Chapter Twenty-Seven

I stare at myself in the mirrored glass.

Glistening gems drip from the top of my veil to the top of my chest in a beaded curtain. The embroidered jacket over my undertunic is fitted, handsewn with exquisite pearls and rubies, tapering to my waist and then flaring out in wide, gold-dusted panels to the knees of its matching undergown.

Unlike the sheer golden outfit I’d worn for Javed’s engagement farce, these wedding garments are heavy and crimson. From the translucent scarlet covering my bejeweled hair to the tips of my ruby slippers, I am a bride dressed in blood. A sacrificial lamb. Though not one being led to the slaughter. I’m willingly going there with my eyes wide open.

I’ve thought about trying to find Amma for real and blasting our way out with magic, but I don’t know exactly where her room is in this maze of a citadel. My stardust simurgh form had passed through walls and floors. All I remember is that she had been in the northern section of the palace, near what looked like servants’ quarters. Attempting escape would be a risky gamble with time I don’t have.

Right now, the only half-baked plan I’ve formed is to wait until we are in the middle of whatever ritual the queen has concocted with her son and attempt to take them both out at the same time. Of course, that will mean that I’ll have to consummate the marriage vows with Javed. The very thought of him kissing me or touching me is sickening, but whatever pain he has in store for me on our wedding night won’t last forever.

Sacrifice one for the many.

Vena’s words—but I’ll be the sacrifice, no one else.

“Lady Suraya,”

one of the guards calls through the bedroom door. “The king requests your presence.”

My escort’s words are much too close to the ones that had been printed on the cursed invitation that had set me on this path. A heavy weight settles upon my chest, making it hard for me to breathe or reply. I fumble for words. “Thank you. I’ll need a moment.”

Gasping for air, I dismiss the waiting handmaidens and lean against the closed door, savoring my last minutes of privacy and freedom. This is it. Countless women in Oryndhr have dreamed of this moment—of marrying a royal—all except me. I don’t want to be queen. I don’t want to be some starlight warrior. I don’t want to be immortal. I just want . . .

What do you want?

I’m not sure I’ve ever asked myself that question. Not truly.

Tears burn the backs of my eyes. I want to go back to a simpler time. I want peace for my countrymen and goodwill between the houses. Happiness. A hopeful future. I want love blanketing me. I want my father to live to a ripe old age. And Amma, Laleh, and life at the inn. A family of my own one day. Old friends and new. I want to see Clem again. Sands, I’ll even tolerate Simin and Cyrill.

While I’m making impossible wishes, I want love, too. But there’s only one man I desire and he’s hopefully far away from this palace of lies. His handsome face with those sparkling, soulful brown eyes and that perpetual smirk is imprinted on my mind. Stars, I miss him.

If only wishes were so easy . . . or real.

Overcome with misery, I swipe at my damp eyes and try to put some steel in my spine. I’m moving toward the door when a waft of air blows into my face. My gaze flicks to the stained-glass window, but it is firmly shut.

A second eerie gust makes my skirts billow. My eyes scale the room, catching sight of shifting fabric on one of the walls. One of the tapestries on the right side of the room undulates, and my breath quickens. A form takes shape—a large, ominous form, pushing outward into the embroidered bands of textile.

Suddenly, all I can think of is the starsdamned prophecy.

Has Fero come to claim me?

My hands and runes begin to glow of their own accord as my magic surges to the fore, ready to defend. Hot white light arcs through me when the dark shadow moves to the edge of the tapestry and a covered head emerges along with a familiar face . . . one I’d never expect to see in a million years. I rub my eyes in disbelief.

“Cyrill?”

I go stock-still and then shake my head as the rest of his body materializes. It is him. I lower my glimmering hands and rush toward him. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you Javed would try to take your light.”

He reaches a hand to me, holding the fringe of the tapestry aloft. “Come, your father is waiting.”

Hope soars in my chest. “Papa? He’s alive?”

“Yes, we don’t have much time. It took forever to navigate the mines and find the right passageway after you arrived at the palace. And then you changed towers and rooms and that was a whole mess, too. There are guards everywhere.”

Hurrying behind him, I enter the low stone corridor, the secret door snicking shut behind us. We move at a clipped pace, the silk of my skirts getting caught on the rough-hewn rock. When we emerge in an underground dungeon that smells of musk and mildew, I almost weep at the sight of my somber father standing with a group of armed men. I fling myself into his arms.

