Four

I dug till my hands bled. After a few days I'd healed enough from my injuries that every hour was focused on tunneling underneath the floor of my cell. We moved forward in inches, and though it was the tiniest of increments, I felt like I was moving with purpose.

Freedom.

Family.

I pushed back against that tiny voice that wanted a different goal, a darker, more wrathful purpose.

Revenge.

But I couldn't afford to think about vengeance now. My only priority needed to be getting back to my father and making sure he was okay.

The first few days of digging, Noor and I worked quietly together, shifting away the black earth millimeter by millimeter. But after a year of being confined alone, I wasn't about to continue the silence. Working alongside her made me realize I wasn't impervious to the need for human companionship, as much as I wanted to pretend otherwise.

We sat in the dark tunnel, illuminated by the sun filtering through the small slice of window, as I chipped away at the earth and passed cups of dirt back to her.

"You worked for Emperor Vahid? Dealing with djinn magic?" I asked cautiously. I had been itching to talk to her about it for days, turning over her earlier words in my mind. If she had access to zoraat—the most powerful substance in our world—there was no telling what she could do once she broke out of here.

She paused, holding the tin cup in her hand. She lifted her eyes to the small window in my cell, staring at the disappearing light.

"Technically one of his chieftains," she responded finally. "His name was Souma and he was responsible for managing Vahid's zoraat farms, as well as mixing the right doses for his soldiers and healers. I worked as an herbalist in Vahid's royal apothecary, under Souma's supervision."

"All that djinn power." My words were hushed. "How were you allowed to work with it? I thought you had to be incredibly special to even touch zoraat."

"Are you saying I'm not special?" She arched a brow, but her smile faded. "Actually, I'm really not. Just an orphan who managed to be in the right place at the right time. I needed somewhere to go and Souma needed an assistant. Working with zoraat was quite dangerous and he kept… losing them." She winced.

"So, you weren't chosen because you were special, it was because everyone else died."

I handed her another cup of dirt. Noor emptied it in the waste bucket and came back to the tunnel.

"I suppose you could say that. But I also had a knack for zoraat blends. You must consume the djinn seeds in exactly the right proportions or the results can be catastrophic. Emperor Vahid mixes his own blends, of course—they say the djinn he bargained with for the power taught him how to use it. But for the soldiers and healers and anyone else who uses zoraat, Souma and his staff mix the blends."

"Did you try them?" I couldn't hide the awe in my voice. I had never known anyone who had eaten zoraat. I had seen Emperor Vahid a few times in passing when I'd been at the palace with Maz but hadn't ever spoken to him directly.

To be able to use raw djinn magic, to have the power to reconfigure your body, to wield a smokeless flame or shake the very earth we walked on—those kinds of abilities could come in handy. I flexed my fingers, not thinking about the djinn magic so much as my own skills—the swords I longed to hold, the daggers I dreamt to throw again.

It wasn't magic I craved, but the weight of steel in my grip.

"No, I never got to use them myself. That was only for the generals or the emperor's personal healers, and he controls their consumption very strictly. He never wants to give anyone more than they need. But Souma said I was one of the finest blenders of djinn magic he'd ever seen. It was one of the reasons he…"

Noor trailed away, her face shadowed in the darkness of the tunnel, the faint light catching the shimmer in her eyes. After a moment she cleared her throat. "It was one of the reasons he trusted me so much." Her voice cracked.

Souma sounded like someone important to her. Perhaps even a father of sorts. I swallowed, my throat tight. I knew what it was to miss a father.

An unfamiliar kinship tugged at my heart, recognizing the shared emotion. We were more than just two escapees, we were two daughters, two people who had been wronged, two people trying to get back what we once had, though we probably never would. This place had stolen years of our lives, and we wouldn't get the chance to live those again. I curled my fingers into the dirt, savoring the feel of it pushing under my fingernails. Someone was responsible for taking that life away from me, and I wanted to be the one to make him pay.

Noor's sniff brought me back. She scraped more of the dirt into the tin cup.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

She looked up at me, pushing the tangled hair from her eyes with a dirty hand. "Yeah, me too."

But there was more to this story. Souma had betrayed Vahid, and I knew as well as anyone what happened when you were accused of betraying the emperor.

"You said Souma hid zoraat from the emperor? That he stole from him?" I ran through the implications of that. I had been thrown into a cell to rot, but I hadn't stolen djinn power from the emperor. "I'm surprised Vahid didn't destroy Souma's entire family."

Noor was silent for a moment, and I didn't expect her to respond. "Oh, he did. Vahid was furious. All Souma's sons were executed, and anyone connected with Souma was sent here and tortured for information on where the zoraat was hidden. As you can imagine, Thohfsa loved that."

Her voice was bitter and I thought about what that must have been like for her. At least I knew that my father was still alive and waiting for me. Everyone Noor had known was gone.

I chipped away at the hard packed earth and was thankful that I was the one rotting in prison and not my father.

