“I want to go home, too,” Azizi had said to Hassan as they waited on the docks to board the ship. “Why can’t we come with you?”
The words had twisted in Hassan’s gut. “You will. I promise. You will. That’s why I’m going—to make Nazirah safe for you to return to.”
“But I’m not scared,” Azizi protested. “I want to help.”
Hassan had crouched down to Azizi’s level, putting a hand on the boy’s bony shoulder. “You are helping. This—getting on this ship with your mother and sister to sail to an unfamiliar land—it’s just as important as what I’m doing. Just as brave. To keep our home inside your heart, right beside your hope, even when you’re far away—it’s one of the bravest things there is. I’m going to make Herat safe for you, Azizi.”
He hoped.
Then it had come time for Hassan to say his farewells to Lethia. Part of him wished she were coming with him instead of boarding a ship headed to Charis, bringing word to the Herati refugees there.
There were not enough words, he thought, in all the languages of the world to thank her. Not just for the ships, but for everything she had done and everything she’d been to him since the coup. Even when she’d kept him from the agora, even when she’d questioned the Order, she had never doubted him.
“Lethia—”
She had cut him off with a look. “Be safe, and I will see you soon, my prince.”
She’d kissed his cheek and nodded at Cirion to take him aboard the Cressida.
Now, in the ship’s navigation room, Hassan traced the distance from Pallas Athos to Nazirah. It was hardly any distance at all, yet it had taken everything he had to cross it.
“You should get some rest, Hassan.”
Khepri. Some small part of him had hoped she would stay behind after the strategy meeting, too. In the days leading up to their departure, Hassan had noticed how often he’d sought her out, even in the midst of their planning and strategy with the rest of the army and the Guard. He’d caught himself staring at her, hoping she’d look back. Every time she did, he was hit with an unexpected lightness in his chest, a deep pull in his belly. Herat and Nazirah were what Hassan thought of the moment he awoke each day, but Khepri was what he saw when he closed his eyes at night.
She leaned her hip against the table beside him.
He shook his head, spreading his hands over the map. “There’s so much that could still go wrong. Our ship could be spotted from shore. There could be a blockade we don’t know about, or the Order’s ships might be delayed—”
“Stop,” Khepri said, stilling his hands with her own. “We’ve gone over the contingencies a thousand times. There’s nothing left to do except trust in yourself, and in us.” She put her palm against his cheek, tilting his face to her. “But that’s not really what you’re worried about, is it?”
He let himself look at her, unable to hide the desperation on his face. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing,” he said, helplessness clawing at his throat. “Tell me this is what I must do. That I have no other choice than the path in front of us.”
Her gaze was steady as she moved toward him, into him, cupping his face in her hands. “We always have choices, Hassan.”
And then she pressed her lips to his. Hassan barely had time to react before she was drawing away, her brows creased in concern. Her hand pressed down on the curve between his neck and shoulder like an anchor.
“I’m sorry,” she said, with a shake of her head. “That was—”
He did not wait to hear the rest of it. He surged toward her, one hand in her hair and the other enclosing her against the table as his mouth found hers. They’d almost been here twice before. Once, he had drawn away. The second time, it had been she who’d shied from this.
But now, they came together. Now, he kissed her like it was the only thing in the world he was meant for. Like prophecy and bloodshed and battle did not matter. Just this—lips against lips, his pulse beating against her thumb, her hair like silk through his fingers.
Khepri broke the kiss with a soft gasp, and then swept her hand across the table behind her, scattering maps and papers and plans. She pushed herself up onto it and drew Hassan toward her, kissing him again, frantic and hungry and hopeful.
Heat surged through Hassan, and he thought incongruously of their sparring match in the agora, of how luminous Khepri had looked while yelling at him in the villa courtyard, of her fierce and unbreakable spirit in the face of the Witnesses’ attack.
Did I choose the wrong man? she had asked him beside Emir’s grave.