“Did he hurt you?”

my father says, his voice gruff with emotion.

“No,”

I sniff, ripping the veil from my head and grinding it into the dirt beneath my heel. I eye the men surrounding him, recognizing many of the faces from the tavern. “I thought you were dead. How did you survive in the desert? How did you get here?”

“We hid in an abandoned jādū mine,”

Cyrill says from behind me. “And then we rode here.”

“You rode?”

I ask my father weakly, and he nods. I’m shocked. Without a portal, a trip like that would have taken weeks through the unforgiving desert. “How did you find me?”

He waves a wrinkled map at me. “When your mother and I lived in Kaldari, King Zarek gave me a record of the palace plans and all the deserted passageways beneath it.”

I blink owlishly at him. King Zarek. Roshan’s father. He’d helped them, too. “It was how we escaped the queen,”

he says tightly, a grimace furrowing his brow.

“Amma told me.”

I hug him fiercely. “We have to get her, Papa. She’s sick and still in the palace. North wing.”

His eyes cloud over as he takes me by the arm with a noncommittal grunt. “Let’s go. We have a wagon and fresh horses waiting. We need to get you to safety at least for tonight.”

The way he says that suggests that there’s more at play. Why at least for tonight? Does it have to do with the alignment of the blood moon and the ritual the queen hopes to perform?

I halt, tugging against him. “Papa, does this have to do with the prophecy?”

“We don’t have time, Suraya,”

he growls. “The more we wait, the more danger you’re in. I’ll tell you when we’re safe.”

“What about Amma?”

He swallows hard, his throat bobbing as pain rips across his face. “She knows what is at stake, and she will make her peace with that.”

I stare at him in shock. “You’ll just leave her to die?”

He grabs my shoulders. “You are what is important, Suraya. You.”

“Because of a stupid prophecy?”

“Listen,”

he barks, startling me with his vehemence. “Everything is happening as the diviners of Fomalhaut claimed it would. Your birth chart foretold this vertex, too. This specific karmic encounter. We’ve always known this day would come.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “The blood moon has risen, and the constellations of the sidereal zodiac are in alignment. The queen will use her death magi gifts to summon Fero”—his voice breaks—“to take you.”

“You believe that?”

In response, he grabs my arms, flipping my palms over. “How do you explain what you can do? The magic of the stars in your human body? Morvarid has coveted you from the day you were born for this one reason: to return the god of death, eternal darkness, and destruction to his wretched throne.”

His face hardens, and an expression I’ve never seen settles on it. “Do not let your mother’s sacrifice be in vain.”

Sacrifice. She died protecting me, using magic that had sucked up every drop of her life essence. It might have been her choice, but I still killed her. My throat tightens, pain and loss burning up my rage. All the fight drains from my body in one fell swoop.

He’s right. She died for me. To protect me from this very fate.

Feeling numb, I let him lead me through the rest of the dungeons into a wide, dark courtyard. A bloodred haze filters down from the moon, bathing the yard in an unnatural hue. I’m so consumed by my guilt that I don’t notice the dead silence in the space until it’s too late and the hairs on my arms stand at eerie attention. My runes writhe below my skin.

“Papa—”

“Shush,”

he whispers, raising one fist. Everyone else behind us crouches down, blades and bows appearing in their hands.

Slow clapping draws our collective attention to a parapet almost hidden from view on the far wall of the palace. Queen Morvarid appears. She is clad in black and silver and wears no veil. “Hassan,”

she calls out, her voice mocking. “Couldn’t stay away?”

“Be gone, demon.”

Her laugh is chilling. “I’ve been called worse. You’ve eluded me so cleverly for years. Did my late husband and his treacherous soul-fated lover have a hand in that?”

Soul-fated. My eyes round in shock.

“Zarek and Nihira knew what a monster you were,”

my father says.

Morvarid inclines her head. “And she paid for her treachery.”

“You fucking murderer!” I shout.

Her stony stare turns to me. “I should have removed your tongue that first day in the courtyard. My own sister bedded my husband and bore him a bastard son, and she paid in blood for taking what was mine.”

A collective gasp winds its way through the men around us. Roshan had said the truth of his parentage was a carefully guarded secret. Now, not anymore.

