and I both knew it wasn’t part of the plan to kiss him likethat. Not with his hands tangled in my hair, my arms around his neck, pressed against each other like we were about to combust.
He thinks you are someone else.