But if Souma had hidden zoraat, did Noor know about it? And if she did, would she go back to claim it?

Access to magic like that was worth more than just breaking out of here. It was complete freedom. It was the power to go anywhere, be anything you wanted. I could escape with my father, away from the emperor, away from Maz.

But something dark and rotten answered inside me.

Did I really want to run away from Mazin?

Did I want to run?

Or make him burn?

I gave Noor a sidelong glance. She hadn't said if Vahid had recovered his missing djinn magic. Which meant she might just know where it was.

"Everyone you know is gone," I said, breaking a particularly large stone free from the earth and handing it back to her. "And Vahid killed Souma. So, what will you do when you break out of here?"

She'd asked me this question, but hadn't shared her own answer. It was enough to simply want free of this place, I supposed, but she dug the stones away with fire in her veins, just as I did. This wasn't only about freedom, like my motivation wasn't just getting to my father. We both had something we hadn't wanted to confess, because confessing it meant acknowledging it.

Noor held the rock, the shadows staining her expression, making her appear more ominous than usual. She was a small girl, with a pointed chin and a mop of dark curls, but now she appeared more like a vengeful ghoul than when she'd first burst into my chamber.

"I suppose you could say I'm a loyal person," she said quietly. "And I believe that Souma deserves justice."

"And are you the person to mete that justice out?" I asked, wondering if that same need flooded through my veins.

But justice seemed more noble than what I wanted. Admirable. What I wanted from the people who betrayed me wasn't admirable.

Not when I pictured the dagger that would tear through Mazin's heart.

But even I had a greater reason to want justice than she did. Noor was an orphan, beholden to no one. It wasn't she who was accused of treason, it wasn't her own name she had to clear. It seemed odd she would focus so much on the injustice done to the man who had simply taken her in.

"I am." Her voice was gravel hard. "If not me, there isn't anyone else left."

"How?" I asked, the word curling between us like an incantation. "How would you get justice?" We both knew I was asking something much larger than the mechanics of a strategy.

How can one take down an empire?

Vahid had done it with the power of the djinn by his side. Could it could be done again?

She hesitated, her response catching in her throat. "I have a plan."

There was no doubt in my mind that plan involved djinn magic and a stolen treasure Thohfsa had been trying to torture out of people for three years. And if Noor had access to that treasure, perhaps I could as well.

Coupled with the possibility of escape, I felt hope bubbling in my chest.

But having that small kernel of hope was a dangerous thing, because if I lost it, then the despair might finally overtake me.

That much I knew from the past year.

"I think I have dirt so far up my fingernails it's part of my skin now."

I lay in Noor's cell, examining my hands. She was right, mine was worse than hers. Her chamber looked like a palace compared to where I'd been housed—it was at least three times the size, and she even had a rickety bed with a worm-eaten straw mattress that felt as good as if it had been filled with peacock feathers.

When I first saw it, I cried.

Then I lay down, my bones sighing, my back unbending from the year of sleeping on a cold stone floor.

"You said you were tricked when you were arrested." Noor's voice cut through my joy in lying on a bed again. She sat with her back against the wall, cross-legged, watching me. "Tell me what happened to put you in here."

I sat up, rolling my shoulders and ignoring my growling belly. My muscles ached from digging and I was feeling the lack of food more keenly now.

When I didn't answer right away Noor barked out a rough laugh. "You get such a look on your face when you are thinking about home that I can't help but ask about it. And sometimes when you talk about escaping, I can only describe your expression as how I would feel if Thohfsa were being dismembered in front of me."

My lips lifted involuntarily. "I know exactly what my face would look like if that were transpiring."

"So, tell me, then. What happened?"

What happened?

I had thought of nothing else. I had worked it all out, every misstep where I went wrong, every clue that signaled what they had done.

What he had done.

How could I have been so foolish to not realize who he was? To not think that he would choose the emperor over me, when it all came down to it?

I flexed my hands in the scratchy bedcover. "I was betrayed by someone I thought I loved. Someone I thought had my back. But he didn't."

"Bastard," Noor seethed, and I appreciated the anger on my behalf. "What was his name?"

I exhaled, filling the space between us with my rage. "Mazin. We'd known each other since we were kids. I thought I knew everything about him."

"What did he do?"

"He asked me to meet him in the palace. Instead, I found the body of a northern warlord at my feet, poisoned by djinn magic. Darbaran, the head of the palace guards, arrested me. I thought Maz would help me escape, but he just stood and watched. He didn't even defend me." The words stung so badly I trembled. "He made me believe I was loved, trusted. Then, he and the others at the palace framed me for murder. Emperor Vahid tossed me in here, condemning my family to the sin of my crime too." I swallowed thickly, not just anger rising in my chest but sorrow. Maz hadn't just taken my freedom, or my father's reputation. He'd taken away one of the few relationships I believed was safe, true.

And he lit it on fire and smiled as I burned with it.