No, he thought desperately now, clutching her closer, consumed by his need for this, for her. He wanted all that fire and grit and steel directed at him, and him alone. He wanted to know every part of her. And he wanted her to know every part of him, because no one else could. He’d lied to her about who he was the first time he’d met her. But here in the ship’s belly, on the eve of battle, she was the only person in the world who knew the truth of who he was. He wanted her to know the truth of this, too—how she made him feel, how her touch and her gaze and her words took him apart. How they pulled him back into something whole and new and more.
Her fingers curled around the back of his neck, tugging slightly at the short hairs there until he lifted his lips from her pulse point and pressed his nose against her cheek.
“I can hear your heart beat,” she whispered against his ear.
Hassan trailed his thumbs down her sides, reveling in how she shivered against him.
“It’s very fast.” He could hear the smile in her voice.
He let out a helpless laugh.
“It’s all right,” Khepri said. She reached for his hand and pressed it to her heart. He felt it beat against his palm. “So’s mine.”
“I thought,” Hassan gasped, pressing his forehead against hers. “I thought you didn’t want this. I thought—”
She cut him off with a kiss, her hands leaving trails of warmth down the planes of his chest. When she pulled back, her eyes were damp. “I tried not to. But I don’t care if it’s selfish anymore—I want this. I want you.”
His lips found her pulse, the line of her jaw, the hollow of her throat, eliciting sweet sighs and the sound of his name, like a breath. “Hassan.”
And then her body went rigid against his. “What was that? Did you hear that?”
It took Hassan a second to pull away. Khepri’s eyes were wide and alert. He hadn’t heard anything, but he stepped back nonetheless, allowing her to slide from the table back onto her feet.
“Something’s wrong,” Khepri said, grabbing her sword from where it leaned against the wall.
The door burst open.
“Prince Hassan!” It was the ship’s first mate, out of breath and frantic. Two other crew members stood behind him in the shadowed corridor. “Come quickly.”
Hassan straightened, desperately hoping he didn’t look like he’d been doing what he’d just been doing. “What is it?”
“Something’s been sighted in the harbor,” the first mate said, leading them out into the corridor and toward the stairs.
“Ships?” Hassan asked, hastening to keep up.
The first mate shook his head. “I’m not sure. The captain just asked us to come fetch you immediately.”
It was then that Hassan realized Khepri was no longer keeping pace behind them. She’d stopped in the middle of the corridor, illuminated by the incandescent light spilling out of the room they’d just left, the two other crew members at her back.
“Khepri?”
“You’re lying,” she said suddenly to the first mate. “I—Your heart rate just sped up. You do know what’s going on.”
“Come, they’re waiting above decks,” the first mate replied briskly.
Khepri shook her head. “You’re lying.”
She reached for her sword, but not quickly enough. Before Hassan could comprehend what was happening, the two crew members behind Khepri leapt forward, wrapping a chain around her, pinning her arms to her sid
es.
“Khepri!” Hassan did not think. He lunged, slamming one of the crew members sideways into the wall. The other grabbed Hassan, dragging him back down the corridor.
With that moment of reprieve, Khepri threw the chain off. It dangled free from a metal cuff that had been locked around her wrist. Khepri slid into a strong lunge, her arms bent at the elbows in front of her. Hassan recognized the stance as the starting position of the koah for strength. A desperate cry escaped her lips as she began to move, and she fell back into the wall.
Rage poured into Hassan’s lungs as he surged against the crew members who held him. In his anger, he was blind to anything but the sight of Khepri’s face, warped in pain.
“What’s happening?” Hassan demanded, his voice a hoarse shout. “What have you done to her?”
Khepri tried another koah, and again cried out. Two more crew members pinned her against the wall, binding her arms behind her back.
“Don’t touch her!” Hassan roared, ripping himself free from his captors. “Get off—”
Someone slammed into him from behind, pinning him face forward against the wall beside Khepri. He could hear the sounds of her struggle, and the choked-off whimper she let out.
