Something wet and tacky hit my forehead. I gasped, wiping frantically at my face.
“Filth for filth,” Vaun whispered, directly into my ear.
I lunged for him and met empty air. I failed to catch myself this time, landing hard on my knees.
A clicking hum preceded the scuttle of pointy legs over my hand. A munban. I thrashed, pushing to my feet too quickly and clipping my shoulder against a tree. I was surrounded by threats I couldn’t see, and they were winning.
The next feint came from the right. I dove to the left instead, colliding with a distinctly human body. These were my woods. I fed this soil my blood and broken tears, sharpened its teeth on the fine flesh of monsters. In Essam, I reigned supreme.
Breathy noises leaked from my open mouth as I tightened my fist and smashed it into the side of what was hopefully a head. Did Vaun think I wouldn’t kill him? I wasn’t held to the same code of ethics as his precious Heir. I would rip his head from his shoulders and spit on his skull. I would crush what was left of him into the dirt, because his remains weren’t fit to feed animals.
“Sylvia!”
The bloodsong wailing through me paused. For a terrible moment, I could not locate my mouth in the swirling savagery. “Marek?” I patted at the chest beneath me, checking for a guardsman’s vest. It wasn’t there. “Marek, I’m so sorry!”
I rolled away from him, but the urge to tear a living thing asunder and plant my fury into its quivering heart remained.
Approaching footsteps pushed me to my haunches. I crouched, ready to spring.
“Remove the blindfold,” Arin said.
Awareness came too late, after I had already launched myself. A bone-crushing grip caught my arms before I could slam into the Heir.
“You,” Arin said. “Take off her blindfold.”
The cloth fell to the ground, and I blinked rapidly against the piercing light. Arin released me. His searching look resembled the one he’d worn when I dangled myself over Hirun. As though I’d failed some elusive test, but not in a way he had anticipated.
“Why did you wait?” he asked. “Why didn’t you remove the blindfold yourself?”
My vision settled. The drum beating its feral tune faded, taking Hanim and her fiends with it. The hazy words leaving my mouth belonged to a different girl, addressed to a dead woman. “You didn’t say I could. I have to follow the instructions.”
Good girl, Hanim whispered.
In almost humorous unison, Marek and Arin’s brows furrowed. Arin’s smoothed again, but I knew his dangerous curiosity had been piqued.
“In the future, avoid touching the trees while you run,” Arin said lightly. “Even the sap in Ayume can kill you.”
The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to find the scent of Mahair surrounding me. Fruit displayed in colorful arrays, fresh cutlets of lamb, ground spices heaped in wooden bowls. I sorted through the food, some of which had passed from season months ago, with wonder.
“This was your doing, wasn’t it?” Wes asked. I dropped into my seat, pulling a bowl of oats soaked in lavender and honey toward me.
“His Highness ordered a patrol to follow one of Raya’s wards around the market and bring back items typically found at an Omalian table,” Jeru added. “He’s never shown any extracurricular interest in food.”
“Maybe I should start complaining at the top of my lungs when I’m unhappy, too,” Jeru mused. I crossed my legs, balancing a plate on my risen knee. Sefa inhaled a bowl of bileela, the milky wheat topped with raisins and sugar.
“You’re not as attractive,” Marek said. He pounded Sefa’s back when she choked on her third bowl. I busied myself with food to hide my bewilderment. Why would Arin go through the trouble of bringing Omalian food to the tunnels when he couldn’t care less what he ate?
I didn’t voice my doubts aloud. Jeru and Wes had grown marginally more comfortable around me as the weeks passed. Marek and Sefa’s arrival had helped, too. Ren continued to pretend I didn’t exist, though, and Vaun… I wished Vaun would pretend I didn’t exist.
“Marek’s right,” Wes agreed.
Jeru clutched his chest, toppling to the floor. “Wes, catch me! I’m wounded!”
I finished chewing a bite of gibna areesh enough to garble, “Try throwing knives at him, Jeru. He seems to like that.”
All three guards turned to look at me. Wes put his head down on the table.
I cracked a boiled egg against Marek’s forehead. Wes and Jeru balked. It was a time-honored tradition at the keep, cracking eggs on the nearest victim’s forehead. I picked at the bits of shell and asked, “Did the patrol happen to find sesame candies?”
In unison, both guards scowled. Ah, I’d forgotten their last encounter with sesame candies took place when they removed one from the body of the Nizahl soldier I’d killed.
Marek inspected the colored berries with a frown. He plucked one from the stem, rolling it between his fingers. “This berry does not grow in Mahair,” he said. “I cannot even name it.”
“Let me see.” Marek dropped the berry into Sefa’s open palm. She studied the white fruit and shook her head. “I can’t, either. Sylvia, do you know?”
I accepted the berry when she held it out. I split it in half and popped a piece into my mouth.
The dry, sour flavor bursting on my tongue brought with it an old interaction, too hazy to be properly called a memory. Hadn’t Niyar tried to feed me a bowl of these white berries? It must have been before Soraya became my attendant and took over arranging my meals. I remembered Niyar going on and on about how special they were, how they only grew in the east of Jasad, and the nobles had taken to treating them like a delicacy. I called them “moon-vomit berries” and clenched my teeth when Niyar pushed one against my lips. When he would not desist, I shrieked, and my unrestrained magic threw the table and chairs into the wall. Someone had stayed with me after my grandfather stormed out—Dawoud, wasn’t it? He’d dried my tears and lifted me into his arms. “Even queens must bite sour fruit sometimes, Essiya. Now help the servants fix this mess.”
I hurled the fruit to the table, my pulse cacophonous in my ears. How could it be here? Nizahl had not left any portion of Jasad unscathed, and these berries’ existence was confined to the wilayahs in the east.
“I do not recognize it,” I whispered.
“Curious.”
I jolted in my seat. Arin and Vaun stood framed in the kitchen’s entrance. The Nizahl Heir glanced at the hastily discarded berry, and icy realization washed over me.
I was still being hunted. Arin would not stop until he uncovered my identity, culling the list of potential nobles in his systematic, efficient fashion.