My heart stopped.
“Sylvia!” Sefa gasped as the soldiers bent her arms behind her back. They forced Marek’s head to the ground.
I was on a frozen lake as my mother burned. Collecting frogs while the world screamed around me. I was at the Blood Summit, and Niyar was shouting, “Run!”
Arin stopped the guards from dragging Sefa and Marek from the ballroom, but only his father could order them released. Pulse pounding in my neck, I ran through the possibilities. Even if I bided my time and devised a brilliant plan to rescue them from Nizahl’s highly secure prisons, I could fail. The minute Sefa and Marek were taken from this ballroom, their fate would be out of my hands.
I couldn’t lose anyone else. I wouldn’t.
Essiya, don’t be foolish. You have everything you want, Hanim purred. All the wealth you will ever need. Safety from Nizahl persecution. Your precious Heir. Why lose it all for a pair of foolish Nizahlans?
But it wasn’t Hanim’s voice speaking anymore. It was mine. My own voice whispering in my head, haunting me more effectively than Hanim’s memory ever could.
And for the first time, I answered. I snatched the voice and shoved it somewhere leagues deeper than the hole I’d used for Hanim’s mortal body.
I am not yours to plague anymore, I snarled. Love was not submission. It was not testing how far I could bend before I broke. Love was Sefa’s hand finding mine in the dark to reassure herself of my presence. Love was Marek entering the kingdom of his nightmares to help me. Raya’s squash soup on my birthday, Rory’s gruff smile when I named an herb correctly, Fairel’s giddy laugh. Dawoud turning the dagger onto himself. A table exploding in the Blood Summit. Love was Arin cradling my face in a burning room and telling me to run.
I looked at Marek and Sefa, and I made my choice.
“Your Highness.” I climbed the platform to Supreme Rawain. The steps groaned beneath me. “I am here to plead for their lives.”
Rawain tilted his head. I’d piqued his curiosity.
“Who are a pair of thieves to the Victor?” Rawain asked. Arin appeared at Rawain’s shoulder, muscles coiled with apprehension. I couldn’t look at him.
He would never forgive me.
“They are my companions. They are innocent of this crime.”
The scepter thudded against the floor. He looked bored again. “The trial will decide their innocence. I’m afraid I cannot grant you this request, dear Sylvia.”
I thought of a wink across an ancient oak table. A serene smile as the sky crashed around us, raining ruin onto the Blood Summit. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he took everything from me.
When you choose who you are willing to fight for, you choose who you are.
I knelt at the Supreme’s feet.
Every line in Arin’s body went taut. I gathered fistfuls of my dress, bowing my head. “Please, Your Majesty. I beg you to spare them.”
Supreme Rawain had the same thoughtful calculation I adored in his son. In the former, it sent revulsion pulsing in my gut. “Why should I?”
A bargain would have to be struck. Nothing less would ensure Sefa and Marek’s safety.
“I offer myself in their place.”
Sefa and Marek weren’t Jasadis, but there wasn’t a doubt in my body they were mine. I would not suppress them. I would not let myself forget everything good to safeguard myself from the bad.
My magic cascaded, gathering hungrily at my cuffs.
Rawain laughed. He shared a commiserative glance with a puzzled King Murib. “I don’t want to punish my own Champion. Especially one who’s given us so much pride!” he exclaimed, drawing a few nervous chuckles.
He wouldn’t embarrass Nizahl by arresting his own Champion. Not for a few common thieves. Supreme Rawain was no different than Hanim. One thing joined them together years before my birth. One immutable, depraved need, and it was what I called upon now.
I allowed myself to look up at Arin. Like a dying woman at an oasis, I drank my fill of the beautiful Heir. Horror twisted across his features. As hard as he tried to plan every conceivable outcome, even the Nizahl Heir could not prepare for the hidden shadows of a broken mind—nor what might happen if light was turned upon them.
In the measure of monster or man, what tips the scales?
I rose to my feet. “You knew me before I was your Champion.” My voice rang loud and clear. My magic howled for release. There was no tightness. No pain.
If it was power he wanted, it was power he would get.
“We met across a sacred oak table many years ago. At a site of peace and prosperity. You knew me by another name. Look closely, Rawain. Don’t you remember me?” I leaned over the table between me and the Supreme. “I certainly remember you.”