“Oh no, my lord. Not atall.”
He was looking down at his hands, moving them restlessly upon something that gleamed silver. He looked suitably ashamed.
“Arwa,” he said. “Lady Arwa. I owe you an apology. I am sorry I have not visited. I have been unwell also, and…”
“Your wound,” she said. “Has it healed now?”
“Somewhat,” he said. “It still hurts. I gather that is to be expected, when you have been stabbed.”
Arwa rose up onto her elbows, then into a seated position. She leaned forward, clasping her hands, her head blessedly clear for the first time in… how long had she been here? Days?
“Is this where you grew up?” she asked, attempting to distract herself from her own distress, the moth-eaten gaps in her memory. From the cold pit growing in her stomach at the way he would not meet her eyes, the fragile hunch of his shoulders. “You told me your mother had a home beyond the palace.”
“My mother had her own establishment, but she came here regularly,” he replied. “They were good friends, she and Aunt Aliye. After my mother…” He smiled once more, thinly. “After. I found a way to continue to write to Aliye. There was a guardswoman who was kind enough to help me.”
“How many years since you last saw her?”
“Since my mother’s death. Perhaps before that.” A faraway look in his lowered eyes. “I did not know if she would recognize me, but she did.”
His hands paused, their restless motion held in check.
“Did you know you had the power to compel spirits? To use them to—save us?”
“It wasn’t compulsion,” said Arwa. “I only begged. I told you the truth, on the dovecote. Spirits saved my life in Darez Fort. I didn’t ask them to. In fact, I wanted them gone. Then I ate the ash of my ancestors, and I understood a little more of what the daiva are. Not monsters. Simply… my blood. They saved us because I asked, in their language and because they… wanted to. I think.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know,” Arwa said, voice sharp with frustration. “I know they vowed to protect the Amrithi. But I have no understanding of why they chose to protect me, when so many Amrithi have not been protected—have been beaten or murdered or driven from the Empire. There is so much I don’t know about what it means to be Amrithi. I only know what the ash has given me. I have sigils and stories. I have nocontext.”
“I think we need to speak of the ash too,” Zahir said. “You forgot yourself again.”
“Unusual circumstances, my lord.”
“You were not in the realm. You were in your own skin. And you still lost yourself. It has harmed you, no matter what you claim. Done something to you. I should never have… I…”
He exhaled and turned his head away from her, so she could see only his profile.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I know who I am now. No harm has been done.”
A bitten-off laugh.
“Lady Arwa, you can’t possibly believe that.”
“I do. In the end, Lord Zahir, whatever it has done to me, we are both alive because of it, and I am grateful for that.” Still, he wouldn’t look at her. “Now,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me why you won’t look at me. Tell me what has happened.”
One heartbeat. One more.
Finally, he turned to face her. The look on his face…
Even before he spoke, she felt dread rising through her limbs.
“Well.” His voice shook faintly. “You need to know. Perhaps you guessed. On the night we fled the palace, my father died.”
Her breath left her. She had known what the Emperor was—seen it. Frail and mortal and spiteful. But she had also worshipped him her whole life, taken comfort in his faceless, eternal image. Her grief was reflexive and undeniable.
