Thirty-three

Darbaran was cloaked in darkness, waiting by the edge of the wide river that wound itself through Basral. He was alone, without any city guards with him.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but a part of me was. He sank into my plan perfectly, like a fat stone thrown into a lake. He could have tried to turn me in—Noor and I had a contingency for that—but he was here to satisfy his greed, the one thing he couldn't resist.

"I see you are a man of your word, Captain." I let my voice bleed into the night, a soft hush, luring him in further.

"Of course. Do you have the goods?" His tongue ran across his teeth, and he flashed an unsettling grin.

Noor threw the canvas bag of zoraat at his feet. The top of it opened to reveal the small djinn seeds, glistening like multicolored stones in the torchlight. He bent down and picked up the bag, his fingers shaking.

Darbaran huffed out a laugh that was whisper soft. "Yes, yes," he said, mostly to himself. He licked his lips, then looked up at us. "I can get a pretty penny for these, sahiba. Just wait and see." His eyes gleamed as bright as the seeds in his hands.

"I don't know what I would have done without you, Captain." I made my voice breathless. "If I obtain more, can you sell those too?"

He tried to smother his surprise but was unsuccessful. A dark giddy feeling built in my chest.

"Of course," he responded, a little too fast. "But how will you get more?" He pressed the bag of zoraat to his chest.

I gave a little laugh. "I can't give away all my secrets, can I, Captain?"

He looked faintly annoyed.

He would find out very quickly where I got these from.

"Who will you sell it to?" Noor asked, probing gently.

"I know some nobles who will pay handsomely for access to this kind of power." He patted the bag. "But don't concern yourself with that." He returned his gaze to me. "It will get sold faster than you can blink." His cruel laugh cut through the night air. "I already have buyers lined up."

I smiled, and it felt feral. I'm sure you do .

"Then you are my savior, Captain." I looked down, making myself smaller. Let him think he was in control here. It would be him rotting in prison before long.

I waited until he had put the zoraat in his saddlebag and rode away. Relief filled me as he disappeared down the dark cobbled street with the illegal djinn magic strapped to his horse.

Now. Now he would know the meaning of what he had done to me.

Revenge.

I took a surprised step forward, squinting at the darkened street. I'd heard it again, that whispered voice, the same one from Souma's tomb, and again at the town house. The voice that was in the still parts of my brain when all was quiet, that seemed to thrum under my fingertips when I drank my morning tea or took my daily dose of zoraat. My hands curled into fists involuntarily, that familiar darkness seeping into my skin once more.

"Did you hear that?" I narrowed my eyes at the alley, then whirled on Noor. "That voice?"

Noor squinted in the direction I had been looking and came to stand beside me. "No, I didn't hear any voice. Shall I go check it out?"

I shook my head. "No, no. I think I'm just hearing things."

Noor examined my face closely. "Your eyes seem… different. Maybe I should tweak your dose." She grabbed my chin and tilted my head toward the torchlight.

I pulled away.

"I'm fine. I just want to focus on our plans."

Noor looked as if she was about to say something, but thought better of it.

"You know what to do?" I tried to change the subject, but I couldn't stop looking at the street where the voice came from.

"It's already in motion," she replied. "Though I must say, he was easier to deal with than Casildo."

"I told you, he just needed the right incentive. Greed is his motivator. He wants to be rich. But more than that, he wants power over those weaker than him."

I breathed, pushing that unsettling voice from my mind and thinking of how satisfying it would be when Darbaran was finally thrown into the same prison as I was.

"Too bad where he's going, he won't have any power at all."

I stirred my chai, sitting on the divan and waiting for Noor to come back. When the door creaked open, I turned.

"Is it done?" I held my breath.

"Yes." She nodded. "They picked Darbaran up this morning. Along with the stolen zoraat lifted from one of the emperor's healers a few days ago."

I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. I mentally crossed off another name on the list.

Just two more.

Two more and I could be done with this. An ache settled on my shoulders, like one more burden had been lifted from them, leaving only the pain of the impression behind.