“He loved her, never you,”

I snarl. “You kept them apart. You took him from her, knowing they loved each other, because you couldn’t stand that he was hers and not yours.”

As far away as I stand, I can feel her rage and jealousy burning.

“And what do you know of love?”

she drawls. “It is a sickness. A disease that infects the weak. Take these two for example.”

She hooks her fingers, and two of the guards at her side push two figures forward: Laleh and Amma. I swallow the howl that claws up my throat. Blood covers half of Laleh’s swollen face. “You love them so much that it makes you weak. You are not worthy of the magic you bear.”

“And you are?”

I fist my hands, clenching my teeth as my tears flow, despite my efforts to stanch them. Blood rushes in my ears as I summon the Starkeeper’s power. I don’t even hear the terrified murmurs from my father’s men as they watch my skin glow luminous silver and the section of my hair burn iridescent white. All I am focused on is my enemy. “Release them.”

“As you wish.”

Before I can move, before I can blink, a gleaming jādū blade with a carved golden simurgh for a handle slides across Laleh’s throat. My dagger. If I could have foretold this moment, I never would have forged that fucking blade. Time slows to a trickle, Laleh’s hopeless eyes meeting mine across the space. Blood pours from her gaping neck. An agonized scream tears its way out of me as I rush forward, only to see her lifeless body sink to Morvarid’s feet.

“Laleh!”

My vision tunnels to red. Heat saturates every part of me, hissing through my eyes and mouth, thirsty for vengeance. They’re all going to burn. Every last one of them.

“Suraya, no!”

It’s my father’s voice, but he has no sway on me.

Morvarid’s words do, however. “Your choice, Starkeeper. Your precious aunt dies next.”

Amma.

My skin sparks with magic and I come to a halt. Sobbing openly, I quake with the effort to subdue my ravenous soul, my breath shuddering through my anguish as a hundred armed royal soldiers march into the courtyard to encircle my father and his men. Resigned to the queen’s will, I release my gathered magic and fall to the ground, my heart in fucking pieces. I don’t even struggle when two guards yank me to my feet and someone approaches. Javed, my betrothed. I don’t care anymore. Let him take me. Let Fero come. There’s enough blood on my soul. Let it rest on someone else’s for once.

“Quickly now, my son, the moon is almost aligned,”

Morvarid calls down as he drags me to a nearby door leading up to the tower.

Suddenly, a second wave of armed men—not guards this time—swarm the line of royal soldiers with a roar. Dahaka. Fighting breaks out in earnest as a tight circle forms around Javed and me. He shoves me into the tower, pulling me by my hair up the steps to stand before a trembling magi. House of Fomalhaut, by the looks of his navy-blue robes with the laurel wreath and two birds. I guess the rumors of that house being heretics and arcanists have been true all along. An entire secret society of death magi plotting the downfall of the realm . . . led by a devious, power-hungry queen.

“Invoke the rites for the handfasting,”

Javed orders.

The cleric starts speaking hastily, binding my hands to Javed’s with a satin ribbon. I don’t struggle or protest. I can’t even think beyond the sense of grief and futility swamping me. A crashing sound echoes up the stone steps leading into the turret, the clang of clashing blades swiftly following.

Javed thrusts a golden chalice into my face. “Drink.”

The liquid within is dark, thick, and reeks of rust. Blood?

Nearly gagging, I stare at him, my lips descending to obey his command, but the delicate cup is shot out of his hand as a jādū arrow impales it to the far wall, exploding it in a shower of sparks. The brackish, sludgy fluid splatters over the ground.

We turn in unison to see Roshan standing there like an avenging angel, bow aloft and dark eyes flashing. I’m no delicate rose who swoons upon rescue, but my nostrils burn and my eyes sting at the sight of him. I knew he’d come.

Has he been here the whole time? And by the heavenly stars, why does it feel like I need him to fucking breathe?

“Get the fuck away from her,”

he roars, discarding his bow for a curved jādū blade carved with an earth rune.

Javed does the opposite, pulling me to him as he squares off against Roshan, his own saber drawn and at the ready. “Good to see you, too, brother.”

“Sura?”

Roshan asks, eyes finding mine.

My eyes brim anew. “Laleh’s dead.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,”

Roshan says softly. “But she would want you to fight. Don’t give up now and let her death be for nothing.”