As they bound his hands, Hassan struggled to make sense of what was happening. Anger clouded his mind. Was this a misunderstanding? Mutiny?
But as the first mate marched them down the corridor and up through the hatch to the deck, the truth became clear.
In the bruised violet-blue light of the dawning morning, Hassan’s soldiers were lined up along the side of the ship, hands bound with chains and mouths gagged with cloth. A dozen crew members stood in front of them, crossbows trained.
They had been betrayed.
The click of boots sounded behind him, and then a firm hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“Well, Hassan,” Cirion said. “I have to admit, you had a pretty fine plan laid out.”
Wordless with rage, Hassan turned to face his eldest cousin. His eyes were exactly the same shade as Lethia’s.
“It just so happens that ours was better.”
49
ANTON
The palace servant’s room they kept Anton in was actually very nice. Nicer than his tiny room in Pallas Athos, and certainly nicer than the cramped, rotting cell in the hull of the ship where he’d spent the last few days.
Pale sandstone walls and iron scaffolding stretched up to a sloped ceiling. A lofted bed was tucked beneath one narrow window, where he could stare out at that white strip between sea and sky. Every so often, he would catch a glimpse of sails on the horizon and imagine it was a ship that was coming to save him.
It never was.
Twice a day, a guard dressed in green and gold brought him plates of crumbly white cheese sprinkled over olives and sun-risen bread and a cup of lukewarm tea.
“Wait,” Anton said one night as the guard began to shuffle out.
The guard stopped, uneasy.
Anton leaned forward, trying to strike the right balance of eagerness and boredom. “Do you have any cards?”
Halfway through their sixth game of canbarra, the door swung open again and in strode Illya.
The guard jumped to his feet from where he’d been sitting on the floor with Anton, sending the cards in his hand flying. Illya nodded almost imperceptibly to the door, and the guard hastily retreated.
Only after he was gone did Illya look at Anton. “I think you’ll agree these accommodations exceed the ones in Pallas Athos.”
Anton hadn’t seen his brother since the fight at the Hidden Spring, but he’d known this moment was coming. Illya always made Anton feel powerless, but now he truly was. With everything else stripped away, with no hope of escape, there was only one way left for Anton to stand up to him. He could deny Illya that which he wanted the most—Anton’s fear. He’d spent most of their childhood learning how to extract it, but here, with Anton completely at his mercy, he wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing just how deep that fear ran.
Anton shuffled the deck idly in his hands. “I guess in Herat they like to comfort their lambs before they slaughter them.”
“A lamb?” Illya said, mirth in his golden eyes. “Is that what you think you are?”
He circled his brother and sat down in the place the guard had just vacated. Tossing one of the olive pits they’d been using as counters into the air, he asked, “Canbarra?”
Sitting this close, Illya looked startlingly young. A memory came to Anton, of the two of them on the thick wool rug beside the hearth in their grandmother’s home, heads bent together as they peered down at a fanned-out deck of cards and a pile of dried white beans.
Anton blinked the memory away. There were so few peaceful memories of his brother that he was surprised he’d held on to any of them at all. The terror hadn’t been constant, which made it all the more insidious. He had never been able to tell when he would be faced with an older brother teaching him how to play cards and throw snowballs, and when he would be faced with a creature of rage and wrath.
Illya shuffled the cards and then dealt them, four cards each and one faceup in the middle. He picked up the olive pit and shuffled it between his hands before holding both fists out to Anton.
“Choose.”
Warily, Anton pointed at the left hand. Illya opened it. Empty.
“So tell me, Anton,” Illya said, drawing a card from the deck. “How are you finding Nazirah?”
Anton’s voice was measured as he took his own turn. “Well, I’m being held prisoner by the person I despise more than anyone in the world, so I can’t say it’s recommended itself to me.”
Illya sighed wearily. “I suppose it was too much to hope that you might have learned some manners since we were children.”
“Oh, I did. I just must’ve missed the lesson where they teach you to be polite to murderous older brothers.”
