Chapter Twenty-Five

The royal selection ball and the Dahaka attack on the palace were not so long ago, and yet the capital city is once again a shining beacon of prosperity and wealth. All the ruined buildings have been repaired, and the streets are thronged with townspeople in brightly colored clothing. Rose petals cover the cobblestones. It looks nothing like the desolate, burning metropolis Roshan and I had escaped. Then again, it’s astonishing what stolen money and hoarded wealth can do.

The engagement parade in honor of King Javed and his new bride-to-be is a spectacle. Ugly, garish, and unnecessary. I want no part of it, though of course, I have little choice but to suffer the king’s whims. Decorated horses, fire-eaters, belly dancers, smartly attired soldiers, and elephants pave the way for servants bearing baskets full of gold coins, which are showered upon the adoring citizens. I feel sick at this empty display of excess when I think about the refugees in Nyriell and those who are starving to death in poorer quadrants of the kingdom. But mostly, I’m sick about the reasons for the celebration and the fact that everyone here has no inkling of what their king has planned.

Javed is a fucking monster.

Since our arrival at the palace, hope has eluded me at every turn, despair weighing on my soul like a stone. Amma, Laleh, Roshan, Aran, and my father, wherever he is—their lives all depend on my choices. While the thought of marrying Javed is sickening, it’s the only way I can protect them. And as for Aran’s prophecy and my perplexing visions of Vena, I’ve no time for that. For now, it’s all I can do to keep my cursed magic under wraps and my loved ones alive.

Which means marrying the tyrant cantering beside me, who is all regal benevolence, while sitting upon his throne of blood and lies. The clear half of his face is bronzed with gold powder, and his eyes are heavily lined with kohl. A jeweled mask covers his burned cheek, the high collar of his coat hiding the rest of the scarring. Apparently, it was the best his royal healers could do.

Clad head to toe in purple threaded with gold—a far cry from the rags he’d worn at the Scav garrison—Javed is every inch the king of Oryndhr. An embroidered headdress rests on his forehead, the priceless sapphire in the middle surrounded by azure plumes. He rides a massive stallion, a smile on his face and his back perfectly erect, waving charmingly to his people—the head of the Imperial House . . . the consummate royal.

The consummate starsdamned liar.

His gloved fingers rest on his mount’s jeweled pommel, a sword sheathed in the scabbard at his belt. My jādū dagger is also tucked into his belt like some kind of symbolic prize. My fingers itch to grab it, but I remain still, outwardly calm. Because lives depend on it.

As part of the charade, we have been dressed to match, only my outfit reveals much more than it covers. My fingers wind viciously in the fine gold silk of my skirts, threatening to rip the costly fabric to shreds. As is Kaldarian custom, I am covered from crown to heel in a filmy veil, a strand of jeweled coins falling across my forehead, with only my eyes visible through a slit cut in the material. My mass of hair has been brushed to a mirror shine, the glossy curls wound with ropes of sapphires and hanging halfway down my back. In all honesty, when I’d looked at myself earlier, I hadn’t recognized the woman in the mirrored glass. She’d stared back at me just as confused, as if she hadn’t known me, either.

I’d rather walk through the streets of the capital naked than wear any of it.

A heavy jeweled belt rides on my hips, the sheath for its matching dagger conspicuously absent. Probably because Javed knows that if I had access to a blade, I’d stab him in the testicles.

With violent pleasure.

I don’t even get to ride as he does; instead, I’m confined to a raised silver-and-gold litter hefted by six bearers. The king’s glacial eyes flick to mine. Strange how I’d once thought them beautiful. But the rotting soul inside has tainted them. “Are you displeased?” he asks.

“No.”

I clear my throat and choke out the address. “Your Majesty.”

“I would hope not.”

His gaze insolently inspects my person. My skin crawls at the lust and possession sparking there. “You look like the wife of a king.”

The words not yet spring to my lips, and I strangle them. Instead, I lower my eyes demurely and pretend not to want to raze him to ash and spit on his fucking embers.

Upon our return to Kaldari, I’d racked my brains to come up with a solution that did not end with me bound to a despot for the rest of my life, but Javed holds all the cards. I can’t run away—he’ll punish those I leave behind. I can’t kill him. Such an act of treason would be an instant death sentence for my entire family and Queen Morvarid would not hesitate to enact it.

