“It might take me a little longer than it would have taken him, but I’ll get Paranjay back,” Zeyar said. He stepped over to where Hasan had thrown the final newspaper, bending to pick it up. “But you, Hasan?” Zeyar righted himself, turning his hard, accusatory stare onto Hasan’s face. “If you had your way, you’d only get him killed.”
With that, Zeyar left the room.
• • •
The most torturous part of Poppy’s captivity was the silence. After Harithi left, Poppy had been alone for an interminable amount of time. It drove her mad, not knowing what was happening back at home. Were they searching for her? Were they celebrating her disappearance? The Jackal must have known exactly what was going on, but she only ever saw him when he came by with food, and he never stuck around to answer the questions she flung at him.
It had become a routine of sorts, though the intervals between his visits were odd and seemingly random. The jingling of the Jackal’s key ring would announce his arrival before he came into view, giving her enough time to put herself together. The first time he’d unlocked the door, she’d considered trying to rush him directly. She could knock the tray from his hands, launch the watery tea and thin sandwiches into his face, and make a break for it. But the idea was meritless, and she knew it. He was a head taller than her, his lean, muscular frame at the epicenter of speed, strength, and agility. Even if she could push past him, he’d catch up to her in seconds.
So instead, she attempted to make conversation with him, hoping to glean something useful. She wanted to know if Richard had responded to his demands. She wanted to know what the Jackal’s demands were in the first place. She wanted to know his name, if not to have him arrested, then at least so that she wouldn’t have to keep calling himMr. Jackalevery time he came by.
“Mr.Jackal?” The right corner of his mouth had twitched the first time she’d addressed him as such. “That’s new.”
“What else should I call you?” she asked. “Surely you have a given name?”
“Nice try,” he said. “If only you weren’t as transparent as a sheet of glass.”
He hadn’t spoken to her again, no matter how much she chattered at him.
Being alone gave her plenty of time to think about her engagement evening. Now that she had recovered from the shock, a new question plagued her: Whom had Richard been speaking to? Clearly, whoever the other man had been, his loyalties were to Richard, not to the office of the viceroy. Otherwise, he’d have never dared to conspire so openly against the daughter of the duke. His voice had sounded vaguely familiar, though she had not been back in Viryana long enough to associate voices with faces.
It had to be someone Richard trusted immensely, which meant that it was either a friend or an underling of his who could not go against him. From the way the other man had questioned Richard, she believed it was a friend. Unfortunately, this deduction didn’t help with her short list. Everyone was friends with Richard. He was magnetic. She had no idea whom he trusted, whom he valued above the others.
It was a hazard, she supposed, of getting engaged to a man after a three-week courtship. She really didn’t know much about Richard at all. She had been taken in, just like everyone else, and if she hadn’t heard him confess his plot herself, she would have never believed it.
This, of course, begged the question?—would anyone believeher? The thought provoked a humorless laugh. If it was between the golden boy of Marnapur, high society, morally unassailable Richard Montrose, and the lowborn, brown-skinned girl who was exiled over a necklace, Poppy knew exactly where everyone stood.
Everyone, save for one man?—the most important man: her father. She didn’t know if he would believe her, a doubt that weighed on her heart, but Clarence Sutherland was a fair man. At the least, he would hear her side before passing judgment. But she had been denied even that small dignity, her body and her voice locked in this accursed cell. The longer she rotted here, the more opportunity Richard had to poison her father against her. Her nails dug into her palms as she pictured Richard whispering in her father’s ear, smearing her image into a portrait of duplicity.
“Damn it, Jackal!” she shouted into the empty room. She kicked the chair, toppling it, but it didn’t ease the pressure on her chest. Sighing, she bent to right it, then froze: The square of light that spilled in through the window in the door was half blocked, creating a shadow in the shape of someone’s head.
“Who’s there?” She whipped upright, just in time to see the other person duck. Heart racing, she called, “I know you’re there. I saw you.”
For a moment, she didn’t think they would come back. Then, soundlessly, they stepped back into view. Poppy gasped. It had been years, but she’d know that face anywhere.
“Samina?”
Chapter Fourteen
On the Other Side of the Bars
Samina was a fool. After the abduction, Hasan had explicitly forbidden any of the gang members from interacting with Poppy Sutherland.
“She asks far too many questions,” he’d said, “and while they may seem harmless or even innocent, she is not to have any answers. Nothing she can report back to her fiancé after this is over. Understood?”
Samina had nodded with everyone else, but in the end, her morbid curiosity and a seven-year-long grudge had led her down here. At first, she’d told herself she just wanted a look. She’d stood off to the side of the cell door, studying the other woman in silence. Peeking through the bars, Samina was unwantedly taken back to the last time that she’d seen Poppy, through the wrought-iron gate of the Sutherland estate.
Oh, she hated how every reminder of that day evoked the same, raw animal feeling of desperation that had driven her back to the Sutherlands a decade after they’d fired her mother. The grief, the hunger, the rage that twisted her insides every time she looked at her little brother and counted his ribs. She had gone there because she was at her lowest?—but she hadn’t yet known that there were far deeper places to sink to. Now, almost a decade later, everything had changed. Perhaps that was what had driven Samina to move without thought, revealing herself to Poppy?—to show her just how different things were. But standing across from Poppy Sutherland, divided only by metal bars, Samina couldn’t help but feel as though everything were exactly the same. Though Poppy now wore cotton clothes instead of silk, she still held herself carefully, as though she were a doll and someone else had positioned her limbs for her.
“Samina?” Poppy asked. “That is you, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”
Her question almost made Samina laugh out loud. In a way, Poppy’s actions were the very reason that Samina stood in this hallway.
“I work here now. For the Jackal.”
“As a maid?” Poppy asked, her voice curling up with uncertainty.
“No,” Samina said. “I’m part of his gang.”
