She gave me a faint smile and closed the door, leaving me in an unfamiliar room with no one but myself for company. I hardly even knew how I offended her, and I found myself hoping she’d return.
I’d grown up feeling abandoned and unwanted, but after the warmth of Varidian and the Red star, even the surly camaraderie of the fortress and the legion, being left here made me cold deep in my heart. I’d never felt so alone.
I’d determinedto leave Morysen behind. I had it all planned out: I’d borrow a wyvern or stow away on a cart bound for the south, use my bare hands if I needed to defend myself against ruffians, and no matter how long it took, I would return to my idiot husband and the Red Star.
I’d spent most of the night putting a plan together, but every single intention turned to smoke when I entered the castle’s mosque with Mihrunnisa on my right and the silent, foreboding queen on my left, and found instead of an imam leading the service clad in ordinary regalia, clothes as black as ink embroidered with silver.
The dark clergy who executed the innocent farmer in Wyfell were here.
I folded my hands into fists within the secrecy of my djellaba, folds of soft, purple fabric hiding my rage as the clergyman impressed the dangers of the unknown upon the gathered worshippers. New, foreign, peculiar—these things were bad. These things spelled danger and the downfall of the world we loved. Like the speech in Wyfell, there was no hope, noinspiration or reassurance in the clergy’s message. Only doom. Only fearmongering.
I kept my face blank and neutral but inside I seethed. How dare this man come into a holy place and taint it with his hatred, with his propaganda? Whether the lightning soul was a threat remained to be determined, but the looks I saw exchanged around me? Those were a far more immediate danger.
None had turned my way—yet—but there was a woman in a djellaba the colour of freshly tilled earth to our left who seemed to be the subject of whispers and speculation. I barely got a glimpse of her face, couldn’t tell if she had physical anomalies like my eyes, my hair, or if her otherness formed in different ways. An analytical mind, a too-loud voice, an interest in taking things apart to see how they worked, adeptness at medicine and healing, a reluctance to marry. I’d seen all these things in Strava earn whispers, as ridiculous as they were.
How long before there was another execution to ‘keep us safe?’ How long before the wordsympathiserwas thrown around, a neat and bloodless weapon to be turned on anyone you disliked?
I lowered my head and prayed that I was wrong. But some prayers are never meant to be answered.
“Surely you have betterthings to be doing,” I said hopefully, my stomach flipping when Kamaal approached the rack against the side of the open training arena in the heart of the Morysen palace.
Palace of the Great and Noble Saber was its true name, and that prestige was reflected even here—arabesque designscovered every golden wall of the training space, painstakingly carved by master craftsmen. Each flowing mark spoke of scripture, stories, and history, the designs breaking only for narrow windows that looked out on the grove of olive trees at the back of the palace where the queen entertained people over the fragrant scents of qahwa and jasmine. I got the sense she kept glancing through the windows as her son, Kamaal Saber, Crown Prince and eldest son of King Bakshi Saber and Queen Majida Saber, contemplated how he could most efficiently torment me today.
In my opinion, a better title would be Crown Prick. It suited his delightfully sunny disposition and the radiant scowl on his face. He was the abject opposite to Mihrunnisa in every way, and I struggled to accept they were related.
“Of course I don’t have better things to do than train my sister,” he replied, his tone about as gruff and flat as he could possibly produce. I sighed. Heavily. We’d been doing this for enough mornings now that I felt comfortable expressing my annoyance; the Saber family had swept me into them as if I’d always been a member, treating me with kindness and acceptance. I didn’t trust it. But Varidian told me his siblings would protect me, so I trusted them at least. Even if Kamaal took a single staff from the rack of potential weapons. None for me today, then.
“Must we?” I asked, my body already aching from yesterday’s session. The injuries I sustained in the attack on the Red Star had been gone for days, swept away by the palace’s healers as if the gash on my leg had never existed. Kamaal seemed determined to make up for that by giving me a hundred new bruises.
If I ever expected Kamaal to treat me lightly because I was a woman or his sister, that impression was soundly beaten out ofme the first time he knocked me on my ass. Then the second, and the third, and the fourth. And that was just the first ten minutes.
Kamaal smiled, a slow thing that hooked a scar deeper into his cheek. He looked like a sadist, but I was informed he had a good heart deep down.Reallydeep down, I assumed. That or he’d replaced it with muscle as part of his exercise regime.
“Yes,” he said. “We must.”
After every session, I told myself it was the last one, and I never had to face Kamaal’s miserable, scowling face again. All it took was an hour in the library reading every passage and poem and tome about lightning souls I could find to remind me why I needed to be strong. As far as anyone knew, I’d been moved by the dark clergy’s message and was doing my duties as a good princess of Ithanys by trying to find ways to rid us of the lightning soul. No one knew I desperately scoured for ways to save my husband.
The fact I was back in the training hall for another masochistic fighting session ought to tell you how much luck I’d had with the books.
Any other instructor might have chided me for being distracted. Kamaal just swept the wooden staff into my calves and took me down to the ground without a single hair leaving the punishingly tight knot his dark hair was locked into.
“Ouch,” I muttered, glaring at him like an accusation.
“On your feet,” he commanded, not cruel or harsh but completely unyielding.
With a sigh, I pushed off the cold stone floor and rubbed my tailbone. It was far from the first bruise Kamaal had given me, but he was one of the best ground warriors in the empire. Not the biggest or strongest, but the fastest and most skilled. That’s whatIneeded to be to keep Varidian safe when everyone discovered the lightning soul was inside him.
My gaze drifted to the ring on my finger, soft morning light catching the purples in the dragon opals and making them sparkle. I dropped my hands and fixed my attention on Kamaal as the warrior assessed me. He was likely five steps ahead of me, and already knew the first move I’d make, but it didn’t stop me adjusting my body the way Aliah and he taught me, tracking every minute shift of his arms for the next swing.
I saw it coming and jumped, leaping aside with enough time to thrust the flat of my palm towards his body, planning to finally land a hit on Varidian’s stone-faced older brother.
The staff knocked my legs from beneath me before my hand could connect. I clenched my teeth against the dull throb of another bruise forming, splayed on the sandstone floor.
Kamaal peered down at me and said, “On your feet.”
So I got up. And I kept training.
“Hardass,”I muttered under my breath as I left the training room, heading through the bright, golden hallways of the palace, the scent of orange blossom drifting from the pots overflowing with flowers that lined the open windows. I limped slightly, thanks to the hard knock I took to my hip before Kamaal dismissed me with a frown that could be concern or simple disappointment. “Smug, stern faced—”