In a surprising gesture of “benevolence,”

Javed had allowed Laleh to serve as my personal handmaiden. I’m certain the act had nothing to do with pleasing me and was entirely about suiting his ends. The king isn’t stupid—he wants me agreeable, but he also wants to taunt me and remind me who has the power to kill my loved ones.

Earlier that morning, Laleh and I had managed to sneak some time together while I was in my bath. I’d dismissed all the servants, aware it would get back to Javed, but I hadn’t cared. I had to take the chance of punishment to have a few private minutes with my best friend.

“Did he hurt you?”

I’d whispered over the loud gush of water from the taps.

“Define hurt.”

She’d shrugged at my expression. “Don’t worry, I survived, even when he tortured my parents in front of me. Your instincts were right about him.”

I clasped her hand, tears forming. “Oh, Laleh, I’m so sorry. Are they . . . alive?”

She’d nodded, thankfully, but the pain in her eyes for what her parents suffered had made me ache for her. “I’m so fucking sorry. Sands, I hate him! I want to tear him apart.”

We’d cried for a moment, holding each other. But time was too short to sit with any grief.

“Did any others escape?”

“Some.”

She sent me a sidelong glance. “It was a bloodbath. The king was in a rage when he couldn’t find you or your father.”

She took a breath. “Suraya, people are saying things about you.”

“What things?”

“That you’re some kind of sorceress. That you can kill with your bare hands.”

My smile was a grimace. “Everyone can do that.”

“They say you were born with . . . raw magic.”

I’d debated not telling her for her own safety, but then something inside me had snapped. Laleh was my closest friend, had been my best friend my entire life. She deserved the truth, even if she chose to run in terror from me. But she hadn’t, not even when I’d let the pearly, luminous radiance of the Starkeeper magic overtake my skin and the rush of light from the shimmering runes along my arms bathe the room in an otherworldly glow.

“Holy flaming sands,”

she whispered.

“Definitely,”

I admitted. “And yes, it’s deadly. I’ve hurt people without meaning to.”

She pursed her lips, putting two and two together in her head. “Did you do that to Javed’s face?”

I nod, and her smile is slight but hard. “Good. So that’s what the king is after. He wants the ultimate weapon.”

“Yes.”

“Can you, you know”—she wiggled her fingers—“fry the rest of him or something?”

“How can I when he still has you and Amma. Roshan, too . . .”

A glimpse of the old Laleh had appeared for a beat. “Roshan, is it?”

“It’s not like that.”

But it was exactly like that: I’d gone and fallen for a prince, after all.

I’d wanted to tell her everything. But we didn’t have time. Sure enough, an army of guards had drummed on the door so loudly that the walls trembled with the force of it. When the lock splintered, Javed had barged in, enraged. “This is how you repay me?”

“What exactly are you accusing me of?”

I replied, the picture of wide-eyed innocence from my position in the middle of the tub. “Laleh was helping me bathe in private. Did you expect me to run from the palace stark naked?”

Javed was far too smart to not know when he was being duped, but he hadn’t been able to fault my logic, especially as I was in the middle of a bath. His eyes had flicked to the foam-covered surface of the water—where, mercifully, my body had been concealed from his foul gaze—before he’d dismissed his entourage with a curt nod.

“Three handmaidens must remain with you at all times,”

he’d snarled. “It is for your protection. You are to be the next queen of Oryndhr. Your safety is paramount.”

But despite those seemingly protective words, I know what Javed is really afraid of: now that I’m in his grasp, he doesn’t want me escaping from it, either by my own means or by someone else’s. Not before the wedding and my binding vow, at least. The accounts of my powers have spread like shooting stars across the sky—on the whispered heels of a blasphemous prophecy—and the only way Javed can safeguard his claim is via a royal marriage.

Via my sacred bond.

With me by his side, his position and the Imperial House will be untouchable.

The procession stops, jarring me from my thoughts. Gleaming blue eyes meet mine as Javed slows his horse and leans down. “You are about to greet my mother, Suraya. You will remember your place.”

As if I have a choice. I wonder if she suspects what her loathsome son has been up to—the crimes he has committed in his obsession for power. Suppressing my hostility as he commands us forward with a flick of his wrist, I gaze at the crowd with unseeing eyes. A familiar face leaps out at me, and I blink, my stare swiveling in reverse to search the throng in earnest. My eyes land on a man in a cowl who looks bizarrely like Aran.

