Her lips trembled, and she picked up Rory’s gloves. “No matter how much I love you.”
I groped behind me, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. My fingers slid along, bumping into a curved protrusion. The windowpane.
“Love?” I whispered. I thought of Sefa and Marek following me into Essam in the dead of night to bury a Nizahl soldier. Risking death to find me after the waleema, throwing aside their lives in Mahair to become fugitives once more. “I know now what love should feel like, and it is not this.”
Soraya pressed the gloves to her chest. “Do you know why I called you amari? It doesn’t just mean ‘my beauty.’ Amari means ‘my moon.’ That is what you were to me. Constant and true. All I wanted was to make you happy.”
Tossing my gloves aside, Soraya blew out a determined breath. “But it is time for the sun to rise over Jasad, Essiya. We have dwelled in the night too long.”
“You’re killing Jasadis, yet I am the system bringing destruction to our people?”
A frustrated Soraya did not watch me as thoroughly as a woeful one. She kicked my chair into the wardrobe, and I took the opportunity to press my palm to the window. I angled my body over the glass. I would need my magic for only a split second, but faltering would doom me.
Grief. Rage. Fear.
So much of each whirled through me, but which would I need to rile my magic?
“We kill only the Jasadis too weak to join the movement for our recovered land. It is a blessing that they should die at our sword than at a Nizahl soldier’s.” Feverish energy entered Soraya as she spoke. “Think of it, Essiya. A Jasad built on equality, without royals or nobles. No lower villages. Jasad’s rich resources made available to any citizen who seeks them. This is what the Mufsids will build. The Urabi couldn’t care less about the kind of kingdom they renew, so long as it is theirs.”
This made the third time someone maligned the honor of my grandparents’ regime. A Jasad built on equality sounded eerily reminiscent of corrupt walls of Usr Jasad and no two more insidious royals have existed since them. Hanim had loathed the Malik and Malika with every fiber of her foul being, but I had always assumed her tales were just that—tales. If half the stories she told me about my grandparents or the Jasad throne were true…
Hanim told me the wilayahs tried to overthrow my grandparents. She recounted rebellions and uprisings from Janub Aya all the way to Laf il Rud. The upper wilayahs rallying behind the crown while the lower ones burned crops in protest. But the Mufsids belonged to the upper wilayahs, and the Mufsid woman I’d met had made it quite clear they wanted me for my magic and my name. Who had they lied to—me or Soraya?
“My grandparents employed you. They trusted you with their daughter’s Heir. Why would you accept if you hated them?” My voice wobbled. Why would she pretend to care about me if she didn’t?
Soraya took a step toward me. Her eyes were wet. I did not believe the softness for a second. She had already proven herself a phenomenal performer.
“I had my reasons. Essiya, I never planned to care about you. I tried so hard to hate you, to see the rot of royalty in your sweet face. But you would wrap your arms around my waist and plant your little feet on top of my own and ask to keep me company during errands. You were the most affectionate, clever thing.”
I could barely conceive of a time when I could embrace someone without panic raking nails into my skin. And affectionate?
The words struggled through the ring of agony burning in my chest. I did not have long. “Stop distracting me. Why do the Mufsids think Jasad was corrupt when it benefited them most? Why do you hate the throne?”
Soraya’s eyes hardened. “You know why.”
“I don’t.”
Soraya grabbed the sides of my head before I could react. Her nails dug into my curls as she brought my face close to hers. “Why was the Summit called? Before it was the impetus for the Jasad War, before it was the Blood Summit—why did the kingdoms assemble? What were they discussing?”
I tried to shake her hands loose without moving my torso. “I was a child! I don’t remember.”
Her fingers tightened painfully. “Amari, do you know why I let the Urabi find out you existed, though I despise those spineless brats? Why I broke from the Mufsids, a group I have led for half my life, when they elected to recruit you instead of bury you?” The rings of Soraya’s eyes were flecked with gold. They burned into mine. “You have the potential and power to be worse than any who have come before you. You can reshape yourself to survive any conditions you are placed in. Who we are is where we were. Where we come from. The generations of our blood and our roots. But you… you broke a girl’s arm for not climbing a tree with you and forgot about it the next day. You set Dawoud’s most precious quilt on fire because he would not allow you to play with it in the courtyard, and then you asked him about the quilt not two hours later. Your mind is a maze of mirrors, reflecting only the memories you choose to save. The best thing Malik Niyar and Malika Palia did for Jasad was putting you in those cuffs.”