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That seemed… unlikely.
He huffed a short, sharp laugh. “I know, this is not the face of an administrator. But I was, in my youth. She escaped and I made sure you and her were hidden, but as you know, the court is loyal to the crown, and Umair eventually discovered my deception. I warned your mother and fled, both of us going our separate ways. I lost contact with her and lost myself for a while. Turned to… darker things, to get by.”
Darker things to get by.I knew that road and where it led.
“I later learned she’d been found and captured, with you. And I tried…” He stirred his broth, then tapped the stick on the side of the pan. “I tried to get back in, but I was different by then, a changed man, with scars to prove it, and the courtly doors were closed to the likes of killers. By the time I eventually did find a way in, I was too late, and she hung as a traitor.” He fell silent, but that silence was loud with feeling. “You vanished not long after. You’d escaped, and that was a good thing. I thought that would be the end of it.”
“But it did not last.”
“No. Razak found you, sealed you away, where I couldn’t get to you. If I asked after you, suspicion turned my way, so I stayed, I listened, I watched… and when you were sent to the Court of Love, I volunteered to carry messages back and forth. Razak didn’t know our connection. He didn’t know I was close with your mother, or how I’d worked as an administrator for Umair, alongside her. Nobody did. The young, brilliant man I’d been had died with her. I became what you see now, but I watched you.”
“You could have told me.”
“We’d both changed so much. You were nineteen years, devious, sly, too clever for your own good, and you had the Court of Love dancing to your tune. Razak had molded you into a stranger, into his spy. If I told you what I knew, spoke of your mother, the traitor—from seeing what you were capable of, you’d have handed me over to Razak. The risk was too great. So I vowed to watch for you from afar, for your mother.”
He’d known all this and said nothing. All the times we’d met, and I’d thought him Razak’s man. I’d looked into his eyes and seen a killer there. “You’re a damned good liar, Danyal.”
“So are you. I believed Razak had turned you. I heard someone fitting Bendrik’s description had been seen near the council chambersafterhis body had been discovered. If it was you, I had to know. I had a suspicion I knew where you’d go next. That’s when I heard Malvina’s cry for help.”
If Danyal hadn’t arrived when he did, Malvina would have fled, and I’d have bled out on her precious rug.
He’d killed her though, for me.
“Thank you.” Such small words didn’t feel like enough.Thank you for bringing my mother back to life, if only for a few moments, and thank you for saving me.“Thank you,” I said again, croaking it.
“It wasn’t enough. Soup?”
He talked, while I sipped soup from a bowl and listened to tales of how my mother had known there was a wrongness at the center of the Court of Pain. She’d seen how the court exploited its people, taking their lives, their wealth, and hoarding it—bleeding its own citizens dry.
The last she’d seen of me was that night on the hill, with Umair at my side, his hand on my shoulder. She must have been desperate in those final moments, but I remembered her being fierce.
I was glad Umair was dead, lost somewhere in Justice’s sordid past. My only regret was that I hadn’t been the one to kill him.
“You must never take your own life, Zayan. Not when you mother fought so hard for you to have one.”
Taking my own life wasn’t a decision I’d come to flippantly. Backed into a corner, holding a blade to my neck had had been all the control I’d had left. “You sound like a friend of mine. He would not be please with any of this.”
“Ah, Love’s prince.” Danyal’s smile suggested he approved. “You did well to get Arin out. The Court of Pain is no place for a man like him.”
“He’d disagree with you. And believe me, he’s not the fragile prince most everyone believes him to be. He’s no meek-minded emotional fool.”
“Then it appears he’s a good match.”
“Wasa good match.” I’d sent him away and made sure it had ended, for his own good. By now, he’d have long discovered the documents and realized Draven’s duplicity. Arin had a sharp mind and a keen sense of survival. He’d survive.
Danyal talked some more, but the cold drew in and when he stoked the fire, I laid alongside it, closed my eyes, pulled the blanket closer, and sketched a picture of my mother in my mind. To know she’d been kind, loyal, and fierce… She’d been good, in a world that treated goodness like a disease. I’d known in my heart, but I’d been left with only bad memories. Danyal had given me some good ones.
If there were good people in the world, people willing to fight for what was right, like Danyal, like Arin, then not all was lost.
CHAPTER27
Lark
My strength returnedover the coming days, thanks in part to Danyal’s catching and cooking wild critters and broth. He’d set up camp in the wilderness, far outside the cities and close to Justice’s borders, which accounted for the dramatic swathes of trees, steep inclines, and frosty nights. Danyal chastised me for my thin appetite, and as there were no hungry children here willing to steal my food like there had been in the desert camps, I was forced to eat like I hadn’t in years. He seemed to imply I might suffer from self-loathing, to which I replied I loved myself more than most. He had a gruff laugh and a kind personality, hidden beneath all the grizzled, snarling exterior.
But as the days cycled on, and the wound in my side healed, I grew impatient.
Neither of us could return to Pain. I’d likely be hung, drawn, and quartered in War, and I couldn’t go to Arin. The meeting at the Overlook Inn had long since passed. By now, he’d be putting his coin to good use and crafting himself a new life. At the very least, he was safer than when he’d been with me.
