by Emma Hamm
Sigrid blew out a breath. Who was she to question the knowledge of someone like Aslaug? A woman who knew her history so thoroughly that she didn’t have to wonder who she was or where she came from.
She shook her head. “Then we’ve already lost this battle, Eivor. Those who know more than us must be respected. The elders walk this path for a reason.”
“The elders look directly ahead of them and follow the footsteps of thousands.” Eivor stepped forward, wringing her hands nervously and her voice pitched low. “I’m asking you to turn your head and look for prints elsewhere.”
“I don’t know where else to look.”
“Then you’re looking for the wrong prints. Stop putting your feet in shoe prints. Start looking for animals.”
Sigrid didn’t understand why Eivor was so vehemently arguing this. The medicine woman seemed to be happy in her life. She’d lived here for… well, forever. There wasn’t any reason why she would argue it unless she wasn’t happy. Unless there was something else going on that Sigrid didn’t know.
Hesitantly, Sigrid lifted her hands to the sides of Eivor’s mask. “In my homeland, masks are not worn in front of family.”
“You are not my family. I don’t have family.” But Eivor’s words were shaking with an emotion Sigrid recognized all too well.
“Family is who we choose, not our blood.” And with that, Sigrid slowly took off the mask which had hidden Eivor’s face from so many. Likely since she was a child.
She barely held in the gasp, although she might have winced. Someone had ruined Eivor’s face with a butcher knife. There were still scales on it from where her beast had tried to stop the harm. Patches of fur and feathers added to the grotesque features the mask had covered.
“This is why they hide you,” she whispered. “Isn’t it?”
“Medicine women and men are not supposed to exist. We’re an abomination and a disgrace to our clan. So we are sent into the mountains to learn how to make ourselves useful to the tribe,” Eivor replied. “There is no shame in my features. Only a life that was created by myself and the animals inside me.”
“You don’t keep souls, do you?”
Eivor shook her head. “Not in the way people think. I learn how to change my shape, but it confuses my beast. Sometimes there’s more than one animal in people. Rarely. It happens though, and I have so many inside me I cannot even count.”
“They’re afraid of you because of how you look.”
“They’re afraid of what they don’t understand.” Eivor reached for her mask. “Please.”
“No,” Sigrid said, taking a step back and taking the mask with her. “You shouldn’t have to hide who you are.”
“I want to.”
Hadn’t Sigrid said the same words to herself? Hadn’t she tried to justify the mask she’d worn her entire life as something which was comfortable? Now she saw it was a crutch. It was a way to make herself feel more comfortable without other people staring at her.
Hesitantly, she held the mask out to Eivor. “I wore a mask my entire life as well. I can tell you there is nothing more terrifying than revealing your face to others. But there is nothing more freeing, either.”
Eivor held the mask in her hands, staring down at the wooden face with her mismatched features. Her eyes roamed over the worn pieces and painted colors. “I don’t take it off much,” she said. “Sometimes, even when I’m alone, I just leave it on. It’s easier that way.”
“Just because their culture is ancient doesn’t mean they are. Sometimes, the old ways need to be broken so that something else can grow in its place.”
Eivor gently set the mask down onto the altar in the center of the room. “That’s why I brought you here, you know. I wanted you to see that something else can happen. You don’t have to listen to Aslaug or the others. You don’t have to listen to anyone other than yourself.”
“I don’t know what my soul wants.”
“What about your heart?”
Warmth bloomed in Sigrid’s chest. It wasn’t her own heart or a belief in herself, but the dragon that lifted its head and saw something it wanted to protect. A dragoness who had seen a youngling that needed it.
She knew without a doubt that she would protect Eivor until the woman died. This creature was now part of her family, claimed as so few people had been claimed. It didn’t matter that she was ugly. It didn’t matter that she’d been forgotten by time itself. The medicine woman would stay with her until the kingdoms fell.
“My heart wants war,” she replied. “My heart wants to devour and destroy, and that is not something I can allow it.”
“Why not?” Eivor gestured to the dragon statues around them. “The age of dragons passed long ago. Who says they cannot wander the earth again? Whether by peace or war, we both know the time of dragons will come again.”
Deep in her chest, the dragon unfurled its wings, lifted its head, and roared.
17
Nadir
He shouldn’t feel so comfortable here, and yet, the hidden city of Falldell had quickly become a second home to him. The people here weren’t hiding behind the masks of royalty or nobility. They didn’t care who he was, what he was, or why he was there. All they cared about was that he would work and that he would work hard.
When was the last time he’d used his muscles like this? He couldn’t remember other than his childhood when he’d been training to take over the army from his uncle.
Hakim’s voice whispered in his mind, memories of when his older brother had laughed at him, pointing out muscles on his small frame that weren’t on the other boys.
“You were made to work, weren’t you, little brother?” Hakim had shouted one day when Nadir had returned from training. “Those muscles cannot lie. You’ll make the most impressive general yet.”
He’d ruffled Hakim’s hair and chuckled. “Not a sword will touch you while I’m alive, brother.”