Javed laughs cruelly, his fingers winding into my hair. His blade kisses my torso, and I feel its cold bite through my clothes. “So predictable that you’ve come to retrieve your lost prize. You’re too late—she’s mine.”

Hearing Roshan’s soft words makes something warm flicker to life inside of me—a spark of sadness mixed with love and hope. I see Laleh’s face, her courage and her determination urging me to listen. She can’t have died for nothing. My beaten spirit rises to the fore, like a firebird from the ashes. The irony of the symbolism is not lost on me. As long as there’s breath in me, I have to fight. For my best friend. For myself. For everyone.

With a scream that comes from the depths of my soul, I hurl my elbow back with all the force I can muster, catching Javed in the ribs, and stomp on his instep. He curses, weakening his grip enough for me to twist out of his grasp. His blade whistles across my bodice, two pieces of silk falling in frozen panels to the floor. His blade is carved with an ice rune.

I snarl at the king, “I’ll never be yours, you fucking monster!”

I glance at Roshan, longing to throw myself into his arms, but I have other things to take care of—like the bitch of a death magi who still has my aunt. Roshan’s gaze meets mine, his lip curling into that half smile I adore as he mouths the word go. Heart full, I race up the steps to the parapet, where I’d seen Morvarid and Amma last.

Four guards stand outside the wooden door, but I dispatch them easily with a white-hot blast of my magic, feeling nothing as ash flakes from their skin. I hear chanting coming from the topmost tower room, and cautiously, I peer through the view hole. Amma is trussed and tied in the corner, and Morvarid is intoning something, holding up another shallow goblet. Four Fomalhaut magi in navy robes and hooded cowls surround her. The queen dips two fingers into the chalice to draw runes of rot on her skin, and my magic recoils at the unnatural nature of it. Is this what a death magi ritual looks like?

Exhaling a breath, I call my light forth and shove open the door.

“You,”

Morvarid growls, and throws her neck back. “You can’t stop this. Even if my son cannot claim your power, the dark god will come and he will feast on your soul.”

I follow her stare, looking up. This tower has a skylight, and the moon is almost aligned in perfect eclipse position with a ring of constellations winking in the velvet darkness. A tiny sliver of a red crescent remains, growing smaller by the second, until it winks out and disappears. The tower shudders, and I don’t know if that’s from the eclipse or Roshan’s magicked earth blade below us.

“My lord Fero, come forth to claim my offering. The Starkeeper is yours.”

I’m rooted to the spot, gooseflesh rippling along my arms. There’s something foul in the air—a slick essence, slithering down on a carpet of darkness. Morvarid swallows the contents of her cup, teeth stained dark red, her body crumpling to the ground and shuddering in the throes of possession as the malevolent essence wraps around her. I stare in horror. The chanting of the four death magi grows louder. A ring of jādū lights up around them, and suddenly, the queen goes preternaturally still, her back frozen in mid-arch.

No one moves. No one breathes.

The tower groans and quakes again.

“Suraya.”

The urgent whisper from my aunt drags me out of my petrified trance. Gathering my wits while the magi remain frozen by whatever ancient magic has them in its grip, I slip around the smoldering fire and untie Amma quickly.

Without stopping, we hurry down the stairs . . . to find Javed propped against the wall, his body motionless but for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. He and Roshan are not alone. A few Dahaka soldiers I recognize from Nyriell surround them.

“What are they doing here?”

I blurt out. “Are they—”

“They’re loyal to me,”

Roshan pants.

Since when? Doesn’t he mean loyal to Aran or to the commander? But I don’t bother to dwell on it as I nod my gratitude. If it had been Aran I’d seen before in the square, they would have come to overthrow the king, but they’d ended up saving my father and his men from a massacre, and I’m grateful to them for that.

“We need to get out of here. The queen—she’s possessed or something.”

“Fero?”

Roshan asks, rushing forward to help me with Amma.

“I don’t know, but whatever rites they’re practicing up there, it’s beyond anything natural,”

I say. “We need to get all these men out.”

“What about Javed?”

he asks, hooking a thumb at the unconscious king.

As much as I want to leave the prick, I shake my head. “Take him with us. He’s leverage, if we need it.”

Two men prop the king between their shoulders. Holding on to one another, we move as a unit toward the stairs.

