The words hit me like a physical slap, sending me recoiling into the wall. “I’m not—”
“Oh, I know,” he replied leaning against the curved wall of the cell across from mine. “But no one else has to know that. Ithanys is safe, the threat finally contained. Can’t you hear the city celebrating?”
The cheers that had woken me… I opened my mouth but found no words, shock merging with outrage and good, old-fashioned rage. It was that that allowed me to say, “Varidian will come for me. You know he will.”
Bakshi laughed, a sneering, dismissive laugh that looked as at home on his face as those affable, easy-going smiles he handed out in droves. “Varidian cannot save you, whether he’d like to or not.” He tilted his head, considering me, and I tried so hard to control my emotions, to hide them like Kamaal told me to in Jamaa Square. “Through the careless actions of Falael Jouhari, neither you nor Varidian signed the certificate of your marriage.”
Ice hit first, spreading through my chest like a layer of frost. And then rage combusted every frozen shard until Iburnedwith hatred. “You cannot take my marriage from me.”
He held eye contact for longer than was comfortable, a little smile on his weathered face. “I already have. But it seems my actions were both pre-emptive and unnecessary. Word arrived this morning from the recovery team searching the wreckage of Daurith.”
I froze—on the outside and inside, where my soul lived within my body.
I breathed, “Daurith survived. The messenger said so.”
“It survived thefirstattack. But not the attack last night.”
I bared my teeth, but my rage rapidly spiralled away from me, cold filling its place.Hedid this. Daurith survived his first attempt, so he sent more wyverns, more riders, to ensure its destruction.
“The bodies of your husband and his legion were found in the ruins; their wyverns perished with them.”
I began to shake, first in my hands, my knees, then the rest of my body. He was aliar;why should I believe a single word he said? Daurith may be standing as we speak, Varidian utterly safe, unhurt, not burned in the smouldering wreckage of a sacred city. He might be alive. Bakshi was aliar.
I reached for my link to Raheema, but it felt far away as it had every time I tried to reach her this morning. They’d locked me here, but where did they send my wyvern? Was she in a prison wagon, bound for some worse dungeon? The cold spread through me until I had to clench my teeth to stop their chattering.
“So no, Varidian is not coming to save you,” Bakshi said, watching me, seeing beyond the scant veil hiding how close I was to falling apart. “No one is coming to save you.”
I curled my trembling hands into fists and—became aware of the strange light, empty feeling on my finger. A horrible stillness overtook my body, killing even the quiver in my hands.
“You took my ring,” I said without looking, my voice a whisper, a shadow, a portent of death.
Bakshi angled his head, eyes bright on me, like my suffering was a delight. Only that movement, not a single word of confirmation. I clenched my fists tighter, until my fingers hurt.
“I want it back,” I said in the same whisper of velvet rage. “Even if Varidian is—gone.” It was a struggle to spit the word out, to even acknowledge that it might be true. “What harm is there in me keeping the ring?”
“It’s a symbol,” Bakshi replied, unmoved by the scream for help that echoed through the dungeon, a woman’s scream shattering the tension. “Like you as the lightning soul are a symbol that we have triumphed, that good has at last found victory over corrupt magic and evil.”
“But I’m not—”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand, a spiteful laugh in his throat. “As far as Ithanys is concerned, we are safe.”
“But the clergy, the wyverns—”
“Will take longer to root out, of course,” he cut in smoothly. “In fact, I think they’ll take a good long while to remove from our empire. Perhaps, in the end, they will be the ones who triumph.”
I jerked forward with a hiss, wrapping my hands around the metal bars, freefalling into my core of magic and ready to blast this place apart. But I didn’t knowhow.I didn’t know how Kaazhim ripped out pieces of my power and made me kill all those clergymen. “You control those wyverns. You sent those riders to Daurith—and to the Red Star a month ago. It’s Raheema, isn’t it? Your riders were searching for her. And you wanted Muhannad to kill her. Why?”
“You expect me to spill all my secrets?”
I scoffed, cast a glance at the empty cells around me. “Who would I tell them to?”
“You’ll soon be going on a journey, to complete a little task for me. I wouldn’t want you to spread lies to your companions.”
The laugh that left me was low, an omen of danger he’d do well to heed. “I’m not doinganythingfor you.”
I didn’t like the slow smile that crossed his face, brightening amber eyes to gold. “And here I thought you’d become good friends with Mihrunnisa.”
Was he really insinuating… “We are good friends.”