A sword hadn’t touched his brother at all. Poison was the one thing that Nadir couldn’t protect Hakim from. No one could have thought a hair comb, a tiny knife, could have brought about so much pain and agony.
If he could have turned back the time of the world, he would have. He would have gone back to that moment when he was but a child and sliced the person’s hand from their arm. He would have destroyed them in the only way he knew.
Feed them to the dragon, destroy them with fire, and devour their bones until the anger inside him was finally sated. The beast inside him wanted to feast on the bones of thousands just because its brother was taken away from it. He’d been so lonely, for such a long time. All because someone had thought the royals of Bymere weren’t worthy of the lives they had.
Blowing out a breath, Nadir straightened from the home he was helping to rebuild. White clay stained his hands and streaked across his bare chest.
These people weren’t like the ones who had wanted to hurt him. Of that, he was certain. They didn’t care that he was the Sultan of Bymere. In fact, most of them ignored him because of that. They wanted nothing to do with a noble who led a privileged life.
It had been a personal pleasure knowing that he’d changed their minds. The first time he’d offered to help, they had laughed at him. The second time, they had taken him up on the offer. They put him to work in the most grueling pace he’d ever seen set. But he’d taken it all in stride. If they wanted to test him, then so be it. He would perform better than they could ever imagine.
The other men around him straightened as well, their backs slick with sweat and their hair sticking up at odd angles. Did he look like them now? The sun had certainly burnished his skin even darker. A beard now scratched his chin, slowly softening in texture until he almost liked the new addition. It was different. And different was what he was looking for.
A woman strode toward them, back straight and the linen cloth blowing at her waist. Tahira was always the messenger for his mother. Likely, the old woman had another thing she wanted him to do. There was no shortage of ne
ed in this place.
Tahira paused near the half-built house, looking him up and down. “Seems they’ve put you to work.”
“Better than idle hands.”
She scoffed. “Somehow, it’s hard to imagine that’s what you really believe, Sultan.”
“If there’s one thing about me to learn, Tahira, it’s that I don’t lie.” Nadir wiped his hands across his chest and arched a brow. “I take it she’s interested in seeing me again?”
“She misses her son.”
He didn’t reply, knowing the tone of sarcasm in her voice. Tahira thought this was all an elaborate plan to get him to do what the Alqatara wanted. And maybe she was right. He wouldn’t put it past them to see the use in having a sultan in their pocket.
Yet, there was something more in Nahla’s gaze than the intent to use him as her pawn. The leader of the Alqatara was perhaps softening in her old age. She looked at him as though she hadn’t seen her son in many ages, looked at him with longing.
The truth was, she still thought of him as her son. She looked at him as the boy she didn’t have a chance to raise, but a man who could now still learn from her in the shadow of her great life.
He didn’t know what she was dying of. Something important, something likely that could have been fixed in the capital, but she didn’t want to be fixed. She’d already told him time and time again, life had a way of taking important things away at the very last second. He needed to learn to use that pain.
Nadir nodded and followed Tahira as she spun on her heel. He already knew where she was going to bring him. Nahla had taken the day in her private gardens, the only place she allowed herself outside the safety of her walls.
The gardens were beyond the mountain range that protected the Alqatara. To make the journey a little safer, they had blasted a hole through the mountain. The dark tunnel was lined with torches, casting the entire journey in a red light that flickered with their movements.
He strode through the darkened place, reminding himself that they didn’t want to kill him. There wasn’t a reason for him to be here so long only to have death find him. Nahla wanted something from him.
Tahira’s voice echoed in the tomb-like chamber. “You know, she’s only going to get what she wants in the end.”
“A son?”
“A sultan.” The woman in front of him shook her head slightly, the long black curtain of her hair shuddering with her movement. “Nahla is not some feeble old woman. She sees the future in ways other people couldn’t understand if they tried. Testing her will only end in your own madness.”
“I’m not testing her.”
“Then why are you still here?”
He thought about the question, wondering if there was a right answer to it. All he settled on was the truth. “I want to find out who I am, where I came from. I think that she can at least tell me part of that. Bymere is my kingdom, and Falldell is a part of that. If I cannot understand your people, then I cannot understand the empire which relies upon me to prosper.”
Tahira snorted. “I think you're falling back into your old ways, Sultan. This is just one more person to tell you what to do and how to live. Think for yourself, dragon, before someone else does it for you.”
The words stung like salt in an open wound. He winced. Was he falling back into the same habit he’d done his entire life?
Nadir didn’t want to entertain the thought at all. He didn’t want to think that something was so wrong with him that he couldn’t think for himself. What kind of man couldn’t do that? What kind of ruler would he be if he didn’t have the power to even think for himself?
They left the tunnel system and entered the garden beyond. An oasis had formed in the center. Stone wrapped around them on all sides, stretching up toward the sky in the mountain range beyond. No one would have been able to even find this oasis if they didn’t have wings.
