“Hazan,” Kamran said into the silence. “Look at me.”
He did not.
“Hazan,” Kamran said again, this time angrily. “I bid you rise.”
Without lifting his head, Hazan said, “With all due offense, sire, please fuck off.”
Shock provoked Kamran to make a sound, something like a laugh. He’d never heard Hazan use foul language, and somehow it only fed his curiosity.
It seemed Hazan had been hiding a great many things about himself; and Kamran, who suddenly had numerous questions for his old friend, made no preamble.
“Why did you never tell me you were a Jinn?” he asked.
“I thought it none of your concern.”
“None of my concern? We’ve known each other since childhood, and you didn’t think I had a right to know that your loyalty, all this time, was to another empire? To another sovereign? You didn’t think it was my concern that my home minister was only biding his time, using me, no doubt, to feed information to his people, hoping to one day lead an insurrection?”
“No.”
Kamran almost smiled. There was nothing to celebratehere, and yet he felt strangely invigorated. All pretenses between he and Hazan had evaporated; stripped of the deference his rank once demanded of their interactions, Hazan had betrayed more about his true self in the last minutes—and in his time in the dungeon overnight—than he had in a decade.
There was something fascinating about the discovery: this irate, belligerent, devil-may-care iteration of his former minister was somehow refreshing. Hazan was neither afraid of him, nor was he invested any longer in the maintenance of his good temper. They met now as equals—if not in status, then in emotional aptitude and physical prowess. Though why this revelation offered Kamran any measure of comfort, he could not articulate into words.
He only felt the rise of an inexplicable relief.
Kamran had realized the truth about Hazan’s heritage only when Miss Huda had earlier identified the insect as a firefly; Kamran was not entirely ignorant of Jinn history—he knew what their fireflies meant to them—and he was grateful for that education now. Had he not been able to piece together Hazan’s motivations for dissembling, he might never have been inspired to imagine a more complex explanation for the young man’s crimes. The possibility that Hazan had been loyal only toAlizeh, and not Cyrus—well, that changed everything.
“I have your pet,” he said.
Hazan straightened at that, studying Kamran with a wariness that said he didn’t believe him. “Mypet?”
Kamran held up the jam jar for inspection, elevating thecontainer to Hazan’s eye line. Upon sighting him, the dispirited insect took flight with a terrible frenzy, flinging itself desperately against its prison, its abdomen illuminating at intervals, the small body striking the glass with a series of dull, steady pings.
“Will you attempt to deny that this belongs to you?”
It was a while before Hazan said, reluctantly, “No.”
“I assume you want to keep it.”
By way of response, Hazan only sighed. He tilted his head back against the wall, crossed his arms against his chest. The tense line of his mouth all but screamed an unspoken irritation.
“It’s not anit,” he said darkly. “It’s aher.”
“And I will give her back to you after you’ve answered my questions.”
Hazan shot him a bleak look. “You think too highly of my relationship with an insect if you think I’d divulge sensitive information for so small a reward.”
“I see. So you wouldn’t mind if I were to crush her under my boot.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
Hazan shook his head, turned away. “You really would, wouldn’t you? You faithless rotter.”
Kamran’s expression was grave. “Hazan,” he said. “I need to know what you did for her.”
“Why?” Hazan laughed bitterly. “Lost her again, have you?”
