“Definitely,” I admitted. “And yes, it’s deadly. I’ve hurt people without meaning to.”
She pursed her lips, putting two and two together in her head. “Did you do that to Javed’s face?” I nod, and her smile is slight but hard. “Good. So that’s what the king is after. He wants the ultimate weapon.”
“Yes.”
“Can you, you know”—she wiggled her fingers—“fry the rest of him or something?”
“How can I when he still has you and Amma. Roshan, too...”
A glimpse of the old Laleh had appeared for a beat. “Roshan,is it?”
“It’s not like that.”
But it was exactly like that: I’d gone and fallen for a prince, after all.
I’d wanted to tell her everything. But we didn’t have time. Sure enough, an army of guards had drummed on the door so loudly that the walls trembled with the force of it. When the lock splintered, Javed had barged in, enraged. “This is how you repay me?”
“What exactly are you accusing me of?” I replied, the picture of wide-eyed innocence from my position in the middle of the tub. “Laleh was helping me bathe inprivate. Did you expect me to run from the palace stark naked?”
Javed was far too smart to not know when he was being duped, but he hadn’t been able to fault my logic, especially as Iwasin the middle of a bath. His eyes had flicked to the foam-covered surface of the water—where, mercifully, my body had been concealed from his foul gaze—before he’d dismissed his entourage with a curt nod.
“Three handmaidens must remain with you at all times,” he’d snarled. “It is for your protection. You are to be the next queen of Oryndhr. Your safety is paramount.”
But despite those seemingly protective words, I know what Javed is really afraid of: now that I’m in his grasp, he doesn’t want me escaping from it, either by my own means or by someone else’s. Not before the wedding and my binding vow, at least. The accounts of mypowers have spread like shooting stars across the sky—on the whispered heels of a blasphemous prophecy—and the only way Javed can safeguard his claim is via a royal marriage.
Via my sacredbond.
With me by his side, his position and the Imperial House will be untouchable.
The procession stops, jarring me from my thoughts. Gleaming blue eyes meet mine as Javed slows his horse and leans down. “You are about to greet my mother, Suraya. You will remember your place.”
As if I have a choice. I wonder if she suspects what her loathsome son has been up to—the crimes he has committed in his obsession for power. Suppressing my hostility as he commands us forward with a flick of his wrist, I gaze at the crowd with unseeing eyes. A familiar face leaps out at me, and I blink, my stare swiveling in reverse to search the throng in earnest. My eyes land on a man in a cowl who looks bizarrely like Aran.
What wouldAranbe doing in Kaldari? I’d watched both him and Roshan enter a portal to Eloni as part of my deal with Javed. I’d begged my prince to take the chance to get away for good, but I’d seen the promise of retribution in his eyes.
Ishe here?
Heart in my throat, I scrutinize the crowd more carefully, but the faces start to blend, and then the parade is past the gates and coming to a stop in the main palace courtyard.
Nearby is the wall where I’d first seen Roshan, and I feel something clench in the pit of my stomach. I’d give anything to see that crooked smirk, to watch him vault down from atop that wall, alive and well.
The men carrying the litter lower me to the ground, and my handmaidens accompany me inside the palace to the receiving hall. The atrium looks the same as it had the last time—ornate and opulent—but I have no taste for it. Its beauty feels rotten, like exquisite silk overa desiccated corpse. The hall is crowded with visiting dignitaries and nobles, all dressed in their finery. They turn their eyes to the ground in deference as I walk past.
Unlike my last time at court, there is only one person on the raised dais instead of two. Eyes glittering, Queen Morvarid regards me down the length of her nose. The viceroy steps forward to present me to the queen, and I execute a faultless curtsy.
“Lady Suraya,” she greets me in that clipped voice with a curl of her lip that passes for a smile. “Please do me the honor of sitting on my right.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” I murmur, our eyes colliding for the briefest of seconds as I stand. When they do, I rear back in shock. The hatred I’d expected, but the conniving awareness in them knocks the breath out of me.
Sands, she knows.
Of course she knows what I am. The invisible collar around my neck cinches tighter when I take her jeweled hand in mine. A sharp current zings between us, one I can’t readily identify but, oddly, makes me think of Aran. Fighting a numbing rush of dizziness, I snatch my hand away.
A cushioned stool immediately appears in the spot indicated by an elegant flourish of her fingers, and I am ushered onto it. My handmaidens bow their way back, and the sham of an engagement ceremony begins.
Surveying the hall, I recognize many faces, including that of Reza, the young nobleman who had escorted me so very long ago, and a sneering Helena, the woman from the arena. I feel like crying. I wish I could go back to the day I’d received that fateful invitation. I’d burn the starsdamned thing to ashes. Then again, none of that would have changed who I am. This star magic would have manifested sooner or later.
And I still would have been hunted for it.
