by Renee Ahdieh
Shahrzad would never return to Taleqan with him.
For she no longer belonged there.
She belonged in a palace of marble and stone. A queen, in her own right. With a boy-king who loved her, as she loved him. The boy-king she’d turned to tonight, at all times. First when the arrow had struck her, then when she’d been in immeasurable pain, and even when the question of a hot blade against her skin had been suggested in hushed tones—
Shahrzad had sought the solace of only one person.
It ached. It tore at every selfish part of Tariq’s soul. It ripped in two every memory of the years they’d shared together. Every day he’d waited for her to return. To see that they were meant for each other.
To realize the boy-king meant nothing.
Shahrzad and the Caliph of Khorasan had been together for only a few months. Apart for less than that. Yet each was willing to die for the other.
While Tariq had been willing to kill the boy-king, at nothing more than a glance.
How had their lives descended to this?
Love for hate, in the mere blink of an eye.
Again, the memory of Shahrzad crumpling beneath his arrow flew to the forefront of his mind. Tariq shuddered to a stop. In that moment, he’d made a thousand careless promises to a thousand faceless gods.
Among these promises, he recalled one that burned with a sudden, shining fervency: If you let her live, I’ll do anything you ask.
A heedless promise made as Tariq had hurled his bow aside and raced toward Shahrzad, unconcerned with anything beyond the girl lying before him.
Unconcerned with all—even the lasting memory of his own hatred.
Tariq paused before his tent. He had to speak with the boy-king—the caliph. He had to understand what it was Shahrzad understood. To know what she saw in Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. For a monster could not love as the Caliph of Khorasan loved. Could never care for Shahrzad with the tenderness Tariq had witnessed tonight.
Of that, he was certain.
His resolve hardening, Tariq ducked within his tent.
Irsa was inside, sitting next to Shahrzad’s motionless figure, a single taper casting a golden glow through the yawning darkness.
The caliph was nowhere to be found.
“Tariq.” Irsa glanced about nervously.
“Where is he?”
“He went to wash not long ago.” Irsa unfurled to her feet. “I just gave Shahrzad some tea to help her sleep.” She continued to look about with obvious unease while rubbing her shoulder. “I don’t think it’s wise for you to remain here. Khal—the caliph will likely return soon . . .” She trailed off, her meaning as clear as the intention behind it.
Though Tariq knew she meant well in warning him, he ignored it. “She’s asleep, then?”
Irsa nodded.
Stifling a weary sigh, Tariq crouched beside his raised bed pallet—the bed pallet Shahrzad now occupied, her chin tucked into his pillow, her wound covered in poultices. Irsa knelt across from him, her eyes fraught with a mixture of pity and frustration.
After a time, Tariq met her gaze. “I’m so sorry this happened, Cricket. Please believe me when I say I never meant for any of this to occur.”
“I know you didn’t. But I am not the one who deserves to hear your apology,” Irsa said quietly.
“I know.”
“If you know, I think it would be wise for you to take the knowledge and act upon it in the future.” With that, Irsa reached for the packets of herbs she’d used to brew Shahrzad’s tea and stepped aside.
Tariq took hold of Shahrzad’s hand. He wove his fingers through hers. The skin of her palm was soft, save for the calluses he recognized from her years of training in archery. The years he’d spent training alongside her. Encouraging her to defy the odds. To be more than the wife everyone expected her to be. To command attention wherever she went, as only she could. As only she had, from the day Tariq realized there was—and would be—only one girl in the world for him.
Only one. Always.
Even though Tariq knew it was wrong, he brushed a thumb across her forefinger. He knew he would never again have a chance to touch her like this. But he wanted to.
One last time.
“I’m so sorry, Shazi-jan,” he murmured. “God, if I could change that moment, I would not have done it, not for the world. I would take a thousand arrows for you.” Tariq bent his head closer to hers. “When I thought you were dead, there was nothing I wanted more than to take it back. I’m so sorry, my love. I can’t swallow my hatred as you can. I’m not like you. But I can swear I will listen to you next time. No matter how distasteful I find your words to be. I will listen, Shazi.”
Tariq rose to standing, then stooped to kiss her temple. “I swear on my life, you will never be hurt by me again,” he said in her ear as he brushed aside a wayward curl.
A muted yelp from the corner jostled him straight. Tariq turned. Irsa al-Khayzuran’s face was frozen in a mask of fright. Her eyes were locked on the entrance of the tent.
Where the Caliph of Khorasan stood by the open tent flap—
Watching him.
Tariq could find nothing in his expression. Not a hint of emotion. Not the slightest sign of awareness he’d heard a single word. The caliph waited a beat before walking inside. Once he’d made certain his face was concealed beneath his rida’, he gathered Tariq’s recurve bow and quiver of arrows in unhurried silence.
Then waited by the entrance.
Without a word, Tariq followed him out into the desert. The caliph paused to hand him his bow and arrows before striding twenty paces away.
As calm as the eye of a storm, the caliph withdrew his shamshir and twisted it in two.