“Wait,”

I say, glancing to the upper parapet where the queen had slit my best friend’s throat. “I want to get Laleh. She doesn’t deserve to be left here.”

I turn to Roshan. “Please.”

“Of course.”

His soft agreement is a balm, and I swallow past the lump in my throat. He takes my hand and we move to retrieve Laleh’s body—but even as we step forward, the tower starts to shake and crumble. I let out a whimper of frustration. She’s so close.

“My fault,”

Roshan says, lifting his blade with the earth rune. “Earth magic is hard to contain.”

“It’s going to collapse,”

someone warns from behind. “You won’t make it.”

Roshan looks to me, letting me decide my fate . . . and his. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

I glance toward the crumbling passage and swallow my grief. “No, let’s go,”

I say hoarsely, unwilling to risk his life. “Laleh’s soul is already in a good place. Whatever’s up there isn’t her.”

His gaze searches mine. “Are you sure?”

I swallow against the tears rising in my throat, stinging my eyes. “No. But I can’t lose anyone else.”

Once we reach the bottom, we spill out into the bloodied courtyard. Behind us, the tower gives a huge groan and collapses inward, taking its remaining occupants with it. It would be a miracle if Morvarid survived that. Then again, she’s a death magi who practically invoked a fucking god in front of my eyes, so I’m not sticking around to find out if she did.

Frantically, I search for my father. He’s alive, I note with relief as he stumbles toward me, his clothes spattered with gristle and blood.

“Take Amma,”

I say, embracing him for a scant second before we exit the courtyard with Roshan and the Dahaka, running toward a cramped wagon already pulling out and a group of waiting horses. I calculate quickly—five horses, more than ten of us. I fall back slightly, and my father swivels, a questioning look in his eyes.

“Suraya, what are you doing?”

Kneeling, I snatch a crossbow off the ground and throw the strap over my shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll find another way out of here.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“You need to get Amma to safety.”

I pause and force a reassuring smile. “Morvarid was in the tower when it fell.”

His eyes narrow, but I nod reassuringly, hiding my qualms. “No one could have survived that collapse. Get Amma to Coban while you still can. I promise I will find another way out, but you need to leave now.”

“No.”

I cup my palms against his bearded chin. “Please, Papa. Just go. I can’t bear if anything happened to you or Amma. She’s been through enough. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“I’ll stay with her,”

Roshan says, striding to my side. “Make sure to secure the king. His kingsguard might come for him. There’s another stable on the south side of the palace where the Dahaka entered the city. We’ll go there and get horses.”

My father looks startled for a moment as recognition dawns in his eyes, his head bowing in immediate respect. “Of course, Your Highness. It is my honor.”

“The honor is mine.”

After a searching look at my face, my father nods at me. I watch as he helps Amma into the wagon. I don’t want to think that this could be the last time I see them alive. All I tell myself is that they’re going to be safe. Somehow.

The small convoy departs, taking the others out of harm’s way. The magic surges in my body as I turn, ready to face my fate. I look at the grim-faced prince at my side, and while his presence is bolstering, I can’t risk putting him in peril. I can feel it in my bones: this is far from over. “You have to go, too, Ro,”

I tell him.

“I won’t leave you.”

His gaze burns into mine, his brown eyes hot with emotion.

“If the queen is still alive, you’ll be in danger. She knows”—the words catch in my throat—“that you’re . . . a vulnerable point for me.”

“Then you’ll know why I’m staying.”

The admission makes something precious bloom in a secret corner of my heart. But the knowledge also brings fear. Fear of loss. Fear of losing him . . . for good this time.

“She’ll use you against me.”

“She will try. And I have my own score to settle with Morvarid.”

He gives that familiar lopsided grin that makes the boulder of ice in my chest thaw slightly. “And for all we know she’s already dead.”

I haven’t forgotten what she did to Roshan’s mother, but this is more dangerous than he knows. “With a powerful magi like her, we need to see a body to know for sure. Because if she did invoke the god of death, she could still be alive.”

And whatever Morvarid is, she might not be human anymore.

“Then we burn it down.”

Roshan’s face is fierce. “Together. I won’t let you do this alone.”

With a glower at his doggedness though my heart inexplicably warms, I sigh and then roll my eyes for effect. “Fine. If you’re going to go all gladiator beast-mode and muscle your way into helping out of some misplaced damsel-saving ideal, then take this.”