Two more names and I could open the floodgates locked around my heart and allow myself to grieve for Baba. For the life I was meant to have.

I looked up at her. "Do you know what they intend to do with him?"

Noor shrugged. "Ship him off to the same prison we— Did you hear that?" Noor turned her head sharply toward the open courtyard door leading to the garden beyond.

I sat up, reaching for my dagger.

A thud sounded outside, followed by a shout that was abruptly silenced. I slid my katar from its sheath before I stood, my pounding heart echoing in the otherwise silent house.

"How many guards do we have out there?" I hissed at Noor.

She moved closer to me, her eyes wide, her hand gripping her kameez at her chest. "At least four."

"Not enough," I muttered. The zoraat was safe, at least, not any intruder could just break in and find it. But if someone wanted to rob us, they needed to make an effort to overcome the security in this place. But then they would be left to me.

I moved to the open door, creeping into the courtyard as quietly as I could, my bare steps a whisper across the stone floor.

But I wasn't fast enough.

A blade kissed my neck, surprisingly steady considering the hand that held it.

I turned my head as Darbaran's stale breath puffed out and he moved out of the darkness. His twisted face was illuminated by the torches lighting the room.

Noor let out a strangled scream, but I held up a hand. I still held my dagger in the other, and I wasn't sure how deft Darbaran was with a sword. If he had taken me by surprise now, then he could move as quick as I and I didn't want to risk using my dagger when his sword was pressed against my leaping pulse.

"Bitch." His fowl stench wafted, the pungent odor of sewer water and sweat, with a slightly metallic, familiar tinge underneath.

I pushed past my panic and focused on that metallic smell. My eyes scanned his body in the dark, trying to find its source.

There.

A dark red stain spreading across his abdomen like spilled paint. He was injured. It was deep.

I smiled.

"Darbaran," I drawled, my voice like rose petal honey. "I wasn't expecting you back so soon. Did you sell the product already?"

"The product you stole, you mean," he growled, his whole body reverberating with anger. "Then framed me for the theft and tipped off the emperor's soldiers." He coughed, a wet, squelching sound. "Good thing I knew a few people to bribe."

I cocked my head. "You didn't know the right people, if you came out of it with a wound like that." I looked pointedly in the direction of his stomach. "It's deep." My voice lost its false charm, instead becoming what I felt inside—cold, fierce.

He laughed, his teeth smeared black with blood. Then his face grew serious.

"Why?" he snarled, stepping forward into the light, pressing his scimitar harder into the soft curve of my neck. Noor moved in my periphery, creeping closer in our direction, but I shook my head almost imperceptibly. Darbaran could slit my throat in a moment, and then she'd have to fend against him on her own. And Noor was no good with a weapon.

We needed to do this my way.

"Why what?" I arched a brow.

He pushed closer and my flesh gave way beneath the sharp sting of his blade. I let out a hiss of pain as a thin trickle of warmth beaded toward my chest.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." His voice grew louder, and I could hear the desperation in his words. He was cornered now, a mongoose in a trap, and I the jackal.

"Why did you set me up?" he bit off. "It was too organized. Too specific. You weren't trying to make money off this, you were out to get me specifically. Why?" His beady eyes were bloodshot and wild, and they were hyperfocused on me. He leaned closer.

"What did I do to you? Tell me before I spill your blood all over your pretty floor."

His blade was already stained red, and my neck burned with the proof of it. My eyes flicked to the courtyard where the prone body of a slain guard lay. So, that had been the noise we heard earlier. I brought my eyes back to Darbaran.

I'd compensate the guard's family, but a life was still taken.

A life that wouldn't be gone if it weren't for me.

I was sick of people like Darbaran who thought they could do whatever they wanted, kill and use and imprison whoever they wanted while they got rich in the process. That darkness rose up inside me again, the rage building until the edges of my vision blackened and a beast in my chest took hold.