What would Aran be doing in Kaldari? I’d watched both him and Roshan enter a portal to Eloni as part of my deal with Javed. I’d begged my prince to take the chance to get away for good, but I’d seen the promise of retribution in his eyes.

Is he here?

Heart in my throat, I scrutinize the crowd more carefully, but the faces start to blend, and then the parade is past the gates and coming to a stop in the main palace courtyard.

Nearby is the wall where I’d first seen Roshan, and I feel something clench in the pit of my stomach. I’d give anything to see that crooked smirk, to watch him vault down from atop that wall, alive and well.

The men carrying the litter lower me to the ground, and my handmaidens accompany me inside the palace to the receiving hall. The atrium looks the same as it had the last time—ornate and opulent—but I have no taste for it. Its beauty feels rotten, like exquisite silk over a desiccated corpse. The hall is crowded with visiting dignitaries and nobles, all dressed in their finery. They turn their eyes to the ground in deference as I walk past.

Unlike my last time at court, there is only one person on the raised dais instead of two. Eyes glittering, Queen Morvarid regards me down the length of her nose. The viceroy steps forward to present me to the queen, and I execute a faultless curtsy.

“Lady Suraya,”

she greets me in that clipped voice with a curl of her lip that passes for a smile. “Please do me the honor of sitting on my right.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty,”

I murmur, our eyes colliding for the briefest of seconds as I stand. When they do, I rear back in shock. The hatred I’d expected, but the conniving awareness in them knocks the breath out of me.

Sands, she knows.

Of course she knows what I am. The invisible collar around my neck cinches tighter when I take her jeweled hand in mine. A sharp current zings between us, one I can’t readily identify but, oddly, makes me think of Aran. Fighting a numbing rush of dizziness, I snatch my hand away.

A cushioned stool immediately appears in the spot indicated by an elegant flourish of her fingers, and I am ushered onto it. My handmaidens bow their way back, and the sham of an engagement ceremony begins.

Surveying the hall, I recognize many faces, including that of Reza, the young nobleman who had escorted me so very long ago, and a sneering Helena, the woman from the arena. I feel like crying. I wish I could go back to the day I’d received that fateful invitation. I’d burn the starsdamned thing to ashes. Then again, none of that would have changed who I am. This star magic would have manifested sooner or later.

And I still would have been hunted for it.

After what seems like an eternity, the entire hall falls into silence as the smiling king of Oryndhr saunters forward with all the arrogance in the world.

This is it—this is when he officially expects me to kneel.

Publicly.

As if on cue, my body fills with warmth, droplets of sweat beading along my upper lip and beneath my arms. Snatching hold of the ornate fan resting on a low table beside me, I fan myself vigorously. The queen’s taciturn gaze flicks toward me, but suddenly, her face starts to morph and pucker. My vision goes fuzzy, and then the room starts to fade.

Not now, not now, please not now.

But it’s not like I have ever had any say in when my favorite crone appears in my visions. Vena comes when she wants. Her form descends to the middle of the room—only we are no longer in a room. We are suspended against the backdrop of black velvet space like the stars we are.

She greets me as she always does. “Setareh sar lokkar.”

“Vena,” I say.

“You have grown stronger, Starkeeper.”

Shooting stars spin from her mouth as she speaks. “But you have lost sight of your path. You ransom your gifts for the sake of three.”

“They are my friends. My family.”

“A Starkeeper has no family. Mortal lives are of little consequence to the fate of the world.”

“You need us to believe in you, so we must matter.”

I eye her, frowning. “And if you’re asking me to sacrifice them, I won’t.”

“You refuse to sacrifice one for the many?”

Her starlit eyes burn like hot embers. “Perhaps we should do it for you. You belong to us, after all.”

Betrayal stabs through me like an icy blade. “Touch one hair on their heads, and Fero won’t be the one you have to worry about. That I promise you.”

“The darkness of the abyss creeps upon you, Suraya.”

She has never called me by my given name before, and the sound of it on her lips makes me shiver, and not in a good way. “Infecting your spirit with a need for vengeance, a desire for blood. That is the path to the lie.”

Is she blaming me? Anger rises like a bitter tide, the taste of ash salting my tongue. “You were the ones who gave me this cursed magic. You know what it’s capable of, yet you tell me nothing of how to control it. If there’s darkness in me, it’s because you put it there.”

The last word breaks on a wild cry. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Mastery comes from a place of wisdom, of enduring love.”

I breathe wildly. “That’s just it—I don’t know how to master any of this. Just take it from me, please, I don’t want it.”

