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CHAPTER 1
Kamari
Both light and shadow are the dance of love.
I traced the looping scripture with my fingertip, letting the fresh ink smudge, bleeding Rumi’s words together and across my skin. The black stained the delicate pink but the shadows of it stay on the page.
Light and shadows.
He goes on to talk about lovers and loving and timelessness, but I found myself rewriting about lights and shadows.
The poem was in my head, wrapped around my soul. I woke up that morning with it dusting my dreams and glittering in the pale light of dawn coming in through my window.
It was his.
The last time he read to me from the book he’d been lost in, those words had been on his tongue and in the air between us. I had absorbed them into me, memorizing them long after he was gone.
I exhaled into the artificial air collecting in the packed car.
“What?” Seated like a porcelain doll behind the wheel, Lavena Medlock spared me a sidelong glance over the sleek frames of herGucciglasses.
I shut my notebook and stuffed it into the bag at my feet. I replaced it with the novel I couldn’t get into but was trying. The worn cover felt paper thin between my fingers.
“Nothing. Just ready to stretch my legs,” I lied, wisely averting my face to the streak of green and brown blurring by in a rolling landscape of wilderness and space.
I would have died for her.
I would have given my life for the three women in the car with me without question or hesitation. They were my sisters in every way, except blood but I couldn’t tell them about the light and shadow. I couldn’t tell them why my chest hurt every day, or why the emptiness in my soul kept expanding until I knew it would one day consume me whole.
They would understand and accept and say all the necessary things one does when someone you love is hurting, but they couldn’t make it go away.
“We’re almost there,” Lavena assured me. Her red lips lifted on each side in a warm smile.
She wasn’t wrong. We’d been on the winding rut of road so often over the last several years that we could have driven it with our eyes closed — a poor decision given the shallow turns and steep drop-offs.
I returned her comfort by settling back in the warm leather and opening up the first page for the eighth time and staring at the first line.
“Can you accidently premediate a manslaughter?” In the back seat right behind mine, Sasha Trevil interrupted my façade.
I didn’t need to glance back to know she had her phone on, the harsh glow illuminating wide, brown eyes. She’d been bent over the device for almost seven hours, her apprehension a heavy musk in the confined cabin.
I couldn’t answer her question. I had no legal background and the little I’d forced myself to pick up was during Darius’strial three years, five months, two weeks and three days ago. I would have been no help.
“As your future lawyer, I am going to pretend you didn’t just ask that.” Adjacent to me but seated behind Lavena, Kasumi Deluche lowered her own phone and fixed the full weight of her impatience on the woman in the seat next to her. “You can’t plan an accidental murder. Either it was planned or an accident. Not both.”
“I think I’m losing my mind. I’m never passing this test. My dad is going to disown me and I’m going to be the laughingstock of the entire family.”
“You already know all this stuff,” Lavena cut in before Sasha could finish. “You’ve been training since we were children. You were top of all your classes at the academy. Your records have gone unbeaten in eight years. You’re just nervous. You’ll get right into it as soon as you get your first contract.”
“I think I just need to get out of my own head, you know? I put it off too long. It’s my own fault.”
We all knew just how hard Sasha had tried to evade the final exam. She’d done everything short of faking her own death, but we all knew it would catch up to her eventually.
“As long as you remember the five rules of executing a clean and proper hit, you will be fine,” Kas assured her evenly.
“Okay, that’s enough shop talk.” Lavena slapped the wheel with the heel of her left hand. “We’re on vacation, goddamn it. We are not Daddy or the uncles.” She flicked a spool of glossy blonde over one shoulder. “We’re here to enjoy what’s left of the summer.”
She drummed lazily on the leather with long, elegant fingers tipped in a vibrant red to match her lips. They reminded me that I needed to book an appointment when we got back; the clear, shiny gloss needed a touch-up and so did my toes. The shop hadbeen so busy in the weeks leading up to my vacation that I hadn’t found the time.