“Three arrows,” he began in a voice that managed to carry over the distance, though Tariq could not detect any sentiment behind the words. “Three shots, Tariq Imran al-Ziyad. There is no one here to stop you. No one here to defend me. I’ll give you three arrows. Three chances to finish what you started by the well.”
“Why three?” Tariq mirrored the caliph’s impassive tone as he shifted his quiver onto his shoulder.
“One for your cousin.” The caliph thrust a sword into the sand before him, its jeweled hilt swaying in the moonlight. He flourished the other in a glittering sweep. “One for your aunt. And one for your love.”
Tariq returned his fixed stare.
Even from this distance, the caliph’s strange eyes possessed an otherworldly glow. “But when you fail—and you will fail—you will never again repeat what I just saw.”
“Then you are jealous?” Tariq called out, loud enough to echo across the cool sands.
A thin stream of pale purple clouds drifted above, moving too fast for comfort, yet too slow to convey anything of significance.
Tomorrow’s storm would come without warning. If at all.
“Jealousy is a childish, petty emotion.” The caliph switched the single shamshir to his left hand in a single, fluid motion. “I don’t feel jealousy. I feel rage.”
Tariq waited a beat. The boy-king’s words were in stark contrast to his actions. Was this finally a weakness? Finally something that made him seem less like a monster and more like a man?
“Do you worry about me, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid?”
The caliph hesitated, and that said more than words ever could. “There was a time I did. But the fact that you waited until Shahrzad slept to touch her shows me you know she would not approve. You will not disrespect her in such a manner again. Nor will you disrespect me.”
Tariq let his recurve bow dangle by his feet. “I did not do it to disrespect her. I am not trying to win her back.” He took a measured breath. “I know I’ve—lost.”
The single shamshir flashed through the air once more. “Yet you still wish to kill me.” It was not a question.
But Tariq
chose to answer it, all the same. “Of course.”
“Then here’s your chance.”
“It’s not much of a chance, since you say I will lose.”
“You will.” The caliph wrenched the other shamshir from the sand and brandished both swords. “For you’re a fool if you think I would choose to fight a battle I could not win.”
“Is that why you have yet to meet me on the battlefield, you arrogant bastard?”
The caliph’s mouth slid into a wry smile. “Partly.”
“And what are the other reasons?” Tariq removed an arrow from his quiver.
“Because I do not yet know my enemy, Tariq Imran al-Ziyad. And, unlike you, I do not willingly fight the unknown.”
“I know who you are,” Tariq ground out.
“No. You think you know who I am.”
“Perhaps you should endeavor to change my mind.”
“Perhaps I should.” Again, the caliph turned his swords in elegant arcs. “You have three arrows. Aim true.”
Tariq inhaled. He nocked the arrow to the sinew. Then pulled back.
He should aim for the bastard’s heart. For, despite the boy-king’s pompous effrontery, no man could escape three arrows, fired in rapid succession. Perhaps he could dodge one. Knock aside the second with a well-timed swing of a sword.
But not a third. He could not be that gifted a swordsman. No one was. The thought was simply ludicrous. Filled with the sort of bold audacity that routinely caused Shahrzad such trouble.
They were alike in that respect. Shazi and the boy-king.
Arrogant. Audacious.
Yet oddly steadfast in their convictions. Oddly honorable.
Tariq should aim for his heart. And take him down. For Shiva. For his aunt.
For himself.
Anger coursing through his blood, Tariq pulled the arrow even farther back. He heard the sinew tighten beside his ear. The goose feathers between his fingers felt so familiar in their softness; they almost whispered a promise on the wind.
The promise of an end to his suffering.
He could do it. The boy-king’s arrogance made him weak. Made him believe Tariq incapable of such violence. Or unable to espouse the necessary skill.
Tariq stared down the needless sights to the end of the arrow. The obsidian point gleamed back at him, menacingly beautiful in the light of the moon.
The last arrowhead Tariq had seen was the one he’d removed from Shahrzad’s back. Stained crimson with her blood.
Dripping red with the blood of the only girl he’d ever loved.
It seemed only a moment had passed since Tariq had promised he would never hurt Shahrzad again.
A moment and a lifetime.
And this? What Tariq was about to do? This would do far more than hurt her. This would destroy her. Beyond words. Beyond time. As Shahrzad had once said of his own death. On a night not so long ago when she’d worried Tariq might perish at the hands of the Caliph of Khorasan.
There would never be an end to this.
Unless someone chose to end it.
Tariq lowered his weapon. “The wind is not right.”
“The wind should not matter to a master archer such as yourself.”
“It should not,” Tariq replied simply. “Yet it does.”
The caliph dropped his swords to his sides. “Perhaps you are not the archer I thought you to be.”
“Perhaps.” He cut his gaze at the boy-king. “Or perhaps I’m merely waiting for a more favorable wind.”
The boy-king’s expression darkened in response, a muscle working in his jaw. “Never forget, Tariq Imran al-Ziyad—I gave you this chance. Today you fired upon me . . . and in turn struck that which matters more than life itself. The next time you attempt such a thing in her presence, I will flay you alive and leave the rest for the dogs.”
Tariq’s brows shot into his forehead. “And here I was on the cusp of believing you might not be a monster.”
