“Put that down!” Rory snapped, swatting his cane against my leg.
My words emerged soaked in grief. “How did you find out?”
I was so careful. But it wasn’t enough. Hanim was right. It would never be enough. No matter where I went or how hard I tried, Essiya would follow.
“I knew you the moment I saw you, starved and bloody and shivering at this door. Niphran’s daughter, Heir of Jasad. Essiya.”
“Don’t call me that!” I shouted. My blood pounded in my ears. “How?”
Concern colored Rory’s voice. For himself or for me? “I have a history with Jasad, one that existed long before you. Be at peace. Only I could have known you by sight. Fate’s hand drew you to my door that night.”
I had not realized how heavily I leaned against the wall until my legs ceased their support and sent me sliding to the floor. Dizzy, I said, “You told me fate is comfort for the content and a misfortune for fools.”
My knuckles were white around the dagger. It belonged lodged in Rory’s throat, stemming the poisonous truth. I needed a minute. Just a minute, to collect my thoughts.
“The Commander will sense your magic. He’ll execute you.” I finally deciphered the strange note in Rory’s voice. He was frightened for me. I was contemplating slicing his throat, and he was stewing in worry. “If he discovers who you really are—”
“My magic is hidden from him. He won’t know I am—I’m a Jasadi.” I swallowed hard. “The Heir of Jasad died with the rest of the royal family. There is nothing to discover.”
Rory’s lips pursed. “You can’t be certain. He has an unnatural aptitude for—”
“He touched my hand and found nothing, Rory.” I pinched the skin between my brows. A torrential migraine brewed between my temples. “I am not a novice.”
Rory’s confusion soothed some of my frayed corners. He did not know about the cuffs. I still had some secrets. “I don’t understand.”
A more important question rose to the surface. One I should have asked five years ago, but Rory hadn’t pressed, and I hadn’t offered. “Why did you never ask me whose blood I wore the night I arrived in Mahair?”
“I knew it wasn’t yours,” he said evenly. “I cared little past that.”
Rory, who threw apocalyptic fits every time one of his experiments went slightly awry, who nitpicked over proper storage temperatures, who regularly turned his hands different colors digging around baskets of plants I’d scrounged from the dankest corners of Hirun—that Rory didn’t care?
I pushed aside a basket of wrapped vials and clambered to my feet. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you care where I had vanished for five years if you recognized me? Or how I survived the Blood Summit?”
Rory’s grip tightened on his cane, but his features remained languid. “There is much we do not know about each other yet, Essiya.”
My jaw clenched. “I told you—”
“My apologies. Sylvia.” Disdain dripped from his voice.
The visceral reaction I experienced whenever I heard my birth name was absurd. She was not an entity separate from myself, a fiction in the tales of bards. But neither was she truly real. Not anymore.
“Answer my question,” I growled.
“Watch yourself. I owe you no answers.”
“Give them to me anyway.”
We scowled at each other. Finally, through gritted teeth, Rory said, “I didn’t want to know.”
“Didn’t want to know what?”
“How you survived,” he burst. “Your grandparents killed so many at the Blood Summit. I did not want to know what lengths they took to ensure you walked away.”
I stopped short, shock rippling through me. “You think—” I clamped my mouth shut. Of course he thought Malik Niyar and Malika Palia had arranged the events of the Blood Summit. Everyone else believed it.
“What exactly do you know of what happened at the Blood Summit?”
For a moment, Rory looked unsure. “The messenger entered the hall with news of Niphran’s murder in Bakir Tower. Stabbed to death. The Jasad crown used the chaos to attack the other royals, but their grief over their Heir caused their magic to go awry. They couldn’t control what they created. It cost many lives and led to the war.”
I pulled at the fringed ends of my braid, avoiding the insistent tug of my memories. After the Blood Summit, the scholars asked all the wrong questions. They wanted to know whether the messenger referred to my mother as “dead” or “slain.” Whether he’d arrived on horseback or by carriage. Not why the Malik and Malika of the most successful kingdom in the lands would bother trying to assassinate the other royals, especially in such a reckless outburst. Why they would risk bringing their granddaughter and second Heir to a summit they intended to destroy.
Hurt sharpened my tone. For all his genius, Rory was as susceptible to Supreme Rawain’s lies as everyone else.
“I see. Because my grandparents were apparently smart enough to orchestrate the most violent massacre on royals seen in a hundred years, but not smart enough to survive it. Go on, Rory. Finish the tale.”
“I do not think—”
“Continue your tale, Rory.” My cuffs pulsed in warning. “You will not like my version of it.”
Rory sighed, making nervous circles around the cane’s handle. “Supreme Rawain rallied the other four kingdoms against Jasad. They found a way through the fortress. Left without a Qayida or any Heirs, Jasad fell to the invading forces.”
“I can finish for you.” I pushed off the counter, and the chemist’s expression tightened with unease. Good. “Nizahl’s armies reduced Jasad to rubble. They threw bodies into holes and burned the homes they left behind. Every Jasadi who survived is in hiding, their magic made a capital offense.” I trembled. My cuffs tightened around my wrists, warm with my vibrating magic. “No one asked, Rory! No one wondered. How does an unassailable fortress fall?”
Once given voice, the question bloomed in my mind like blood in a clear pond. Hanim hadn’t cared about the deaths at the Blood Summit; she hadn’t really cared when the siege began, either. But when the tide of war turned in Nizahl’s favor, what reduced her to a frothing rage was Supreme Rawain’s victory. With my grandparents gone, she had truly believed Jasad would bring forth a new dawn of political freedom. She had imagined herself leaving Essam Woods when Jasad was at its weakest, welcomed with open arms to the kingdom that had exiled her with a convenient Heir to put on the empty throne and manipulate.
But my magic didn’t work. And when the fortress fell, Supreme Rawain’s forces were joined by Omal’s, Lukub’s, Orban’s. Envy over Jasad’s prosperity, its magic, had hardened into a hate no one could have anticipated. No one except Supreme Rawain.
And so Jasad’s Heir suffered in the woods while the throne of magic sat empty in the newly scorched kingdom. In her captured corner, the soft girl who had known a bird by its song and calmed at the touch of another was burned away.
I am what remains.