“Murderous?” Illya flipped an ace of cups over. “I’m not sure that’s fair. I know what you think happened that day on the lake, but I’m afraid your mind has played tricks on you.”
“I know what I remember.” It wasn’t the first time that Illya had tried to convince Anton his own perception was false, or that the pain he’d inflicted on him was somehow Anton’s fault. You shouldn’t have made me angry, you shouldn’t have been in my way, you shouldn’t have looked at me like that. “You hid it so well from Grandmother and from Father, but we both know what you were really like. What you did.”
“I don’t deny that I hurt you when we were young,” Illya said, placing a counter on a pair of sixes. “I’m sorry for that. I was stupid back then. Jealous, inconsolable.”
“Psychotic,” Anton offered, placing his card.
“That’s all in the past.”
Anton looked up. “Then let me go.” He hated to plead, but there was nothing else he could do. “Let me go, and just stay away from me.”
Illya looked down at his cards, taking his time in drawing and discarding. “I can’t do that,” he said at last. “Not now that I finally see what Father and Grandmother tried so hard to teach me. What they told me, over and over until I could barely stand it anymore.”
His eyes flashed, and his words tightened to a growl. It was the first hint of the Illya Anton knew, not the one he’d tried to be in Pallas Athos, so sorrowful and filled with regret. Not the one who moved through the world with riches and finery. Not even the one who lied and manipulated with cold, effortless efficiency. Those were not the truth of Illya. This was. This snarling, howling creature who tore and bit, and wanted, above all, to destroy. This was what Illya had worked so hard to conceal, even when they were young. He couldn’t afford to let anyone see what he truly was—a monster who wore the face of a man.
“They were right,” Illya said, his calm facade sliding back into place. “You are special, Anton. They didn’t even realize how much. They thought you were the chosen heir of a dead, raving king, but you’re more than that.”
Nause
a rose in Anton’s throat. Illya’s words pulled at him the same way the memory of the lake did. He refused to let them pull him under.
“Well, dear brother, it looks like that’s the game,” Illya said pleasantly, tossing down his cards faceup.
Anton looked at them. Illya had won. He had not, he realized, expected any other outcome.
Illya rose. “Time to go.”
He swept over to the door, nodding to the guards who stood by.
They seized hold of Anton. He didn’t bother to struggle as they led him after Illya, up the winding stairs and down a long hallway lit by flickering torchlight. Mosaics stretched down the walls, depicting scenes of tall-stalked wheat, a flowing river, and exotic wildlife—crocodiles and herons, and an elephant with tusks of inlaid pearl.
The sitting room that Illya led him to was decorated to much simpler taste. A few plush seats in dark violet and dusk rose surrounded a glass and silver filigree table. As they entered, Illya nodded to a man that stood beside an open door that led out onto a balcony.
A woman’s voice floated in with the sea breeze. “Leave us.”
The man at the door bowed his head and exited. Behind him, the door clicked shut.
The woman stepped in from the balcony. She wore a patterned black kaftan, belted with a gold sash inlaid with rubies and other bright gems. They caught the light of the flickering flames that lit the corners of the room. She held herself like royalty—back straight, chin up, floating across the floor toward them. Her thin, stern face was punctuated by a black mole just above her upper lip. In one hand, a lit cigarillo trailed a thin stream of smoke.
“Lady Lethia,” Illya said, sweeping into a tidy bow. “I trust your journey from Pallas Athos was tolerable.”
She inclined her head, turning her piercing gaze to Anton. “Is this him?”
Illya nodded, stepping back to present him. “It is.”
Lady Lethia prowled a circle around Anton, a lioness closing in on her prey. “The Hierophant may believe your word, but my own confidence in you is waning,” she said to Illya. “Last we spoke, you said you would deliver the Pale Hand along with this boy. Yet you let her slip through your hands. Thanks to your carelessness, I’ll have to expend more valuable resources finding her again.”
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