“I’m my father’s son—a monster by blood and by right.” The caliph’s voice remained cool, despite the heat of his words. “I do not make empty threats. You would do well to remember that.”
“Yet you wish for me to trust that you deserve Shahrzad. That you are what is best for her.” Tariq refrained from sneering.
“I would never presume such arrogance. And rest assured; the day I concern myself with your good opinion will be the day the moon rises in place of the sun. But know this: I will fight for what matters to me, until my last breath.”
“She matters to me, too. I will never love anyone or anything as much as I love Shahrzad.”
At that, the caliph’s smile returned, mocking in its bent. “I disagree. You love yourself more.”
Resentment simmered through Tariq’s chest, roiling to a slow burn. “Do not—”
“Until you can learn to let go of your hatred, you will always love yourself more.”
Laughter burst from Tariq’s lips, dark and scathing in tone. “Can you honestly claim not to hate me?”
The caliph paused. “No. I do not hate you. But I deeply resent your past, more than I can put to words.” He restored his blades to a single sword and began pacing toward him. “Do you know how many times I could have killed you, Tariq Imran al-Ziyad? How many times I’ve wished, in the blackest reaches of my soul, that you were no more? I’ve known who you were—who your family was—for a long time. My father would have killed you simply for looking at Shahrzad the way you do. For myself, I would have killed you. But for her, I didn’t.” He sheathed his sword with a quick snap. “And I never would have, but for the events of tonight,” he said, almost as an afterthought.
Tariq clenched a hand around his bow-grip, taking the caliph’s confession into consideration. As difficult as it was for Tariq to admit, he did not believe the caliph to be lying. For he did not seem prone to deceit. Which put to question many other suspicions Tariq had long harbored against him. Suspicions that had long begged for answers.
Tariq’s hatred could no longer remain festering in their shadow.
“Why did you murder my cousin?” he asked in a terse voice.
“Because I thought I didn’t have a choice,” the caliph responded with care. “I believed it was taken from me by a man who wished for me to suffer as he suffered. A man who sought to”—he took a halting breath—“curse me for my heedlessness. To curse the families of Rey with the deaths of their daughters each dawn. And in so doing, the man cursed the whole of Khorasan.” A trace of anguish flickered across the caliph’s gaze—an anguish that hinted at an untold amount of suffering. He answered as though he expected to answer for many years to come. As though he knew no answer would ever be sufficient.
“A . . . curse? You killed my cousin because of a curse?” Incredulity flared through Tariq. His eyes grew wide, blurring his sight to all around him for an instant.
“I was wrong to believe I didn’t have a choice,” the caliph said quietly, continuing to make his way toward Tariq. “So very wrong. And I can never right this wrong. Nor can I right the wrongs to your family. But I can promise to make amends, if you will grant me the chance.”
Tariq gritted his teeth. Despite this revelation—despite the realization that this must have been what Shazi had been trying to tell him all along—the caliph’s answer was truly not an answer. It was merely a string of hollow reassurances.
Nothing of substance.
“Your promises are but empty words,” Tariq shot back. “Said all too late.”
“My promises are not empty words.” The caliph stopped a body’s length away from him. “Though a promise means little without a measure of trust.”
Tariq’s jaw set. “The sheikh of this camp once told me trust is not a thing given; it is a thing earned. You have not yet earned mine.”
The caliph’s mouth curved into a reticent smi
le. “I think I’d like to meet this sheikh.”
A spell of awkward silence passed before Tariq responded, his words equally reticent. “Though I’m loath to admit it, I suspect he’d like you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He likes a good love story.” Tariq sighed resignedly.
“I’m not yet certain if this is a good love story.”
At this quiet pronouncement, Tariq caught sight of a vulnerability buried deep beneath the arrogance. More of the man behind the monster.
Tariq paused to consider the boy-king he’d so long despised. So long wanted to see die a thousand slow deaths at his willing and eager hands.
For the second time, Tariq saw the hint of something . . . more.
Not something he liked. Perhaps not something he could ever like.
But perhaps something he no longer hated.
“For your sake, it had better be a good love story,” he whispered.
At that, the Caliph of Khorasan bowed to Tariq Imran al-Ziyad, a hand to his brow.
After a moment, with the slightest twinge behind his heart—
Tariq returned the gesture.
AWRY
WHEN SHAHRZAD AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, IT was with a spinning head and a leaden shoulder. Her tongue felt thick and heavy, and every muscle in her body ached.
But she was warm. Warmer than she could ever remember being.
For the first time in her life, she woke wrapped in someone else’s arms.
Khalid was asleep beneath her.
She was on her stomach, strewn across him, their limbs an unwieldy tangle.
For a moment, she froze, thinking she might still be lost in a dream, concocted by one of Irsa’s foul-tasting tonics.
How is Khalid asleep?
She stared at him, confusion warring with the traces of slumber. Then she noticed a sliver of leather mingling with a length of metal about his throat.
He was wearing the talisman Musa Zaragoza had given her.
Shahrzad had rarely seen Khalid look anything other than pristine. The sight of him appearing in a state beyond his control was . . . intriguing, to say the least.