I thrust the crossbow strapped to my back into his hands.

“Good thing you’re no damsel, Starkeeper.”

With a wink, he slings the weapon over his arm and flexes. “So you think I’m a beast?”

My grin is watery. “I think you think you’re beast.”

“Too late,”

he says with an irreverent wink that reminds me of our first meeting here on these very grounds. “You already admitted that you like me. And we both know how you feel about my body. Especially when you commandeered it so well.”

Blushing at the innuendo, I shake my head. “You poor thing, you must have been so disoriented and confused that it scrambled your wits.”

I break into a jog toward the citadel and the royal stables. “Try to keep up, will you? And use the muscle in your brain instead of the one between your—”

I cut off as the air around us is filled with blinding bright light. An enormous portal is opening in the courtyard . . . and I recognize the armed warriors pouring from it, including their leader. The telltale maroon stripe across her chest and the studs in her cheek slam into me like a boot to the gut. That’s the woman from the communications mirror—the one who reported to Vogon.

What the fuck are the Scavs doing here?

But I’m distracted by a group of Dahaka soldiers who are running our way from the opposite direction, shouting and waving their weapons. “Commander!”

Three of the men veer toward us, their arrows flying as they ward off the incoming wave of Scavs. I recognize Aran running next to a slight female soldier with her head down holding a brace of arrows on her back, both followed by the commander from Nyriell. He moves quickly for such a big man.

“We need to get you to cover, sir,”

the commander rumbles.

I blink at Roshan. My gaze automatically drops to his clothing to see if he’s purloined another Dahaka uniform like he’d done in the Indraloka, but he’s dressed in plain brown trousers and a tunic tied with a yellow sash. He looks much like he did the first time I saw him on that courtyard wall . . . like a lowly gardener. But the commander knows he’s the Oryndhrian prince and not some foot soldier in their ranks so maybe it was a slip of the tongue in all the chaos.

A conflicted look crosses Roshan’s face just as the men reach him. “Sura, there’s something—”

The commander stops short of Roshan, grasping him by the shoulder. “This way,”

he shouts. “We secured transport.”

“Scavs!”

Aran shouts, holding on to a jādū crystal and sketching protection runes as we race down the start of the maze near the forge. I shake my head at our lack of foresight. The Scavs are controlled by Javed—he must have been using them as an extra layer of defense in case the Dahaka attacked. Of course they’d be here.

We reach a long wagon pulled by four horses and climb in. The female soldier offers me a seat, and I freeze as her face comes into view from beneath her hat. Happiness slams into me, and I grasp her forearm. “Clem, you’re alive! What are you doing here? How—?”

I break off as it takes my sluggish brain a second to understand that Clem shouldn’t be here . . . in a warzone . . . wearing soldier’s gear. Unless it’s something to do with House Antares. But still . . . how is she here?

“Clem?”

I whisper, but her eyes fall away as she ducks to hide her face.

“Where are the rest of the men?”

Roshan barks, making me jump and swing to him. “Report, Hamid.”

My brows rise at his curt tone, but the burly leader only nods. “Scattered. We took the victory in the courtyard, but we lost more than we bargained for. The Scavs caught us off guard in the open. We didn’t see them coming.”

He stops, his face grave. “They’ve secured the king, Commander.”

A huge explosion detonates, this one much too close for comfort. Screams and shouts rend the air, but I hear nothing but that single devastating word falling from the man’s lips: commander.

My pulse pounds with the three-syllabled sound of it. The noises fade. The lights wink out. Everything goes still—dangerously still, like the eye of a sand cyclone when you think everything has passed, only the worst is yet to come.

Roshan reaches for me, and I jerk backward, breaking the sticky time lapse in my brain. He nods curtly to the commander—no, not the commander—and my heart free falls in confusion and treachery.

“Get us to the hangar, Hamid.”

“Copy, sir.”

Stars on fire. They’re his men. All loyal to him. They’re fucking here for him.

Including Clem. It had been her in the bunker, not some random hallucination. She’s one of them. One of the Dahaka. She finally meets my eyes, guilt and an odd defiance swimming in them, her mouth twisting down as she reads my embittered expression.

