Stricken, Poppy said, “I don’t think mine are more important than yours.”
“But you do!” Samina all but shouted. “You continue to justify what I went through to make yourself feel better about the hand you played in it. You didn’t even mean for me to get caught, so there’s no reason for you to continue to deny the abuse I faced after that. But you minimize it anyway.”
She stepped close to Poppy, her anger making her impulsive. “You know what I think? I think you’re so used to being the most marginalized person in the room, you don’t know how to recognize that other people have it far worse than you. Maybe you were an outcast?—but being an outcast in a Welkish school for fine ladies is still a hell of a lot more privileged than being an orphan in a shoddy human-trafficking sham.”
Samina’s eyes burned, the memories threatening to consume her again. Poppy reached for her, but she jerked away. An embrace would only serve to comfort Poppy, not Samina, and Samina was done serving the illusion that Poppy had held for the last seven years.
• • •
Hindered by Poppy’s insistence that she had nothing to give the gods, Hasan had refocused his lessons on her language skills. She made quick progress, and her Virian improved exponentially. Even here, sitting on the front porch, he could hear her in the kitchen, chatting with the other women in Virian. Her accent had become smoother than it was a week ago, the words confident, less stilted.
Her lessons in summoning daivyakhi, though?—she’d stalled there. After the play, she’d managed to forge her own connection to the gods, harnessing her powers with more skill than he’d have expected from an adult beginner. However, she lacked finesse and control, two things that would only come with practice?—and they could only practice if she made sacrifices.
Her past had complicated things far more than Hasan had anticipated. On one hand, her time in the countryside had made her acutely aware of all the things her upbringing had deprived her of, her self-pity blinding her to her privilege. On the other hand, she was equally ignorant of the biases that she still carried with her, subconscious instincts that manifested in careless comments. Just the other afternoon, she’d complained about being outdoors, fretting that she would “become too brown” if she stayed under the sun for any longer. Harithi put her in her place before Hasan could intervene, demanding to know what the problem was with being brown. Poppy had fallen quiet, but the atmosphere had changed after that.
He couldn’t blame Poppy for the way she thought?—not when her biases had been so deeply ingrained during her childhood. But if she couldn’t challenge those biases, then there would be no difference between her and Richard. And if there was no difference, then Zeyar was right: Richardwasthe favored choice, and they’d have more to gain by courting his favor.
Hasan would rather eat his own entrails than side with Richard. But Zeyar would return by the end of this week, and he was running out of time to get through to Poppy.
The front door swung open, startling him. Samina stepped out into the amber light of the sunset. She’d recovered slightly from her injuries, the swelling gone, the bruising less lurid. Still, she wore her arm in its cast, a cloth sling tied around her neck, and her awkward movements indicated that her ribs were still bothering her. Hasan’s eyes fell to the bag she carried in her good hand.
Hasan opened his mouth to ask her where she thought she was going, but then she lifted her head, revealing a single tear streaking from her red-rimmed eyes.
He jumped to his feet. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I need to go back to Marnapur. I’m going to walk to Sanivali and catch a bus from there.”
“You’re not well enough.” He reached for her bag. “Stay another week.”
“Sanjiv is by himself.” Samina sidestepped him neatly. “I am going, with or without your permission.”
Hasan recoiled?—Samina had always been forthright about her loyalty to her brother, but she had never spoken to him so defiantly before.
“Samina,” he said, “what’s bothering you? Really.”
She turned her face away. “I can’t be here withheranymore.” She didn’t have to say whom she meant. “It’s bringing back these memories, things I never wanted to remember, and the worst thing is she doesn’t even understand.”
“I see,” Hasan said. “You spoke to her.”
Samina smeared another tear with the back of her hand. “Much good it did either of us,” she scoffed. “There’s no closure for what I went through, ever. I was stupid to think otherwise. And as for Poppy?” She turned, fixing Hasan with a piercing stare. “Teaching her to use her daivyakhi is a waste of time. You could train her to use every weapon in the world, and it would mean nothing if she didn’t know whom she was bearing themfor. She’s so damned sheltered. The only injustices she’s seen are the ones committed against her.”
She struggled for a moment, a medley of emotions flashing across her face before it settled on frustration. “I know you want her to be a champion for us. But if she doesn’t learn to put her struggles second, she’ll be no different from a Welkish viceroy, justifying away anything that makes her uncomfortable.”
With that, Samina stalked down the driveway, disappearing into the night. Her words settled like a stone beside Hasan’s earlier doubts, weighting the scale against Poppy’s favor. But speaking to Samina had also reminded Hasan of another anecdote she’d shared with him: sixteen-year-old Poppy, giving Samina a necklace off her own body. Samina was right: Poppy had been sheltered from the injustices her father had subjected this island to. But he had to believe that if she saw them firsthand, she would feel something?—just as she had felt for her childhood friend.
He didn’t know if it would work. All he could do was pray that her father and her time overseas had not snuffed out the spirit of kinship she’d once shared with her birth people.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Blood for Better
Poppy clutched the grab handle above the passenger-side window of Hasan’s car as he drove them both down the bumpy dirt road to the Sanivali village square. When she’d woken that morning, he’d announced that he wanted her to meet the villagers in person.
“Must we do this?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Remember what I said: The people will decide who rules. To get their support, you have to speak their language. You have to know their struggles. How else will they know that you’re there to help them?”
Her stomach churned, and not just with car sickness. After the dressing down Samina had given her last night, she doubted she could persuade the villagers to see her as anything other than the privileged, pampered daughter of a duke. “What ifseeingme is the thing that makes them retract their support?” She bit her lip. “My Virian is limited, and my daivyakhi is weak. It’ll be so obvious that I’m an outsider.”