It was, for all intents and purposes, a way to entrap men. Water bubbled from a death defying plummet high on the mountain peak. If they had traversed the desert and found this place, the only thing they could do was look at the lifesaving water so far from their reach.
Palm trees outlined the pool of water in the center. Their trunks were peeling great strips of vibrantly colored bark. Fronds bent from their tops, nearly touching the water in a few places.
The Alqatara weren’t usually a ritualistic folk. They believed in magic only as a last resort, and the Beastkin among them were only used in dire circumstances. At least, that’s what Nahla had told him.
Thus, he found it strange to see the Beastkin Qatal standing in a circle around the oasis with their arms outstretched. Their fingertips didn’t quite touch each other. They all stood with heads back, eyes closed, allowing the sun to play across their faces.
“What is this?” he asked Tahira who moved to stand among her brethren.
“Your mother is waiting in her usual spot. Go and see her before you ask any more questions, Sultan of Bymere.”
He frowned. What were they up to? He didn’t want to take part in any kind of ritual. He wasn’t joining the Alqatara. The last thing he needed was for others to say he was an assassin.
But his feet still moved in the direction of his mother. She sat on a small bench, wrapped up in blankets even though it was plenty warm outside.
She was more fragile like this. Her entire body seemed… weak. He had thought she would be a monstrous woman to house a dragon inside her. She wasn’t.
Nahla was as fragile as a spring breeze. Cautiously making her way through life while she tried to figure out what would and wouldn’t hurt her. He could see why his father had been captivated by her immediately. Everything about her screamed that she needed to be taken care of. Someone had to stop and hold her just for a few moments so she didn’t fly apart at the seams.
Perhaps that was her greatest ability in life. She was a woman with a spine of steel who had trained armies of legendary assassins and still managed to look like a delicate creature herself.
At his approach, his mother opened her eyes and smiled. “Come, my boy. Sit with me for a few moments.”
“What is it?”
She patted the bench. “You know how long I’ve waited for you, Nadir?”
The words were the same she said every time she saw him. And every time he replied with, “My whole life.”
“Indeed. And now that you’re here, it’s hard for me to think of anything else than my boy has finally returned.”
Somehow, he didn’t quite trust those words. Her eyes were too calculating, her mind too quick, and he didn’t think she was the type of woman to be distracted by anything that she didn’t want to be distracted by.
He settled onto the bench hesitantly. “What is it, Nahla?”
“You could call me mother, you know.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “It would make an old woman very happy to finally hear those words from your lips.”
He hesitated before replying, “I believe you’ve already heard them before.”
Nadir hadn’t wanted to bring up the man who now sat on his throne. Somehow, it felt like something taboo that he wasn’t supposed to mention. He didn’t know who the man was. Solomon had made it clear he wasn’t going to tell Nadir either. But the suspicion was still there.
Solomon looked far too much like him to be anything other than what Nadir suspected.
“I’ve been called it by many people,” she replied. “Least of all the man whom you think of. That doesn’t mean the words coming from your lips would be any less important.”
He didn’t want to call her mother. The woman who had raised him was his mother. She had held him close at night, wiped away the tears of nightmares. She had been the one who after all this time still appeared in his dreams. The sultana had been far more than just a woman in his life who had taken him in. She had been the woman who raised him, then the woman he knew welcomed him into her heart knowing that he wasn’t her child.
Nahla opened her eyes and focused o
n him. Suddenly, those yellow eyes which looked so much like his own were harder. Chips of gold stuck in a face that had aged but was no less powerful. “Do you not believe in me, Sultan of Bymere? After all these years keeping the kingdom safe, I would have thought you would understand the importance of the Alqatara.”
“I do.”
“Then why are you questioning me? Why are you looking at me as though I am lying to you?”
He cleared his throat and rubbed a hand at the back of his neck. “I’m not doing that.”
“Then call me mother.”
The words stuck in his throat. “I cannot.”
“Why is that, I wonder?” she asked. “Is it because you still have some lingering loyalty to the family who nearly destroyed the creature inside you? The ones who claimed you were a monster they needed to hide?”
“My family was good to me,” he corrected, anger bubbling in his chest like an old friend. “They didn’t make me think I was a monster.”
“They told you no one could know who or what you were. They made you hide in the shadows your entire life and you say they were good to you? Do you know what that does to a Beastkin? You need to change, to allow the creatures inside you to grow or all you foster is an animal that will stop at nothing to break free from the bonds you’ve placed on it.” Nahla shook her head and growled, “You cannot chain a dragon.”
And yet, he had. His entire life he’d done so, and it didn’t seem that the dragon was any worse for wear.
At the thought, the beast inside him lifted its head. The colors around him flattened into little more than black and white. Perhaps his eyes had shifted as the dragon peered out, or perhaps his mind had simply snapped at the idea the beast could take over entirely.
It didn’t matter in the end. Nahla’s pupils elongated in her eyes, and he knew he was no longer looking at the leader of the Alqatara. He was looking at the legendary creature who had birthed him.