“What is given cannot be rescinded.”

“Then let me die,”

I say. “Find another who is worthier.”

The crone approaches, nearly blinding me with her iridescence. Her fingers feather along my temple and the touch is achingly familiar. Warm. Drawing me down into the well of memory where my mother used to lull me to sleep and caress my brow.

“Dig deep, darling Suraya,”

the crone whispers in a voice that isn’t hers. “Find the smallest seed of who you are. All the answers you seek are here in your heart. The strength you need has always been here. And know that you are never alone—I am forever with you, my fierce little firebird.”

That nickname, that voice. My eyes meet hers, and everything slams into me all at once as my heart hammers a rapid staccato in my chest. Her face . . . the voice and the face are my mother’s. “Mama?”

But she’s gone, the smile on her lips unforgettable. After all, it’s seared into my memories along with a thousand laughs, a thousand kisses, and a thousand shared wishes.

I blink stickily back to reality, coming to myself amid the sound of hushed voices. Confusion fills me. This isn’t the receiving hall. It’s a chamber—a very opulent chamber by the look of it, with ostentatious masculine touches and gold accents everywhere as if its occupant needs to be constantly reminded of his own magnificence.

The king’s chambers.

“She’s coming to.”

Javed’s face looms over me, as does his mother’s.

“Water,”

I croak, and a chalice is placed to my lips.

Gentle hands stroke my hair, neither of them belonging to the king or the queen mother. I search for their owners, and my eyes collide with Laleh’s. I’m surprised that Javed has allowed her to tend to me, but maybe he was desperate. Her eyes are guarded but worried. “Are you well?”

“Fine,”

I rasp, taking another cool sip of water.

“Out,”

Javed commands. “Everyone.”

The guards and handmaidens scurry away, the queen following at a slower pace. The door shuts with an ominous click behind her.

I shouldn’t be alone with him in his quarters without a proper chaperone before the wedding, but Javed won’t care for propriety. His eyes wander down the length of my body as if he can read my thoughts. I fight the urge to yank the counterpane over myself. “What are you staring at?” I snap.

“My property.”

My jaw clenches. “I am no man’s property.”

“I am your king,”

he says, his fingers fluttering to my silk-covered kneecap. The light touch makes me cringe, and his eyes harden. “Or perhaps my bastard brother has already stolen that which is mine.”

Stolen, no. Happily received what was openly given, yes.

Javed’s palm creeps upward, and I stop it with the heel of mine, midthigh. “That doesn’t mean you own me, and king or not, you and I both know what I can do.”

“But you won’t.”

My smile is cool and vicious. “Sometimes my magic defends itself, don’t you know that by now, Your Majesty? One wouldn’t want to risk the falsehood of beauty you cling to underneath that mask. Or the very cock you require to procure an heir.”

At that unsubtle threat, he flinches, snatching his hand away, and rises to walk to the foot of the massive bed. His teeth bare in a snarl. “One day we will address that mouth of yours. Tell me what happened in the throne room.”

“It was hot. I fainted.”

His mouth curls downward. “It was more than that. Your runes were glowing.”

At my look, he continues. “Don’t worry, I took care to keep them concealed.”

Waiting for my explanation, Javed taps his toe impatiently against the polished wooden floor. I don’t have a ready excuse, so I opt for the truth. It’s not going to matter either way.

“I have visions.”

Searing ice-blue eyes hook on mine. “What kind of visions?”

“Celestial ones,”

I say, enjoying the look on his face more than I should. “Visions of the old gods in all their glory.”

“What do these visions tell you?”

“That I am a vessel.”

I’m unprepared for the fanatical smile that Javed sends my way. In fact, I’m downright disturbed by it. He looks thrilled. Elated.

“You know, my ancestors were shortsighted fools. And my mother enjoys culling the weak from our ranks. Calling the worship of the old gods heresy is as good an excuse as any to do so, and it ensures only the strongest and the most devoted will endure.”

He studies his fingers, brushing his polished nails against his embroidered shirtfront. “The magi have foretold the rise of a new god.”

I’m lying on a bed, but it feels as though I’m falling, sinking into a space that is dark and suffocating. “And you think that’s me?”

Javed comes back around the bed, sitting beside me. His fingers stroked the side of my face in a caress and then tighten, grasping my chin hard so I meet his gaze. “No, my silly little brainless bride, I think that’s me.”