Had she ever been my friend, or had that been a lie, too? My mind rears back to the explosion in this very palace during the ball that had started this whole thing, and I spear Clem with a look of betrayal. Shame makes her flush as her gaze falls away. I’d been so worried about her safety and being ill, and I’ll bet everything she’d been the one on the inside who set off that blast.

Because the precious fucking prince couldn’t be implicated . . .

And then he had to pretend to save me.

As the wagon takes off, more truths slam into me all at once like sucker punches to the gut—the way Roshan was treated in Nyriell and the Dahaka fortress. The respect, the deference. He even slipped up and said that the men in the tower were his. It had nothing to do with the uniform he’d been wearing, the medallion he’d carried, or being an undercover imperial prince, and everything to do with him being the fucking leader of the Dahaka.

I’d been so blind to it. To all of it. No one else looks surprised, not even Aran, and that perhaps feels like the biggest betrayal of all.

My heart shrivels until it’s nothing but a husk. “You lied to me.”

“Sura—”

“Don’t call me that,”

I snap, feeling everything inside of me start to unravel—everything I’d held on to feels brittle and fragile. The last few weeks. My blind, idiotic trust. My fucking infatuation. Me throwing myself at him, feeling sorry for the poor cast-aside prince, thinking we had only each other. Believing we had so much in common. Recalling every tender, mortifying moment in brutal heartbreaking detail. Confiding in him. Kissing him.

Giving him my starsdamned virginity.

“I trusted you,”

I say thickly. “You let me believe you were helping me, when all along you were like everyone else. You wanted me for what you thought I could do.”

Sands, I’d offered up myself—the precious Starkeeper—to him on a platter. I am such a fool.

“That’s not true.”

I grab his shoulders roughly. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that.”

“It isn’t.”

He hesitates. “I don’t want to lie to you, Suraya. In the beginning, it might have started out like that. You had magic that could change the fate of the kingdom. Once I learned what you were, you became an objective, one I couldn’t allow my brother to have, so I played the part of the fugitive prince. But it was to keep you safe, I swear.”

I glance around. “Who knew?”

“Not many. Hamid, Aran, and Clementine later on.”

He pauses as if pained. “My role in the Dahaka isn’t common knowledge. I needed everyone else to treat me as you saw me.”

I stagger backward. It feels like his jādū earth blade is quaking through the middle of my chest, leaving rubble and bloodied organs in its wake. I can’t fucking breathe, the pressure on my lungs too much . . . the pressure on my heart utterly excruciating.

I think of all the time we spent in Nyriell and the times I’d mistaken for intimacy, me moaning like a wanton in that cave and offering myself up to him, and I want to die. How could I have been so wrong? So desperate for my feelings to be returned. I drop my hands, and he reaches for them, catching me at my wrists.

“No, wait, please, you have to listen. Everything changed.”

“How did it change?”

I bite out. “You kept the truth from me. You had every chance to tell me who you were, and you didn’t. You let me believe we were in danger from the Dahaka when all along we weren’t.”

“The danger was real because of Javed’s bounty! I didn’t know who I could trust, while Hamid was ferreting out the turncoats. And I wanted to tell you so many times.”

He drags a hand through his hair. “Javed needed to be dethroned, and you know what Morvarid is. A death magi! If word got out that I was the leader of the Dahaka, I would not have been able to destroy their hold on Oryndhr. I am a prince. This is my father’s legacy.”

My tone is soft and flat. “So now you’re a prince again? That’s convenient.”

“Suraya, please.”

“And him?”

I ask with a vicious glare to the fake commander holding the reins hitched to the horses.

“Hamid is the face of the revolution. I’m its . . .”

“Heart,”

I finish for him, my voice cracking on the word along with the very real organ in my chest. “Was it all a lie?”

“No.”

He shifts toward me, his hands sliding up my arms, and even as I hate it, I want to lean into him. I hate my weakness. I hate him!

“Please, you have to trust me.”

“Trust you?”

I flare slightly, letting a wave of heat rise to the top of my skin, my runes blinding in the darkness. He pulls away sharply, his eyes wide as he holds his smarting hands to his chest. I only singed them a little, but still. “No. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Sura . . . I love you.”

I almost don’t hear the achingly quiet whisper, but I don’t need to hear it. I don’t need any more of his lies. “No, Commander. You don’t lie to the people you love.”

With that, I leap from the wagon.