"Who framed you?"

I felt the involuntary curl of my lips but knew my smile wasn't a smile by the expression on Noor's face—a mixture of alarm and wariness.

That same simmering fury lurked in my bones, waiting to be released, waiting to be given a sword so that it could create a bloody, vengeful path. Then, I recited the list I said every night before I went to sleep. The list of people responsible for where I was.

"Darbaran, the head of the guards who accused me, arrested me, and made sure I had no escape. Emperor Vahid, who clearly wanted to dispose of one of his political rivals without triggering a civil war and I was the one to pin it on. And Maz." I broke off, not trusting myself to speak anymore.

"Who was Maz to you?" Noor's voice was gentle.

I closed my eyes, thinking about how to answer that question. My childhood best friend? My lover, whom I'd given my heart to? The person I'd shared my darkest secrets with, held in the early rays of morning and fought alongside against anyone who stood in our way?

I looked away from Noor to the wall behind her. Noor's own scratches and marks decorated the stone, tabulating the days, triple the size of mine, a grim reminder of what my days would resemble if I stayed here. Days Mazin had condemned me to without a second thought.

"Mazin was someone I trusted when I should have known better. Someone who was always going to betray me, in the end."

Noor made a sound against her teeth. "A lover, then."

Something squeezed in my heart, and it made me inexplicably furious.

Yes . I wanted to answer.

Yes, he was a lover.

But I wasn't ready to say that yet. I hadn't quite grappled with the depths of that betrayal, and with the fact that in my dark moments my treacherous mind still thought back to those memories when I needed comfort.

As if I still had capacity to yearn for someone who was never there to begin with.

But there was no point in not being truthful now; it wouldn't erase what had happened.

At my silence, Noor cleared her throat. "How do you know they were responsible? Those names you recited."

"How do you know your chieftain trusted you?" I asked her in response. "How do you know he cared about you?"

Noor answered immediately, without hesitation. "I felt it in my bones."

"Yes," I said, the word a whispered hush. "Yes, exactly. When I was arrested, I went over it all, every step, every conversation, every strange look or absurd coincidence. Maz asking to meet me in that room, at that particular time. Darbaran coming upon me instead, catching me right as I discovered the body. Neither of them would have done this at all if Emperor Vahid had not ordered it. The body at my feet was a rival to Vahid—a northern warlord who was rumored to be starting a rebellion. If the emperor had executed him, it would have caused a civil war." My voice was steeped in bitterness. "Maz is loyal to Emperor Vahid above all, no matter what his sins are."

And Vahid had many, given the slaughter during his rise to power.

Noor's eyes darkened at the mention of Vahid's name. "Why didn't they execute you to silence you?"

She asked the question I'd asked myself. Why was I still alive? Why was I here?

"That part I can't figure out. I can only imagine they wanted to inflict the greatest suffering possible."

That stung the most. The knowledge that not only had Maz betrayed me, but that he wanted my torture. My pain. He wanted me to hurt.

What was most pathetic was that I cared. I cared he had made this so personal, he had put me here to rot and taken the side of the emperor.

What had I done to him to deserve that?

Or perhaps I needn't have done anything. Perhaps he always had the capacity to do this to me, and I was too in love with him to see it.

There was a heavy silence.

Noor scratched the back of her neck.

"If Maz put you in a place like this, he can't have been a very good lover," she said, laughter clinging to her words and dispelling the tension in the room.

I huffed out a rueful laugh in response, appreciating her attempt to drive the darkness from my heart.

"No," I said finally, the smile fading from my lips, my eyes tracing the cracks on the ceiling. "That was never our problem."

"Ugh, isn't that always the way? Good at one thing and terrible at everything else." She leaned back against the wall.

I thought back to the first time I had kissed Mazin.

The first time he'd wrapped his arm around my waist, pressed his lips to my neck. Even though the memories were twisted and bitter with his betrayal, I could still remember what it felt like to have my pulse beat wildly as his thumb traced my lower lip, the rush of anticipation in my stomach when he smiled against my skin. I swallowed, trying to will the memories away.

"We knew each other for a long time. I thought I knew him as well as he knew me, but obviously not."

"The ones closest to you will betray you the most," Noor said so softly I almost didn't catch her words. I wondered at them, because she sounded like she understood from personal experience.

I cleared my throat, glad to change the subject. "Is that what happened to you and Souma? Emperor Vahid found out he was stealing from him through someone close?"

Noor nodded. "His own son betrayed him. He wanted to save his family's honor but ended up massacring them all. Even the servants were arrested and imprisoned."

"Like you."

Noor looked uncomfortable by the suggestion that she was a servant but eventually nodded. "Yes, like me. But I'm not going to stay here and rot like everyone else, that's not my fate."

"Nor mine," I said, wiping the dirt from my face and looking at the dark tunnel we'd crawled out of.

Staying in this prison wouldn't be my fate. Not anymore.