Not a hawk, not a jackal, but a halmasti, the giant wolf hunting on the edge of the mountains. Rage made me confident, and I suddenly wanted Darbaran to know it was me, not this lacquered, pretty mask. But the real me, the girl he had condemned to a life of prison, torture, even death, all for coins.

I felt for the thread of djinn magic that had transformed me. I felt for it, and I pulled it back .

My nose, my eyes, the bones in my cheeks—I took everything away that was Sanaya until it was my face.

Until I fit in my own skin again.

Dania, daughter of the slain weapons master.

Dania, forsaken by her best friend.

Dania, looking at one of her betrayers.

"You want to know why ?" I spat the question coming from my own voice this time, deep and certain.

Darbaran shrank away from me, his eyes wide, lips parted. He stumbled back, lifting his sword from my neck and clutching the blade in shock.

"You."

"Me."

I kept walking forward, and he fumbled, falling over his feet until he was on his backside looking up at me.

"I'll tell you why." My voice was soft, the hiss of a blade cutting through the night air. "Because you had a choice. You chose to betray me, to sell a girl for money, to frame her for gain. And so, I chose this." I lifted the glistening dagger in the torchlight of the garden, where the guards I had hired lay dead. Anger burst inside of me. But there was something else there too, savage, elemental.

The power of knowing this was righteous anger.

A history of women and girls being wronged by men who never had any consequences.

Now I would be the consequences.

"I choose vengeance. I choose death. And in the end, that's what you chose too."

Darbaran lurched up, swinging his sword in the air, but I dodged the strokes of his blade easily. He stumbled, the blood dripping steadily down his leg and across the parquet floor. He swirled around, running at me again.

"I knew they should have executed you when they had the chance, but that idiot boy wanted you alive."

I inhaled sharply but didn't have time to process his comment.

Darbaran charged at me, recklessness making him unpredictable. His sword missed me by inches. I struck his blade down with the edge of my dagger but couldn't get close enough with my knife to land a real hit given how wildly he was swinging.

I needed my sword.

I maneuvered myself toward the room behind me, spying my talwar hanging on the wall over the divan. I dove for the doorway, but Darbaran cut me off with his sword raised above his head.

He wavered on his feet, looking as if a strong wind could blow him over.

He let out a howl, lurching forward. But before he could strike, he pitched facedown onto the stone walkway in front of me. I gaped at him as he lay on the ground, groaning.

Noor stood behind him, holding a large dahl pot in her hand.

Darbaran struggled to his feet with a grunt and whirled on her, his sword pointed in Noor's direction now. A roar sounded in my ears, drowning out everything, until I could only hear the faint sound of screaming.

And I realized that sound was coming from me.

I was too late. I would get there too late.

Noor would die.

"No!"

Darbaran rushed at Noor with his scimitar, and panic filled her face as she lost her footing.

I ran full speed at them, shoving Noor out of the way at the same time Darbaran's sword plunged toward her. Burning pain lit my body as his scimitar pierced my abdomen instead.

I looked down at the golden filigree hilt of the scimitar lodged in my stomach and realized this, too, was a blade made by my father. I raised my head, coming face-to-face with Darbaran and every inch of his triumphant smile.

Pain clenched in my heart—not just the pain of the curved blade impaling my body, but the denial of justice, the unfulfilled vengeance piling up inside my chest so that the pressure was too great to bear.

No. I clenched my teeth and stared at his smug, disgusting face.

No, it would be harder than this to best me.

My fingers clenched tightly over my father's katar dagger, the bite of the snake pattern on the hilt forming an impression on my scarred hand. Darbaran's face was so close to mine, close enough that I could make out the yellow threads in the whites of his eyes, the speckled pores in his nose. Close enough that I could watch the victory in his face twist into stunned agony when I sliced him across the throat with my knife.

His mouth dropped open and he tried to move it.

Once. Twice. Forming words with no sound.

But I had enough for the both of us.

"You were destined for this end," I whispered to him, his lifeless body dropping to the ground. I sank to my knees beside him, then fell to my side, my hands holding the hilt of my father's sword, the blade that had killed me.

Perhaps I was destined for this too.