The king sighed.
He closed his eyes, pressed the tips of his fingers to his temple. “I sent six men after her tonight. And the girl is not dead.”
Slowly, the frozen gears in Kamran’s brain began to turn. His rusty mind had its excuses: the hour was late; the prince was exhausted; his consciousness had been preoccupied with a recent effort to defend himself against a surprise attack ordered by his own grandfather. Even so, he wondered that it had taken him so long to understand.
When he did, the breath seemed to leave his body.
Kamran closed his eyes as renewed anger—outrage—built in his bones. His voice, when he spoke, was so cold he hardly recognized himself.
“You think I forewarned her.”
“More than that,” said the king. “I think you assisted her.”
“What an odious suggestion, Your Majesty. The very idea is absurd.”
“It was quite a while before you answered your door tonight,” said Zaal. “I wonder: Were you still slithering back into your rooms? In the dead of night, dragged from your bedchamber, you now stand before me fully dressed, wearing your swords and scabbards. Do you expect me to believe you were abed?”
Kamran laughed, then. Like a lunatic, he laughed.
“Do you deny it?” King Zaal demanded.
Kamran leveled a violent glare at his grandfather, hatred flashing through his body. “With my very soul. That you even think me capable of such unworthiness is so insulting as to astonish me to the point of madness.”
“You were determined to save her.”
“I asked you merely to consider sparing the life of an innocent!” Kamran cried, no longer bothering to contain his temper. “It was a basic plea for humanity, nothing more. You think me so weak as to go against a formal decree issued by the king of my own empire? You think me so frail of mind, so weak of spine?”
For the first time in Kamran’s life, he watched his grandfather falter. The older man opened then closed his mouth, struggling for the right words.
“I— I did worry,” King Zaal said finally, “that you were overly preoccupied with thoughts of her. I also heard about your foolishness with the defense minister, who, despite your undisguised loathing of the man, is a prominent elder from the House of Ketab, and your speech toward him was nothing short of mutinous—”
“So you sent armed men to my door? You sentenced me to indefinite imprisonment without trial? You would’ve risked my head over a mere misunderstanding—an assumption? Does this seem to you an appropriate reaction to your concerns, Your Majesty?”
King Zaal turned away, pressed two fingers against his closed lips. He appeared lost in thought.
Kamran, on the other hand, was vibrating with fury.
The unfolding of the evening’s events struck him suddenly as so unlikely, so impossible, that he wondered distantly whether he’d detached from his own mind.
It was true that he’d privately considered pushing back against his grandfather’s command to find a wife. It was true, too, that in a moment of madness he’d thought to warn the girl, had even fantasized about saving her life. But Kamran always knew, deep down, that those silent ravings were bred only of transient emotion; they were shallow feelings that could not compete with the depth of loyalty he felt for his king, for his home, for his ancestors.
His empire.
Kamran would never have staged a counterattack against the king and his plans—not for a girl he did not know, not against the man who had been more of a father to him than his own had ever been able.
This betrayal— It could not be borne.
“Kamran,” the king said finally. “You must understand. The girl was prepared. She was armed. The puncture wounds inflicted indicate she had access to highly unusual weapons, which one can only assume were supplied to her by a third party with access to a complex arsenal. She was prophesied to have formidable allies—”
“And you thought one of those allies might be me?”
Zaal’s expression darkened. “Your ridiculous, childish actions—your fervent desire to spare her life even with the knowledge that she might be the death of mine—left me with no choice but to wonder, yes, for it remains highly unlikely that she was able to dispose of six armed men without assistance. Five of the six she flatly murdered; she only spared the last to send back a warni—”
“The girl is a Jinn!” Kamran shouted, hardly able to breathe for the vise clamping around his chest. “She is heir to a kingdom. Never mind the fact that she has preternatural strength and speed and can call upon invisibility at will—she was no doubt trained in self-defense from a young age, much like I was. Would you not expect me to easily defend myself against six ruffians, Your Highness? And yet? What? You thought a queen might be easy to murder?”